VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Embodied, Intelligent and Empathic: Reframing Autism Using Insider Perspectives
Keywords: Autism
Embodied
Insider perspective
Qualitative

Background: To date, academic and clinical conceptualizations of autism have been built on research that reflects the perspectives of researchers and scholars, to the exclusion of the perspectives of autistic insiders. Objectives: To build deeper understanding of autism, especially its associated characteristics and behaviours, by examining the perspectives of people who identify as autistic. Research Process: Adopting a descriptive qualitative approach, I conducted three sequential studies. In the first study, I used inductive thematic analysis of memoirs for an early exploration of insider perspectives and identification of phenomena of interest. Through this, I identified experiences of being misjudged and embodied autism as primary phenomena of interest. In the second study, I used directed content analysis of blogs to pursue a deepened understanding of embodied autism. In the third study, I used the dataset from Study #2 and applied inductive thematic analysis to the blog content to more closely examine insider framings of autism. Results: The informants in this research conceptualize autism and explain its characteristic behaviours in ways that are fundamentally different from the dominant framing of autism. When explaining their autistic behaviours and functional challenges, the informants highlight embodied issues such as difficulty controlling movements and maintaining an adaptive level of arousal. The informants frequently experience being misjudged and misunderstood and express desire for a shift in the dominant framing of autism to better match their perspectives and needs as autistic insiders. Conclusions: Together these studies offer an insider-informed framing of autism that is more embodied, intelligent, empathic, and positive than depictions of autism in dominant literature. This research highlights the feasibility of insider-informed autism research and its potential to enrich autism science and service.
Low Temperature Sulfate Resistance of Concrete Produced with Portland-limestone Cements and Supplementary Cementitious Materials
Keywords: cement
concrete
durability
portland-limestone cement
sulfate attack
thaumasite sulfate attack

Portland-limestone cement with up to 15% interground limestone was included in the Canadian Standard A3000 for Hydraulic Cements in 2008. However, due to the lack of data on sulfate resistance of concrete especially the potential for thaumasite sulfate attack at low temperatures, the use of portland-limestone cement in concretes subjected to moderate or severe sulfate exposures, even when blended with supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) was not allowed. In this experimental research, the sulfate resistance of fifty three concrete mixtures produced with several combinations of portland and/or portland-limestone cements and SCMs at three different water-to-cementitious materials ratios of 0.40, 0.50, and 0.70 exposed to both sodium and magnesium sulfate solutions was evaluated in both laboratory and field exposures at low temperatures by measuring changes in length, mass, and resonant frequency of concrete prisms as well as making visual inspections. Also, the causes, mechanisms, and depth of deterioration in damaged concrete mixtures having insufficient levels of SCMs was investigated by mineralogical analysis using X-ray diffraction and microstructural analyses using micro X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy. It was found that SCMs at sufficient replacement levels significantly improve the resistance of concrete to sulfate attack and in such mixtures there was no impact of limestone additions. The sulfate resistance of PC+SCMs and PLC+SCMs concrete mixtures is equal to or better than that of currently allowed highly and moderately sulfate-resistant portland and blended cements. Exposure to magnesium sulfate solution is more aggressive than sodium sulfate solution. The sulfate resistance of concrete prisms in the selected field exposures is better than that of prisms in the selected laboratory exposures due to more reasonable concentrations of sulfate solutions, larger prism size, and possibly including the variable temperature used in the field exposure. Since there is no standard test method for evaluating the sulfate resistance of concrete due to the potential threat from thaumasite sulfate attack at low temperature and previous research focused on mortar tests, the results of this research can be used to develop a standard test method for evaluating the sulfate resistance of concrete.
Potential Therapies for Bone Health in Glucocorticoid-Treated Mdx Mouse Model of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
Keywords: Bone health
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
Glucocorticoids
Growth Hormone
Parathyroid Hormone
Vitamin D

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is an X-linked genetic disease, affecting 1 in 3500 boys. It is a progressive disease, presented with chronic inflammation, severe necrosis and degeneration of muscle. There is no cure, and most patients receive long-term glucocorticoid therapy to delay the disease progression. In addition to their muscle phenotype, DMD patients also suffer from bone fragility due to chronic inflammation in muscle, suboptimal vitamin D levels, and lack of mechanical loading from the muscle on bone. Their bone health is even further compromised by the use of long-term glucocorticoids, which are known to significantly suppress osteoblasts, resulting in osteoporosis. In this study, we wanted to identify the roles of vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency in bone health, with or without glucocorticoids, using the Mdx mouse model of DMD (Study 1). Then, we also wanted to determine the effectiveness of using intermittent PTH (Study 2) and growth hormone (Study 3) as bone anabolic agents, as glucocorticoids dramatically suppress bone turnover. These bone treatments were concurrently done with glucocorticoids to ameliorate the development of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis, during rapid bone growth to mimic young DMD boys receiving the glucocorticoid treatment. We found that suboptimal 25-(OH)D (lower than 50nmol/L) did not have significant effects on musculoskeletal health in growing Mdx mice, regardless of glucocorticoid treatment. However, intermittent PTH treatment improved the glucocorticoid-induced cortical bone loss, as well as dystrophic muscle-driven osteopenic phenotype in trabecular bone. PTH treatment also maintained beneficial effects of glucocorticoids on muscle or further exerted positive effects on dystrophic muscle phenotype. Growth hormone treatment had minimal effects on bone microarchitectures, but significantly improved biomechanical properties in both cortical shaft and vertebrae. On the top of the beneficial effects of glucocorticoids on dystrophic muscle, growth hormone treatment further enhanced muscle function and histomorphometry by reducing fiber size variation and percentage of fibers with central nuclei. This study suggested PTH and growth hormone as potential treatments for musculoskeletal health in glucocorticoid-treated DMD boys during growth.
Canadian Industrial Policy in Comparative Perspective
Keywords: industrial policy
political economy
regime theory
varieties of capitalism

This thesis utilizes an institutional theory of economic organization and technological innovation called regime theory to explain the origins, operation, and outcomes of industrial policy in Canada. The first part of the thesis elaborates the theory using formal logic, spatial modelling techniques, and game theory. The second part evaluates cross-national quantitative evidence in support of the theory and undertakes three detailed case studies involving shipbuilding, agricultural biotechnology, and green energy manufacturing. Consistent with the varieties of capitalism literature, it is demonstrated that liberal political economies are institutionally-poised toward radical innovation but struggle with late innovation. The introductory chapter defines industrial policy, explains why the study of industrial policy is important, details the argument of the thesis, summarizes the methods used, and lays out how the thesis is organized. The second chapter engages with the literature on collective action and entrepreneurship to advance three components of regime theory: a theory of regime origins, a theory of regime operation, and a theory of regime outcomes. The third chapter introduces the structure of the economy and state of technological development as situational variables, consideration of which yields four archetypical models of industrial policy and ten predictive hypotheses about the causes and consequences of industrial policy coordination. Chapter 3 concludes with a summary of the propositions and implications of the theory. The fourth chapter analyzes three cases studies —aluminum shipbuilding industrial policy in British Columbia; federal-provincial biotechnology policy in support of the canola industry; and Ontario’s green energy industrial strategy— and evaluates the ability of regime theory to explain industrial policy in Canada. The fifth and final chapter summarizes the theory and evidence presented in the thesis and discusses the inferences that can be drawn from the findings.
Disrupting Democracy? Voting Advice Applications and Political Participation in the Digital Age
Keywords: Big Data
Digital technology
Elections
Public opinion
Social media
Voting Advice Applications

So-called Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are a class of interactive, online applications which purport to measure how closely an individual user’s political views align with the policy platforms of candidates running in a given election. They have become a popular fixture in election campaigns all over the world, drawing millions of users in certain cases. This dissertation is comprised of a series of papers which examine the implications of VAAs for the practice and study of political participation. It takes into consideration both the information that users take from VAAs as well as the information that VAAs take from users. The first paper examines the validity of the measures that VAAs use to calculate the proximity between users and candidates. It demonstrates how certain assumptions in the design of most VAAs contribute to measurement error, and proposes both a corrective measure and a general framework for testing the validity of VAA calculations. The second paper mounts an empirical challenge to the prevailing wisdom that non-probability samples cannot yield representative inferences about a population of interest. It offers evidence from VAA data to indicate that vote intention data from certain VAAs, which are inherently non-probabilistic samples, produce more accurate election forecasts than do certain rigorous probability samples. The third paper uses a combination of social media and VAA data to develop an experimental method used to infer the ideological positions of Twitter users on the basis of the lexicon they employ on the platform. It serves as a foundation for a scalable, dynamic approach to ideological inference from social media data. The dissertation concludes with reflections on both measurement validity and of VAAs as a case study in the potential implications of digital technology for the practice of democratic governance.
Vortex Lattice Solutions of the ZHK Chern-Simons Equations
Keywords: Chern-Simons equations
orbital stability
vortex lattice solutions
Zhang-Hanson-Kivelson equations

In this thesis we study the ZHK Chern-Simons equations which occur in the study of the fractional quantum hall effect of condensed matter physics. After stating basic properties of these equations, we first prove the existence of vortex lattice solutions of them. Among these solutions, we then find the lattice shape which minimizes the average energy per lattice cell. In addition to the vortex lattice solutions, we find solutions of the ZHK Chern-Simons equations on Riemann surfaces of higher genus g, by utilizing similar results for the Ginzburg-Landau equations. Finally, we study the orbital stability of the vortex lattice solutions under perturbations which preserve the lattice. Also, this thesis is based on results in two papers.
Suppression and Interference Control in Memory Retrieval
Keywords: Aging
Chronotype
Inhibition
Memory
Suppression

Resolving interference from competing information is a critical factor in memory retrieval. This thesis investigated suppression as the inhibitory mechanism required to select target information among competitors, by examining the effect of aging and the synchrony between circadian arousal and time of testing during interference resolution. Study 1 demonstrated below-baseline suppression of competitors by young adults using a novel paradigm that induced interference based on semantic associations, and showed that the magnitude of suppression was correlated with individual working memory span. Study 2 found no evidence of suppression by older adults, supporting the theory that older adults’ memory deficits are related to impaired inhibitory control. Study 3 tested whether the ability to suppress competing memory traces varies with the synchrony between optimal arousal period and time of testing. Using a variant of the paradigm developed in Study 1, the below-baseline suppression effect for young adults tested at optimal times of day was replicated, and participants tested at non-optimal times of day showed facilitation of competitors instead. Study 4 investigated whether optimal time testing would improve older adults’ inhibitory control to reduce interference. Study 4 did not find evidence of below-baseline suppression for older adults at either testing period, however, older adults demonstrated a facilitation effect at non-optimal times of day similar to that shown by younger adults in Study 3. Lastly, Study 5 aimed to supplement this line of research with electrophysiological evidence of differential processing for targets and interfering competitors. Although no behavioral difference in access to competitors was found in Study 5, the neural data demonstrated an ERP signature that may reflect suppression of competing information in interference resolution. Together, these studies converge to show that semantic interference is resolved by inhibitory processes that decrease the accessibility of competitors at retrieval for young adults, but not older adults.
Faculties’ Behaviour and Response to Decentralized Budgeting at a Large Research-Intensive University.
Keywords: Budgetary Decision Making
Decentralized Budgeting
Faculties' Budgetary Behaviour
Higher Education
Responsibility Center Budgeting (RCM)/Responsibility Center Management (RCM)

This explorative descriptive case study examined the extent of budgetary planning and decision-making decentralization under RCB/RCM, and its effects on the quality of decision making as perceived by those involved in budgetary decisions at various levels at a major public research university. In doing so, it adopted a bottom-up approach to determine if what the university sees and expects top-down differs from what the faculties and departments see or how they behave bottom-up. The initial document analysis phase of this study identified the major themes for further development during phase 2 of the study. It also facilitated the identification of the four diverse faculties that formed the basis of the study. During the survey and interview stage of the study, the major themes were explored further, and subsequently, the informational asymmetries that exist between the RCB/RCM model, the process, and the participants were identified. Utilizing the concepts of principal–agency theory, risk and uncertainty, and known unknowns the data were analyzed and the results presented across six categories of asymmetry. This study found that while the university’s intent and design for the decentralized model was for it to allocate budgets to academic divisions only, the faculties in this study responded in a number of ways, from a local decentralized model, to the retention of an incremental process. Moreover, fiscal awareness is dependent on the role, the amount of information that is shared, vested interest in the model, and the types of budget models utilized at the local level. RCB/RCM-Lite models create informational asymmetries. The processes that support decentralized models prompt informational asymmetries particularly within the constraints of a publicly funded university; and create both moral hazard and adverse selection problems, especially as it relates to risk. This study showed that the methodology used to assign shared service costs can create an informational asymmetry when the central administration assigns overhead and indirect costs as average or fixed costs, but faculties recognize marginal costs, and as such, do not recognize or understand the costs that are attributed to them.
Increasing Hand Hygiene Performance in Health Care Workers with Electronic Real-time Prompting
Keywords: Compliance
Electronic Monitoring
Hand Hygiene
Health Care-Acquired
Infection Control

Poor hand hygiene (HH) by health care professionals is a major cause of healthcare-acquired infections. Improving HH compliance among staff is the most effective way to reduce healthcare acquired infections. This thesis evaluates the ability of an electronic monitoring system with real-time prompting capability, to improve HH behaviours, its ability to capture high resolution audit data, and presents alternate system deployment strategies. To investigate HH behaviours, 120,441 dispenser activations on a nursing unit were counted before, during, and after installation of the system. The effect of changing the prompt duration on HH performance was determined by a randomized control trial including 90,776 HH opportunities from 185 participants on three nursing units. Sustainability of performance and participation was observed on four nursing units including observations from 419 participants over a year. Results showed that real-time prompts of 20 seconds’ duration nearly doubled HH activity and caused HH to occur sooner after entering a patient room. These improvements were sustainable over a year. Analysis of HH audit capabilities was conducted on data collected on a musculoskeletal rehabilitation unit over 12 weeks. Results showed that continuous collection of HH data that included temporal, spatial, and personnel details provided information on actual HH practices, whereas direct observation or dispenser activation counts showed only aggregate trends. Aggregate performance at patient and soiled utility rooms were both 67%, although individual compliance varied greatly. The number of HH events that occurred inside patient rooms increased with longer visits, whereas HH performance at patient room exit decreased. Eighty-three percent of missed HH opportunities occurred as part of a series of missed events, not in isolation. The system was deployed two more times on the unit at six month intervals. There was a significant increase in aggregate dispenser use with every deployment and a decrease over several weeks following each withdrawal. Intermittent deployment of the system counteracted potential declines in participation rates sometimes seen with continuous system use.
Explaining Gendered Participation in Computer Science Education
Keywords: closure theory
computer science education
computing education
gender
women in computing
women in technology

Amongst scientific fields, computer science (CS) is the only one in which the percentage of women undergraduates has decreased since the 1980s; in the US and Canada, this percentage has hovered around 15%. Since the 1990s, a great deal of effort and resources have been put toward trying to improve the representation of women in computing. Unfortunately, these wide-spread efforts have not resulted in any macro-scale improvements. Using theoretical and conceptual tools from critical sociology, policy analysis, and systems thinking, I examine the question of why the efforts to improve gender diversity in CS education have not had a more discernible effect on a macro scale. I begin by classifying gender diversity initiatives, and observe that the most prevalent types of initiatives are low-leverage. I examine the history of women in computing, finding that enrolment booms are key times for gendering participation: when universities faced enrolment booms in the late 1980s and dot-com era, the percentage of women decreased, in part from gatekeeping measures enacted by CS departments. And as CS is currently facing its third enrolment boom, I survey CS faculty to see what factors are influencing their current policy discussions about enrolments. I find that diversity is seldom considered, nor is history; this approach to policymaking could exacerbate the gendered participation in CS. I also extend Etzkowitz et al.’s framework of “generations” of women in STEM, noting that different generations of women in CS have had differing and conflicting goals for gender equality. Through re-examining the historical variations in gendered participation in computing, and considering the contemporanous global variations, I determine that Anne Witz’s occupational closure theory provides an explanation for the historico-geographical variations. I find that policies (e.g. educational gatekeeping) and discourses (e.g. you need to be brilliant to be a computer scientist) are the primary ways in which the boundaries of CS are closed. For CS to improve its gender diversity, we need to make higher leverage changes; identifying policies and discourses as critical levers allows for change-agents to more effectively push for gender diversity.
Computational Studies of Gas Injection, Ignition and Combustion Emissions in a Direct-injection Natural Gas Engine
Keywords: Combustion Emissions
Computational Study
Direct Injection
Gas Injection
Ignition
Natural Gas engine

The direct-injection of natural gas into the compression-ignition engines is attractive, due to its emission advantage and diesel-equivalent efficiency. The computational simulation of this next-generation heavy-duty engine can provide deep insights of the gas injection and ignition characteristics and help understand the emission formation process, and hence, a KIVA-3v based three-dimensional computational model was developed and improved to represent the configuration of a glow plug assisted direct-injection natural gas engine. This thesis presents the important conclusions about the numerical studies of the natural gas ignition and emissions by using this engine computational model. Preliminary simulations revealed that the shield for a glow plug, an ignition assist for natural gas in compression-ignition engines, can highly improve the natural gas ignition stability compared to an unshielded glow plug, and the design of the glow plug shield has great potential for the further improvement of the natural gas ignition. The different shield designs, characterized by the parameters such as shield opening shape, number and distribution, were evaluated by using the improved KIVA model. The simulated results clearly demonstrated the three key functions of a good shield design. A multi-opening shield, consisting of four small openings in a diamond shape, can achieve all three requirements and hence highly reduce the natural gas ignition delay and improve the ignition stability, compared to the original single-opening shield. The proper emission models are critical for the numerical simulations of natural gas engine emissions. For the gaseous species, a kinetic package, CANTERA, is coupled to KIVA CFD code to simulate the formation of important emissions, such as C2H2 and NOx. However, the available detailed mechanisms, such as GRI-3.0, will over-predict the ignition delay at low temperature (