VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Walter Benjamin's Weak Force of Study and Counter-traditional Education
Keywords: critical pedagogy
philosophy of education
study
university
Walter Benjamin
youth

My dissertation re-evaluates the potential of a seemingly unpromising moment in the incomplete project of university reform: Walter Benjamin’s attempt to reorient the German youth movement towards the question of the student. Current scholarship does not address Benjamin’s theoretical project for student reform, his creative reception of canonical texts in philosophy of education, or the impact of the youth movement’s alignment with the national war effort on his view of the relationship between state power, education, and violence. I set Benjamin’s educational writings into conversation with nineteenth-century German philosophy in order to bring out the philosophical core of a corpus that has usually been relegated to biography. The productive autonomy of study is the core of Benjamin’s program for educational reform. He proposes that the reciprocal determination of scientific principles and existential commitments shapes each student’s capacity to become a teacher. He argues that this transformed concept of study can ground the organization of the university and alter its working conditions. In opposition to the progressive consolidation of the university system around a nation-building program advancing an unified cultural state, Benjamin proposes that study can be a way of mediating between scientific discourses in the university and emerging problems in civil society. Staging a speculative encounter between Benjamin’s concept of study and Kant’s exposition of the right to philosophical critique, I contend that this expansive vision for freedom of learning has the power to contest the predetermined scope of the right to education granted by the state. Benjamin’s account of student autonomy makes use of the idealist principle of the transcendental subject who identifies with the idea of its study in creating its form of life. He also reactivates the destructive energies in Nietzsche’s critique of educational institutions to unbind the revolutionary kernel of idealism from the ideal of a cultural state. This twofold retrieval resists the reduction of the idealist legacy to administrative rationality and rescues the radical moment of critique that can intervene in the disputed trajectory of educational institutions. My interpretation demonstrates the contemporary actuality of Benjamin’s educational writings and their critical force for pedagogical experiments today.
Smart Hospital Applications
Keywords: Big data
Discrete event simulation
Hospital
Internet of things
Machine learning
Privacy auditing

Recent technological advancements (i.e., internet of things [IoT]), radio-frequency identification technology, electronic medical records/electronic health records) and new achievements in machine learning have provided hospitals the platform necessary to invest in data-driven modern technologies to enhance care delivery and therefore to reduce cost and increase revenue generation. Therefore, this Ph.D. research identifies the impacts and demonstrates the applications of these advanced technologies to shape the current hospital system by accomplishing three projects: (i) Evaluate the impacts of IoT on the quality of care domains and staff requirements of a hospital unit, (ii) Design a validation framework and apply it to evaluate the impact of a smart privacy auditing tool on operational excellence, and (iii) Predict the number of beds to clean within the next few hours as well as foresee the staff requirements in the emergency department (ED) applying machine learning algorithms and discrete-event simulation (DES) modeling to facilitate decision-making and reduce ED crowding. To identify the impacts of IoT on quality care domains (e.g., patient safety, efficiency, timeliness), a pre-/post-intervention analysis of patient falls and length of stay as well as a post-intervention analysis on hand hygiene compliance rate and call response time has been conducted using interrupted time series and other statistical analyses. Additionally, semi-structured interviews to find staff experiences have been performed. A favorable impact of IoT on these outcome measures is reported. The black box method of user acceptance testing has been adopted to design the evaluation framework for the automated privacy auditing tools, considering several scenarios on appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Validation of the framework with one hospital’s data shows that the effectiveness of one such tool is 98.09%. Poisson regression performs the best for predicting the number of beds to clean at the ED. Prediction model results are used as the input for a DES model to identify staff requirements and to assist in decision-making. This data-driven Ph.D. research unfolds the evidence of the consequences of smart hospital applications and solves the current complex problems related to decision making. Thus, this research informs hospital management and policymakers about the effectiveness of smart hospital applications.
The Natural History of Ductal Carcinoma In Situ and Early-stage Breast Cancer
Keywords: breast cancer
cancer invasion
cancer metastasis
cancer progression
DCIS
natural history

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is described as a noninvasive form of breast cancer (stage 0) which cannot metastasize without first progressing to invasive cancer, whereas small stage I cancers are considered de facto breast cancers with the ability to metastasize and cause death. This thesis consists of four papers dealing with various aspects of the early stages of breast cancer and an extensive literature review. I attempt to get a better understanding of the relationship between local invasion and distant metastases in small cancers. In Paper 1, I examined the relationship between local recurrence and distant metastasis/death among women with early-stage (DCIS, stage I or stage II) breast cancer in the Henrietta Banting Breast Database at Women’s College Hospital. There was little correlation between the 15-year rates of local recurrence and of breast cancer mortality across the three stages. Factors predicting local recurrence were different from factors predicting mortality. In Paper 2, I examined the impact of microinvasion on breast cancer mortality in patients with DCIS, using the SEER database. In terms of 20-year survival, DCIS with microinvasion (0.1 cm or less) was distinct from pure DCIS and similar to small invasive breast cancer (0.2 to 1.0 cm). In Paper 3, I examined the relationship between tumour size and risk of metastases among patients with invasive breast cancer in the SEER database. Metastasis risk had little correlation with the number of tumour cells (based on calculated tumour volume). The potential for metastasis decreased with increasing tumour size. In Paper 4, I examined the prognostic impact of a prior history of DCIS among women with early-stage invasive breast cancer in the SEER database. Invasive breast cancer post-DCIS was indistinguishable from primary invasive cancer in terms of prognosis. Together, these studies and the literature review suggest that the invasive in-breast tumour, nodal and distant metastases are independent events which originate from an upstream cause. The prevention of invasive recurrence post-DCIS does not impact on breast cancer mortality. This knowledge is important to optimize strategies for early detection and treatment.
Partakers in Paideia: Representations of Literacy in the Epigraphy of Christians in Central Asia Minor
Keywords: Asia Minor
Christianity
Epigraphy
Poetry

My dissertation examines the epigraphic practices of Christians living in central Asia Minor in the second to fourth centuries CE. Christians living in an area known as Phrygia as well as the bordering region of Lycaonia produced the earliest epigraphic remains of Christians in the Greek East. Many of these inscriptions are in verse and seek to represent the deceased as literate. I argue that the compulsion to produce verse epitaphs representing the deceased as literate stems from two coinciding ancient traditions. The first influence was literary valorization that was present in the earliest documents and material culture of the Christian tradition. This trend portrayed Christians and their early heroes as capable readers and writers. The second is the proliferation of Greek epigram that was popularized after the year 250 CE. Civic and imperial officials used this poetic genre to represent themselves as eloquent, educated rulers who legitimately possessed their posts based on their paideia or education. Through an examination of technologies of paideia in the epitaphs of Phrygian Christians, I argue that Christians in Asia Minor capitalized on this trend to accrue social capital. In doing so, they could portray themselves as skilled with Greek literature that was representative of an elite class of rulers. Capitalizing on literate self-representation, Christians could openly display aspects of their faith, so long as they were couched in the language of paideia. Using a practice-based theory of literacy, my dissertation asks not how early Christians became literate but what did literate representation do for their individual and corporate identity in the socio-cultural and political context of late Roman Asia Minor.
Adapting Automated Vehicles as Assistive Technologies for Older Adults through Intelligent Features
Keywords: Assistive Technologies
Automated Vehicles
Dementia
Human-AI Interaction
Older Adults

Automated Vehicles (AVs) are expected to cause a paradigm shift in transportation systems with promises of enhancing road safety and access to transportation among populations whose non-automated driving is restricted. Among such populations are those living with age-related declines and medical conditions such as dementia. While utilizing AVs to promote older adults’ safe driving can provide potential life-changing benefits to this populations, the topic has received relatively limited attention from the research community and automated vehicle manufacturers alike. At this time when the race to bring AVs to the market continues and many of the AV features are still in development, it is the appropriate time to ask, \textit{“How can we adapt AVs as assistive technologies for older adults?” } This thesis attempts to answer this question through a combination of (A) mixed-method usability studies to uncover insights about the interactions of older adults with AVs and (B) applying the experimental findings of the usability studies towards designing intelligent features for AVs that can ultimately help adapt AVs as assistive technologies for older adults. Correspondingly, the first three usability studies in Chapters 2-4 respectively assess the views of three groups of stakeholders including healthy older adults, people with dementia, and their family care-partners on using AVs as assistive technologies. These usability studies highlight the shortfalls of current AV designs in meeting the needs and preferences of older adults, especially those living with dementia and highlight the merits of AV customization in promoting older adults’ acceptance of AVs. Building upon the findings of the usability studies, Chapters 5 and 6 describe studies on designing intelligent features that could be used for the ultimate adaptation of AVs for older adults. Chapter 5 introduces a design to predict older drivers’ baseline fitness to operate an AV and Chapter 6 introduces a design to monitor older drivers for signs of confusion about the AV’s operating mode. The combination of usability and design studies advances our understanding of the interaction of older adults with AVs and strives to design an intelligent system that could potentially bridge the usability gap between current AV designs and older adults.
Development of Oral Amino Acid Tracer Models to Study Muscle and Whole-body Anabolism in Humans
Keywords: amino acids
dietary protein
muscle protein synthesis
resistance exercise
stable isotopes

Traditional stable isotope infusion methods to study muscle and whole-body anabolic responses to feeding and exercise can be invasive and logistically challenging and generally do not provide insight into the metabolic fate of ingested amino acids. Therefore, this thesis aimed to develop oral amino acid tracer models to comprehensively study muscle and whole-body anabolism in humans. In Chapter 2, we demonstrated that oral L-[1-13C]leucine and L-[ring-2H5]phenylalanine ingestion resulted in greater dietary amino acid incorporation after feeding and exercise as compared to feeding and fasting at rest, resulting in greater rates of myofibrillar protein synthesis. In Chapter 3, we demonstrated that a non-invasive breath test based on oral L-[1-13C]leucine ingestion can detect reduced dietary leucine oxidation and enhanced net leucine balance after feeding and exercise as compared to feeding at rest. And finally, in Chapter 4 we demonstrated that amino acid transporter expression was not influenced by acute feeding and/or resistance exercise and did not positively influence the incorporation of dietary amino acids for myofibrillar protein synthesis. Collectively, these findings represent viable methods and models to allow greater flexibility in testing anabolic sensitivity under a range of physiological conditions and within a wider variety of study populations.
Tongue Pressure and Hyoid Kinematics in Dysphagia
Keywords: Dysphagia
Hyoid
Stroke
Swallowing
Tongue
Videofluoroscopy

This dissertation explores the relationships of tongue pressure and hyoid kinematics with swallowing function in healthy participants and in patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia post-stroke. The first chapter of this dissertation provides an overview of normal swallowing including the roles of the tongue and hyoid kinematics. Next, we discuss oropharyngeal dysphagia and the use of exercise rehabilitation programs that target tongue pressure. Chapter 2 is a systematic review exploring the current evidence base for tongue pressure training as an intervention for dysphagia. Our review deemed this intervention successful for increasing isometric tongue pressure generation, however generalization to swallowing function revealed mixed findings. As a result of this review, we identified limitations in reporting and design in prior studies that we addressed in our prospective studies (Chapters 5, 6). Expanding beyond the tongue, we designed a study in to examine variations in hyoid kinematics in healthy swallowing in Chapter 3 and obtained normative data. A retrospective study was then conducted in Chapter 4 using a large sample of patients presenting with risk of neurogenic dysphagia from varying etiologies. The normative data collected in Chapter 3 were used to classify hyoid parameters as typical or atypical and to explore the relationships of hyoid bone kinematics to unsafe swallowing in this study. Through this analysis we demonstrated significant associations between hyoid parameters and laryngeal vestibule closure parameters, however hyoid measures were not significant independent predictors of swallowing safety. Expanding on these analyses, a study was designed with the objective of quantitatively outlining patterns in swallowing (patho)physiology in a homogeneous cohort of patients presenting with impaired tongue strength post-stroke in Chapter 5. Following the characterization of swallowing in this cohort, Chapter 6 describes a tongue pressure treatment protocol designed to overcome limitations identified in Chapter 2. The intervention was implemented with one participant who presented with reduced tongue strength and swallowing safety. Improved tongue pressure generation and swallowing safety was achieved in this study, however limitations of this single case study design are discussed. Finally, we outline the overall findings and limitations of the studies undertaken in this dissertation in Chapter 7 and discuss future research directions arising from this work.
The Emergence of Family Medicine and Its Impact on Primary Health Care: The Experience of India
Keywords: Family Medicine
Implementation
India
Low and Middle Income Countries
Primary Care
Primary Health Care

Many low- and middle-income countries are introducing family medicine (FM) to strengthen primary care and primary health care (PHC). However, there is little research on how FM emerges in a new context and how FM can strengthen PHC. Insight into these areas can help ensure implementation is effective and achieves the desired outcomes: improved health and well-being. In my dissertation, I use multiple methods to explore these two objectives. First, I look at how FM emerges in multiple countries and the trajectory of implementation using comparative policy analysis. Findings suggest four essential components, that often take place over several decades, including government commitment, educational reforms, the development of professional organizations and stakeholder buy-in. Second, I explore the implementation of FM in India and the role of early cohort family physicians in this process using a qualitative descriptive study. Findings show they developed and implemented the first FM training programs and professional organizations that supported the field's spread. They played key roles as leaders, educators, mentors, and advocates. Third, I delve into the potential mechanisms by which FM strengthens primary care and PHC through the experiences of early cohort family physicians in India using a qualitative descriptive study. They are skilled primary care providers that support the ongoing training of family physicians and mid and low-level healthcare providers and motivate the workforce. They change how care is delivered by ensuring providers' skills match the needs and engage communities as partners in healthcare. They develop relationships with specialists ensuring appropriate referral systems and, when necessary, work with governments safeguarding access to the necessary resources. Finally, using a cross-sectional survey, I assess the current landscape of FM in India to understand the implementation of FM to date and the impact of postgraduate training on family physicians and their ability to practise. Findings suggest that FM training is associated with increased confidence and skills and consequently family physicians deliver a broad range of services. In our sample, almost half of family physicians work in the primary care sector, and a greater proportion of family physicians work in rural areas compared to physicians overall.
Architecture and CAD Techniques for Efficient FPGA Implementation of Machine Learning and Other Applications
Keywords: FPGA architecture
FPGA CAD
Machine Learning

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) offer an alternative to application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that is attractive in scenarios where flexibility may be required or where chip volumes are not sufficiently high enough to justify the costs of a custom chip. The flexibility of FPGAs offer users the power/performance benefits of a custom hardware implementation, compared to software running on a processor, without committing to one specific design. However, the flexibility can lead to inefficiencies in terms of development time, area, performance, and power. FPGAs are used for a variety of applications and different optimizations can be applied to increase efficiency of FPGA implementations. This thesis considers techniques that can be applied to achieve efficient implementation of machine learning and other applications on an FPGA from the perspectives of architecture and computer-aided design (CAD). We consider the use of a high-level synthesis (HLS) tool to synthesize an accelerator for deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) on an FPGA. We implement a complete end-to-end system running on an Arria 10 SoC FPGA. The accelerator implements zero-skipping and reduced-precision convolution with minimal impact on accuracy. We evaluate various versions of the accelerator through software changes and tool constraints alone. Then, we propose architecture changes to the carry-chain architecture in FPGAs to improve the resource utilization of binarized CNNs (BNNs). We add additional carry-chain circuitry that propagates sum instead of the carry. We demonstrate that we are able to reduce FPGA resource utilization while keeping the additional circuit area small. Lastly, we propose to re-map some of the look-up-tables (LUTs) to use the existing carry-chain architecture in order to increase performance by adding a post-LUT mapping step to the FPGA CAD flow. Using a subject graph that closely matches the underlying hardware, we are able to select critical paths to take advantage of the existing fast dedicated carry-chain routing.
Quasiconformal Geometry of Metric Measure Spaces and Applications to Stochastic Processes
Keywords: Brownian motion
Conformal dimension
Gromov-Hausdorff convergence
Quasiconformal geometry
Quasisymmetry
Sierpinski carpet

We study three topics of quasiconformal and quasisymmetric geometry; the quasisymmetric embeddability of metric Sierpi\'nski carpets, the quasisymmetric embeddability of weak tangents and the conformal dimension of stochastic spaces. The common tools we use to attack these three topics are different versions of Moduli and the convergence of spaces. For the first problem, the problem of quasisymmetrically embedding spaces homeomorphic to the Sierpi\'nski carpet into the plane, we use transboundary modulus to study it. This allows us to give a complete characterization in the case of dyadic slit carpets. Every such slit carpet $X$ can be embedded into a ``pillowcase sphere" $\widehat{X}$ which is a metric space homeomorphic to the sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$. We show that $X$ can be quasisymmetrically embedded into the plane if and only if $\widehat{X}$ is quasisymmetric to $\mathbb{S}^2$ if and only if $\widehat{X}$ is Ahlfors $2$-regular. For the second problem, the problem of quasisymmetric embeddability of weak tangents of metric spaces, we first show that quasisymmetric embeddability is hereditary, i.e., if $X$ can be quasisymmetrically embedded into $Y$, then every weak tangent of $X$ can be quasisymmetrically embedded into some weak tangent of $Y$, given that $X$ is proper and doubling. However, the converse is not true in general; we will illustrate this with several counterexamples. In special situations, we are able to show that the embeddability of weak tangents implies global or local embeddability of the ambient space. Finally, we apply our results to Gromov hyperbolic groups and visual spheres of expanding Thurston maps. For the third problem, the conformal dimension of stochastic spaces, we develop tools related to the Fuglede modulus to study it. In order to achieve this goal, we study the conformal dimension of deterministic and random Cantor sets and investigate the situation of conformal dimension $1$. We apply our techniques to construct minimal (in terms of conformal dimension) planar graph. We further develop this line of inquiry by proving that a "natural" stochastic object, the graph of the one dimensional Brownian motion, is almost surely minimal.