VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Affective Body Language Detection and Generation for Socially Assistive Robots
Keywords: affect classification
affective body language
automated body language recognition
human-robot interaction
socially assistive robots

For socially assistive robots to be successfully integrated and accepted within society (especially by vulnerable populations such as the elderly), they need to be able to interpret human affective states (emotions, moods and attitudes) in order to respond appropriately during assistive human-robot interactions (HRI). Previous research has indicated that body language is a very important method of communicating affective states during natural human social interaction. This thesis focuses on developing, implementing and evaluating non-contact based autonomous affective body language recognition and classification systems that allow socially assistive robots to estimate a person's affect and respond appropriately during interactions. Both a novel static body language based recognition system and a novel dynamic body language based recognition system have been developed and implemented. The first system classifies body language using a categorical approach based on a person's accessibility (openness and rapport) towards a robot, while the second system uses a dimensional approach based on a person's valence (feeling of unpleasantness or pleasantness) and arousal (level of activity) levels. Both systems are implemented onto the human-like socially assistive robot Brian 2.1 and evaluated during one-on-one socially assistive HRI experiments. The results of experiments with young adults and elderly participants indicate that both systems accurately identify user affect. This thesis further investigates how individuals interact and perceive an affect-aware socially assistive robot, by designing Brian 2.1 to adapt its behaviours based on a user's degree of accessibility towards it throughout social HRI. Experiments indicate that participants were more accessible towards the accessibility-aware robot over a non-accessibility-aware robot, and perceived the former robot to be more socially intelligent. With this in mind, this work lastly investigates the development of an emotionally intelligent robot capable of effectively displaying its own affective body language during such interactions. Uniquely, body language based on movements and postures founded in human behaviour research are integrated onto Brian 2.1 in order for such a robot to be able to respond to a user's affective state using its own set of emotions. The importance of these body language displays are that they are designed and tested to be easily recognizable by non-expert users. A number of social HRI studies are conducted in this work and lay a foundational framework for developing socially assistive robots that can recognize and react to human affect while providing needed assistance.
On Philosophical Problems in the Foundations of Chaos Theory
Keywords: chaos theory
epistemology
fractals
observational equivalence
philosophy of physics
scientific realism

This dissertation examines several philosophical issues in the foundations of chaos theory and fractal geometry. In Chapter 1, I argue that our epistemological and ontological investigations would be better served by looking at the particular successes and failures of individual chaotic models, rather than focussing on broad questions of approximate truth. The rest of the dissertation can then be seen as a set of attempts to put this program into practice. In Chapter 2 I consider the prospects for instrumental fractal models of non-fractal physical objects. Although philosophers have contended that such models must always be inferior to non-fractal models, I argue that in some cases fractal models can be vastly epistemologically superior to their non-fractal rivals. In Chapter 3 I take up questions of ontology, and consider the prospects for the existence of fractals in physical space. Although philosophers have argued that physical fractals are an impossibility, I argue that classical mechanics and chaotic models could entail the existence of interesting fractal regions of space. In Chapter 4 I consider two definitions of observational equivalence for chaotic models, and ague that they fail to meet acceptability criteria.
When Least Expected: Stories of Love, Commitment, Loss and Survival - The Experience and Coping Strategies of Spouses of People with an Early-onset Dementia
Keywords: caregiving
dementia care
early-onset dementia
frontotemporal dementia
grounded theory
spouses

Abstract Understanding the needs of families and in particular spouses of people with early-onset dementia (e.g., those who develop a dementia under the age of 65), has become increasingly recognized as an area of importance by the healthcare community because of the negative biopsychosocial consequences to patients and families. However, there is a dearth of research about the experiences of younger spousal caregivers. The goal of this qualitative, grounded theory study was to understand the experiences of spouses of people who have frontotemporal dementia and early-onset Alzheimer's disease, throughout the disease trajectory. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 participants; 17 had partners with frontotemporal dementia and 13 had partners with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Spouses were recruited with the intention of capturing various stages of the caregiving career. The participants ranged all the way from spouses of people who were newly diagnosed, to individuals who had already been placed in long term care. Three themes emerged from the data analyses initially: (1) issues related to life-stage, (2) disease invisibility and (3) living with continuous uncertainty. These themes led to a fourth theme of caregivers feeling like they were falling through the cracks of the healthcare and social support systems since there are no appropriate services/policies set up for younger people affected by dementia. Finally, a core theme of surviving chronic crises emerged as spouses described how they coped with the continuous challenges related to their partner's dementia. Spouses live through series of crises that they need to constantly manage, leading to a feeling that they are barely surviving. The most common coping strategies that spouses employed through the illness trajectory included: advocacy, reframing, self-care and spirituality. Over the caregiving trajectory, spouses adapted to the impact of having a partner with early-onset dementia. The applicability of the findings is that they point to the timing, to the types of clinical interventions and to policy initiatives.
Studies of Amino-specific Chemical Tags. Prospects for 19F and 13C Protein NMR and Materials Chemistry
Keywords: Chemical Exchange
Fluorine
Methyl
NMR
Protein
Tagging

Site-specific chemical tagging of proteins is a precursor to many structurally-focused biological studies by NMR and mass spectrometry. In particular, reductive methylation is a well-known approach to incorporate methyl groups onto lysine and N-terminal amines in proteins. Interestingly, the NMR spectra of reductively dimethylated lysine residues are often complex, due to methyl inequivalence and chemical exchange. Whereas prior studies on small molecules have eluded to some of the underlying exchange processes, the fundamental origins of methyl inequivalence for dimethyllysines have been largely neglected. Furthermore, prior to this thesis, no comprehensive model had been proposed which encapsulates all elements of the exchange phenomena, showing how they are interconnected and give rise to experimentally observed NMR spectra of reductively methylated proteins. The first part of this thesis addresses the methyl exchange for both small molecule substituted dimethylamines and for dimethylamino groups in proteins and should therefore be useful for better understanding methyl spectra of reductively methylated proteins as well as methyl NMR spectra in general. The second half of this thesis is primarily concerned with the application of 19F NMR toward the study of protein chemical exchange as well as the design of novel 19F tags for site-specific labeling of amino acid side chains. The former pertains to a study of exchange between monomeric and oligomeric states of the toxic PrPSc form of the prion protein, which has implications for understanding the mechanisms responsible for aggregation and pathogenesis. The subsequent two chapters describe a computational method for the design of highly-sensitive 19F chemical tags and also introduce a new general bioconjugation strategy for chemically modifying amino groups with reactive indoles, with an emphasis on 19F NMR applications. The final chapters introduce a cross-saturation, spin-diffusion-based technique that allows for the detection of subtle conformational changes in proteins.The methodology described in this thesis extends the repertoire of techniques for designing new chemical tags for NMR applications, for site-specifically labeling proteins, and demonstrates NMR-based approaches to studying disease-relevant chemical exchange processes, characterizing conformational intermediates, and for understanding how biophysical characterization of side chain dynamics and kinetic processes can give insight into structure-function relationships in proteins.
A Comprehensive Study of Bank Branch Growth Potential and Growth Trends through the Development of a Unique DEA Formulation and a New Restricted DEA Model
Keywords: Bank Branch
Data Envelopment Analysis
Efficiency
Growth

DEA has been widely used in branch performance work to evaluate intermediation, profitability and production efficiency. However, traditional modeling approaches fail to assess growth potential and customer retention; two very significant components of a bank's economic health and market stability. To address this issue, this research integrates Operations Research (OR) techniques with DEA methodologies to develop a new formulation for more accurately modeling branch growth from one time period to another. This model was found to be successful in evaluating a branch's growth potential and with the integration of Malmquist Index techniques, and was able to identify growth trends over an extended period of time. In addition, this study introduces a new restricted DEA model that restricts the Most Productive Possibilities Set (MPPS) to a convex subset of non-negative growth units through the restriction of the non-negative intensity variable found in the dual form of DEA. To verify both models and test the validity of the results, several data sets were used, including one provided by one of the Big Five Canadian Banks and one from a large Turkish bank.
High-speed Soft-processor Architecture for FPGA Overlays
Keywords: efficiency
FPGA
multi-threading
overlay
parallelism
soft-processor

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) provide an easier path thanApplication-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) for implementing computingsystems, and generally yield higher performance and lower power than optimizedsoftware running on high-end CPUs. However, designing hardware with FPGAsremains a difficult and time-consuming process, requiring specialized skillsand hours-long CAD processing times. An easier design process abstracts awaythe FPGA via an "overlay architecture", which implements a computing platformupon which we construct the desired system. Soft-processors represent the basecase of overlays, allowing easy software-driven design, but at a large cost inperformance and area. This thesis addresses the performance limitations ofFPGA soft-processors, as building blocks for overlay architectures. We first aim to maximize the usage of FPGA structures by designing Octavo, astrict round-robin multi-threaded soft-processor architecture tailored to theunderlying FPGA and capable of operating at maximal speed. We then scaleOctavo to SIMD and MIMD parallelism by replicating its datapath and connectingOctavo cores in a point-to-point mesh. This scaling creates multi-local logic,which we preserve via logical partitioning to avoid artificial critial pathsintroduced by unnecessary CAD optimizations.We plan ahead for larger Octavo systems by adding support for architecturalextensions, instruction predication, and variable I/O latency. These featuresimprove the efficiency of hardware extensions, eliminate busy-wait loops, andprovide a building block for more efficient code execution.By extracting the flow-control and addressing sub-graphs out of a program'sControl-Data Flow Graph (CDFG), we can execute them in parallel with usefulcomputations using special dedicated hardware units, granting betterperformance than fully unrolled loops without increasing code size.Finally, we benchmark Octavo against the MXP soft vector processor, theNiosII/f scalar soft-processor, and equivalent benchmark implementationswritten in C synthesized with the LegUp High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tool, anddirect Verilog Hardware Description Language (HDL) implementations. Octavo'shigher clock frequency offsets its higher cycle count, performing roughlyon-par with MXP, and within an order of magnitude of the performance of LegUpand Verilog solutions, but with an order of magnitude area penalty.
The Present Participle as a Marker of Style and Authorship in Old English Biblical Translation
Keywords: attribution
authorship
Old English Gospels
present participles
syntax
translation

This dissertation investigates evidence of multiple authorship in the Old English Hexateuch translation of Genesis and in the Old English Gospels by examining how the translations render the Latin present participle into Old English. These are two of the longest extant Old English texts, and there is growing scholarly recognition that both may be products of multiple authorship; however, the translators, except one in Genesis, are anonymous, and the number and locations of shifts in authorship are widely disputed. Past scholarship has employed qualitative, philological evidence, counted features possibly indicating shifts in authorship, and variously proposed breaks between and within texts, but qualitative studies have not fully exploited the present participle as a marker, and quantitative results have not been verified with statistical tests. This dissertation addresses these gaps by conducting a full inventory of Latin present participles in the Old English Genesis and the Old English Gospels, identifying how they are rendered into Old English, and then categorizing them by case and position. The dissertation then applies a statistical "proportion test" to search for the locations of statistically significant shifts in the rate of translating the Latin present participle with its OE counterpart, both overall and in several subcategories. Last, the study engages in qualitative syntactic and philological analysis to evaluate breaks indicated by the proportion test. The results independently corroborate previously asserted textual breaks in Genesis and the Old English Gospels with new syntactic and statistical evidence, revise an existing theory of intra-textual shift in the OE Matthew, and detect evidence of other intra-textual shifts not previously asserted in scholarship. These results also suggest Old English biblical translators engaged in interpretation and authorship, not merely mechanical translation. The study's approaches further explore how traditional and non-traditional methods of authorship attribution can investigate a wide variety of authorship problems.
A Methodology for the Optimal Design of Linear Ultrasonic Actuators
Keywords: Design methodology
Excitation voltage
Linear ultrasonic motors
Piezoelectricity
Vibrations

Linear ultrasonic motors (LUSMs) are a type of piezoelectric actuator that can achieve closed-loop positioning accuracy in the nanometre range. The operating principle of the LUSM is based on two stages of energy conversion. First, the converse piezoelectric effect is used to generate resonant vibrations in the stator body. Then, linear motion is induced through frictional contact with a moving stage. A primary challenge facing the design of LUSMs is the ability to accurately evaluate actuator-based output performance parameters in a simulated environment. This challenge limits the use of these parameters in computer-aided design optimizations. Furthermore, this issue has led to a heavy emphasis on the stator design, where the scope is limited to the mechanical design aspect of the first stage of energy conversion. To address these issues, the overall objective of this thesis is to develop an LUSM design methodology that is capable of optimizing an LUSM configuration with respect to actuator-based performance specifications by accounting for both stages of energy conversion in its operation. By fully considering the input-output relationships in both stages of energy conversion from mechanical and electrical viewpoints, the proposed design methodology is capable of further improving the actuator output performance parameters in terms of the output force and power densities. In this work, a novel LUSM performance evaluation and design optimization methodology is developed. The primary contribution of this methodology is its ability to evaluate both stator-based and actuator-based performance parameters in a single design stage under contact conditions found in the stator-operating environment. This approach allows the design optimization of LUSMs to be performed with respect to the actuator output performance parameters. The performance evaluation and optimization approach enables the improvement of the LUSM output performance parameters through the application of non-sinusoidal periodic excitation voltage signals in driving the LUSM stator. Two actuation approaches were considered: the application of a square-wave excitation voltage and the application of an excitation voltage yielding a square-wave-based stator driving tip trajectory. The higher harmonics of the square wave were able to excite additional resonant modes in the stator. Performance analysis and extensive finite element-based simulations indicated significant improvements compared to sinusoidal excitation signals in terms of output force and power.
A Matrix-free Algorithm for Multidisciplinary Design Optimization
Keywords: aerostructural optimization
matrix-free
MDO architectures
multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO)
nonlinear optimization

Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) is an approach to engineering design that exploits the coupling between components or knowledge disciplines in a complex system to improve the final product. In aircraft design, MDO methods can be used to simultaneously design the outer shape of the aircraft and the internal structure, taking into account the complex interaction between the aerodynamic forces and the structural flexibility. Efficient strategies are needed to solve such design optimization problems and guarantee convergence to an optimal design.This work begins with a comprehensive review of MDO problem formulations and solution algorithms. First, a fundamental MDO problem formulation is defined from which other formulations may be obtained through simple transformations. Using these fundamental problem formulations, decomposition methods from the literature are reviewed and classified. All MDO methods are presented in a unified mathematical notation to facilitate greater understanding. In addition, a novel set of diagrams, called extended design structure matrices, are used to simultaneously visualize both data communication and process flow between the many software components of each method. For aerostructural design optimization, modern decomposition-based MDO methods cannot efficiently handle the tight coupling between the aerodynamic and structural states. This fact motivates the exploration of methods that can reduce the computational cost. A particular structure in the direct and adjoint methods for gradient computation motivates the idea of a matrix-free optimization method. A simple matrix-free optimizer is developed based on the augmented Lagrangian algorithm. This new matrix-free optimizer is tested on two structural optimization problems and one aerostructural optimization problem. The results indicate that the matrix-free optimizer is able to efficiently solve structural and multidisciplinary design problems with thousands of variables and constraints. On the aerostructural test problem formulated with thousands of constraints, the matrix-free optimizer is estimated to reduce the total computational time by up to 90% compared to conventional optimizers.
Tipping Points to Institutional Care for Persons Living with Dementia: Analyzing the Policy Trajectory in Ontario
Keywords: Dementia Care
Dementia Policy
Health Policy
Home and Community Care
Homecare
Neo-institutionalism

Most people, if given a choice, would remain in their own home and community as they age. This desire does not diminish for persons living with dementia (PLWD), yet many end up prematurely or inappropriately in residential long-term care (LTC), or waiting in a hospital bed for placement. While institutional care is valuable for those in need of high intensity care, it is ill-suited for those with lower intensity care needs. Premature or inappropriate placement of PLWD is not good for individuals (PLWD and their caregivers), or for the system (inappropriate use of resources), yet occurs in part because PLWD often have multiple complex, ongoing health and social needs; however, this thesis argues that it also is a result of care systems focused on episodic, curative care, and by fragmented services that are ill-equipped to support PLWD safely and cost-effectively in the community.While much policy analysis has focused on demand side issues (e.g., an aging population, dementia projections and needs), this research addresses supply side factors - particularly local system capacity to provide needed community-based care options for PLWD to live safely and cost-effectively in the community for as long as possible. It uses Neo-institutionalism, a high-level theory drawn from political science, to explore the historical and policy legacies for community based care of PLWD and predict what one would expect to see in the future if Ontario remains on the same familiar path. It also uses a Balance of Care (BoC) simulation methodology to explore what the system will actually provide PLWD to age safely at home. The conceptual and applied approaches combined are expected to provide a greater understanding of the policy trajectory for home and community care, its impact on current resource allocation decisions at the local level in Ontario and the potential for H and concerted health and social care interventions to help offset the growing healthcare costs for high intensity users of the system like PLWD.