VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Machine Learning to Predict and Optimize Lower Extremity Arthroplasty Resource Utilization
Keywords: Arthroplasty
Efficiency
Machine Learning
Optimization
Scheduling

Total knee and hip arthroplasty (TKA and THA, respectively) are common and resource intensive procedures contributing to significant burden on healthcare systems. The overall aim of this thesis project is to identify and develop strategies to improve elective surgical scheduling for TKA and THA. Machine learning and optimization to predict resource utilization-related outcomes such as duration of surgery and length of stay for arthroplasty patients were identified. A predict-then-optimize approach utilizing neural network models and linear programming was compared to historic scheduling strategies. Data sources for this work include the administrative National Surgical Quality Improvement Program and an institutional database from the Holland Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. The most important features of the neural network models for outcome prediction were identified and compared between databases. Together, these findings are the foundation upon which to develop a “smart” surgical scheduling system and improve the efficiency of operating room utilization.
Plasma Neurofilament Light Chain as a Biomarker of Global Cognition in the Early Stages of Cognitive Impairment
Keywords: Biomarker
Cognitive Impairment
Global Cognition
Mild Neurocognitive Disorder
Neurofilament Light Chain
Plasma

Neurofilament light chain (NfL) is an established biomarker of neuroaxonal injury, but further work is needed to determine its clinical utility in the early stages of cognitive impairment. The present study assessed 1) the relationship between NfL and global cognition in n=71 individuals with mild neurocognitive disorder (NCD) and 2) differences in NfL between individuals with mild NCD and n=49 age/sex-matched controls. Global cognition and plasma NfL levels were measured using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, respectively. Plasma NfL was associated with worse global cognition at baseline (β=-0.276, p=0.032). Longitudinally, baseline plasma NfL did not predict a decline in global cognition; however, an increase in NfL was associated with worse global cognition (b[SE]=-4.81[2.06], p=0.023) over time. NfL levels did not differ in the mild NCD and control groups. Overall, these findings suggest a relationship between plasma NfL and global cognition in the early stages of cognitive impairment.
Deuterium Reclamation From C-Si Codeposits Using Thermo-oxidation
Keywords: Carbon
Codeposits
Deuterium
Fusion
Silicon Carbide
Thermo-oxidation

Codeposition within magnetic confinement fusion devices where plasma fuel, namely tritium, is trapped along with eroded material, poses serious economic and safety concerns for these devices. Mitigation of the build-up of carbon-based codeposits within magnetic fusion devices can be achieved by thermo-oxidation. This involves heating the codeposit films under an oxidizing atmosphere, typically oxygen. Recently, silicon carbide (SiC) has garnered attention as a candidate PFM due to its good neutron irradiation damage resistance and high operating temperatures. While a previous study has investigated the hydrogen retention within C-Si codeposit films, the removal of hydrogen from these films using thermo-oxidation has yet to be studied. It is crucial to determine if the significant non-carbon component of Si within these films will affect the removal of hydrogen as was observed with C codeposits films containing a significant fraction of Boron.
Psychological Maltreatment and Retired, Competitive, Women Athletes' Conformity to Sport Ethic Norms
Keywords: Conformity
High Performance
Psychological Maltreatment
Sport Ethic
Violence
Women Athletes

The sport environment has the potential to be very advantageous to one’s development and wellbeing; however, the culture of sport is plagued with excessive pressures and extreme expectations which enhances athletes’ susceptibility to experiencing harm. The purpose of this thesis was to qualitatively examine women athletes’ conformity to the sport ethic and their experiences of psychological maltreatment during their time in sport. A total of thirteen retired, competitive, women athletes from various sports participated and engaged in a one-to-two-hour semi-structured interview, which were analyzed thematically. Three major themes were generated: development of conformity to the sport ethic; cycle of conformity and psychological maltreatment; and long-term consequences of conformity. Findings are interpreted to suggest that athletes’ uncritical adherence to the sport ethic is learned through observing and modelling peers within their sport environment. As well, conformity to the sport ethic and experiences of psychological maltreatment are interrelated with one another.
The MSE Knowledge Engine
Keywords: Curriculum Knowledge Map
Knowledge Mapping
Memory Retention
Ontology
Undergraduate Engineering Education

Due to the vast range of content in the undergraduate MSE curriculum, there is reason to investigate whether students are successfully encoding curriculum knowledge long-term. Studies in memory research suggest that the retention of university course content significantly declines in the months after the course is taken. This project involves the creation of a curriculum database to cultivate a strong conceptual organization of knowledge, as a way to enhance students’ retention of content. Previous research supports the use of knowledge maps and ontologies to synthesize curriculum content into an organizational road map. This paper presents an ontological framework which holds a database of approximately 2,000 second-year MSE curriculum concepts. The database is implemented in the format of a customized software platform, specific for displaying the ontology dynamically. An emphasis is placed on the user interface design, and a user experience study is performed to evaluate the final product.
Capsule Networks and Lightweight Dual-Path Model With Fresnel Zone-Based Voting for Human Activity Recognition Using Wi-Fi Channel State Information
Keywords: Channel state information
Human activity recognition
Machine learning
Wi-Fi sensing

Wi-Fi sensing has recently gained significant interest for human activity recognition (HAR), as it provides user privacy and adaptability to non-line-of-sight scenarios. This thesis presents two machine learning models, contributing novel approaches to Wi-Fi-based HAR. Firstly, a capsule network is trained on channel state information (CSI) from Wi-Fi to perform activity classification. Secondly, dual-path feature extraction is proposed, extracting information along both time and frequency dimensions of CSI. This thesis also extends both models into distributed architectures, eliminating communication overhead introduced in centralizing CSI from multiple access points (APs), while using a Fresnel zone-based voting scheme to combine distributed model outputs efficiently using spatial diversity. The proposed methods are evaluated on four datasets, covering various human activities, against state-of-the-art works. In particular, we surpass state-of-the-art classification performance with our capsule network, improve upon existing lightweight approaches with our dual-path feature extraction, and bring practicality with our Fresnel zone-based voting scheme.
Implicit Finite-Volume Scheme with Anisotropic Adaptive Mesh Refinement for Predicting Steady Three-Dimensional Reactive Laminar Flows
Keywords: Adaptive mesh refinement
Aerospace
Combustion
Computational fluid dynamics

A previously developed parallel implicit adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm for the prediction of three-dimensional (3D) steady laminar flames is revisited and extended to incorporate anisotropic AMR. The method is applied to the well-established system of partial differential equations governing time-dependent compressible laminar flows for reactive thermally perfect gaseous mixtures. The conservation form of these equations are solved using a high-resolution finite-volume spatial discretization scheme on non-uniform, multi-block hexahedral meshes. To maintain solution accuracy at low Mach numbers, a local preconditioning technique is used to remove numerical stiffness. To facilitate the anisotropic solution-directed mesh refinement, a block-based binary tree data structure has been implemented. Block-based domain decomposition is utilized to enable an efficient parallelization of the algorithm. The implicit formulation uses a dual-time-stepping-like approach with an implicit second-order backward discretization of the physical time, in which the non-linear algebraic equations arising from spatial and temporal discretization are solved using a Jacobian-free inexact Newton method with a preconditioned generalized minimal residual (GMRES) algorithm. For each sub-domain of the grid, block incomplete lower-upper (BILU) type local preconditioning is used, in conjunction with an additive Schwarz global preconditioner for the entire domain. Along with several basic validation cases, the algorithm is used to solve steady-state flow of a laminar diffusion methane-air combustion flame, for which the Cantera software package is used to treat the detailed chemical kinetics.
The Neural Basis of Speech Motor Adaptation
Keywords: Neural Mechanisms
Sensorimotor Adaptation
Speech Motor Adaptation

Background: Advancements in in-vivo neuroimaging and neuromodulation methodologies have enhanced our understanding of the speech-related brain networks, although the neural mechanisms and correlates of speech adaptation remain poorly understood.Objectives: (1) Explore associations among key nodes in the auditory-motor processing system for speech adaptation. (2) Investigate the role of the left ventral premotor cortex (LvPMC) in speech adaptation and assess the effectiveness of rTMS to modulate cortical activity. Methods: (1) A correlational study of quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) metrics was conducted to examine cortical structures associated with speech adaptation. (2) A quasi-randomized control trial was conducted to explore the functional relevance of the LvPMC in speech adaptation and the efficacy of rTMS in modulating behaviour. Results: (1) Fiber density and cross-section of speech-related white matter tracts were negatively correlated with F1 adaptation. (2) rTMS did not significantly affect adaptation performance. Limitations of sample size and statistical analyses must be considered. Conclusions: This thesis is a preliminary contribution to a better understanding of sensorimotor adaptation processes and will inform future research.
Phase Change Heat Sinks under Periodic Heating: Analysis and Experimental Verification
Keywords: Analytic
Design
Experimental
Heatsinks
Phase Change Materials

This thesis investigates the effectiveness of phase change materials (PCMs) in reducing average cooling requirements in applications with transient thermal loads. Despite their potential benefits, there are few design guidelines for PCM-based heat sinks, and limited experimental research on their performance under high heat flux, periodic heating conditions. To address this gap, we develop a 0-D and 1-D nondimensional analytic model for PCM-based heat sinks subject to sinusoidal heating. We present expressions to predict the effectiveness of a phase change heat sink based on its geometry, the heat load, and ambient conditions. We experimentally validate these expressions using both an air-cooled and a water-cooled phase change heat sink. The proposed models accurately predict the behavior of the phase change heat sinks under a wide range of conditions. This work provides valuable insights for the design and optimization of PCM-based heat sinks in practical applications.
EvoCrawl: Exploring Web Application Code and State Using Evolutionary Search
Keywords: Black-box Scanner
Evolutionary Search
Web Application Security

As the demand for web applications continues to grow, the focus has shifted towards user protection and vulnerability detection. Triggering the vulnerabilities requires 1) the vulnerable code to be executed and 2) the web application to be in the required state. While a previous scanner, AuthZee, combines evolutionary search and traditional crawling to explore application codes with complex interactions, it overlooks state transitions within the web application. To bridge this gap, we extend AuthZee to EvoCrawl, a black-box scanner that is capable of exploring application states and codes. EvoCrawl uses an evolutionary search approach to explore sequences of actions leading to different application states and infers new states by observing the appearance of new elements or values in web application responses. In an evaluation against four state-of-the-art scanners, EvoCrawl achieves a 48\% increase in code coverage on average and submits HTML forms 14 times more frequently than the next best tool.
Comparing the Reliability and Validity of the Criminal Sentiments Scale – Modified and the Pride in Delinquency Scale between Black and White Justice-Involved Youth
Keywords: Criminology
Developmental Psychology
Procriminal Attitudes
Race
Recidivism
Risk-Need-Responsivity

Procriminal attitudes, key predictors of recidivism in the Risk-Need-Responsivity framework, have been shown to differ among Black and White groups (e.g., Eichelsheim et al., 2015; Mandracchia & Morgan, 2012; Wolff et al., 2013). Despite this, the reliability and validity of procriminal attitudes measures have yet to be examined cross-racially. The current study examined the reliability and validity of the Criminal Sentiments Scale – Modified (CSS-M; Shields & Simourd, 1991)) and the Pride in Delinquency Scale (PIDS; Shields & Whitehall, 1994) in a sample of 473 justice system-involved Black and White youth in Toronto, Canada. Findings indicated acceptable internal reliability (.63  α  .93) for scales except the CSS-M Courts subscale in Black youth (α = .63) and the Identification with Criminal Others subscale for both groups (.55  α  .68). Both measures showed acceptable convergent validity with each other (.22 < r < .69). Construct validity (as measured through confirmatory factor analyses) of both scales was acceptable for both Black and White youth, though fit indices of the CSS-M consistently fell slightly below the recommended threshold for Black youth. Both measures showed good concurrent validity for White youth and poorer, but somewhat acceptable, concurrent validity for Black youth, with fewer and weaker significant correlations between the scales and externalizing problems, aggression, and substance use problems. These findings suggest that procriminal attitudes may not reflect individual antisociality for Black youth in the way they do for White youth. The CSS-M Total and Police scores predicted recidivism for Black youth, whereas the PIDS and CSS-M subscales predicted recidivism for White youth. Results suggest that procriminal attitudes, as measured by the CSS-M and the PIDS, may reflect slightly different constructs for Black and White youth, which raises questions regarding how to use and interpret these tools in risk assessment and case management. Though the measures worked somewhat differently depending on race in this study, both have practical utility. Future research directions include examining cross-racial measurement invariance and differential item functioning of procriminal attitudes measures to better understand these constructs and scales for Black youth, teasing apart relationships between procriminal attitudes and offending for different groups (e.g., through moderations and mediations), and expanding these investigations to other racialized groups.
Cracking Open the Literary Canon: Disrupting English Curricula Through Relational Reading
Keywords: Canadian History
Curriculum Development
Education System
English Language Arts
Literature
Relationality

Emerging as a form of pedagogical action research, my study works to develop a reading practice that confronts, rather than ignores or misrepresents, the complex histories of colonialism embedded in the literature that is read in high school English classrooms. Following the research documenting a sustained, disproportionate reliance on the Eurocentric literary canon in English classrooms across Canada, I argue that the way this literature is taught generally leaves students with an ahistorical and narrow worldview that fails to recognize the colonial violence embedded in these narratives. To disrupt this legacy, my project employs Critical Discourse Analysis and Métissage to develop a reading practice I denote as “relational reading.” In developing this praxis, I engage three texts—Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Gale’s Angélique, and Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves—in intertextual conversation. By tracing the sustained impact of these systems of power across texts, I suggest that this study might help re-envision literature education as a means for confronting these violent histories, while helping students imagine how we can work together towards forging anticolonial futures rooted in solidarity, accountability, and reciprocity.
Biochemical Characterization of Two Streptococcus Anti-CRISPR Proteins
Keywords: Anti-CRISPR
CRISPR-Cas9
sgRNA
Streptococcus

One of the greatest threats to bacterial survival are bacteriophages, viruses that infect and kill host bacteria. As defence, bacteria have evolved CRISPR-Cas systems, which are complexes of RNA and proteins that funcNon as adapNve immune systems to destroy foreign geneNc material. In response, phages have in turn evolved anN-CRISPR proteins to evade CRISPR-Cas immunity. My thesis focuses on the characterizaNon of two anN-CRISPRs found in Streptococcus sp. HSISM1 and Streptococcus salivarius D40t1_170626_C11: AcrIIA33SsH and AcrIIA16Ssa. AcrIIA16Ssa is a broad spectrum anN-CRISPR that inhibits all tested type II-A and type II-C Cas9 proteins. When co-expressed with SpyCas9, AcrIIA16Ssa interferes with sgRNA loading and Cas9 stability. AcrIIA33SsH inhibits several type II-A Cas9 proteins, but does not interfere with sgRNA loading. It can also interact with nucleic acid dyes, a characterisNc not described in any other anN-CRISPR. This work expands our knowledge of anN-CRISPR proteins and their inhibitory mechanisms.
Structural-Acoustic-Fluidic Modelling of Synthetic Jet Actuators
Keywords: Acoustics
Active flow control
Fluid mechanics
Synthetic jet actuator

Global efforts to mitigate noise, emissions, and power consumption have spurred rapid advancements in active flow control – a technique that injects energy into a flow to alter its aerodynamic characteristics. While passive flow control methods like flaps on airplanes or slots on wind turbine blades have demonstrated efficiency improvements, significant further enhancements necessitate active approaches. This need becomes increasingly crucial as technologies such as aviation and wind power continue to gain prominence and widespread use.One particularly promising use for active flow control is its application to airfoils. Synthetic jet actuators are devices that apply active flow control in the form of oscillatory excitement, and have been shown to delay flow separation, improve lift, and decrease drag when implemented in airfoils. A computational model was developed to study synthetic jet actuators using a Multiphysics approach. The model coupled physics from structural mechanics to provide unique insight into the physics of this flow, electrostatics, pressure acoustics, and fluid mechanics to make it as physically realistic as possible, and the most complete model published in the literature to date. The model was validated using hot wire measurements, then was used to study the fluid behaviour, acoustic properties, and the impact of modelling a physical diaphragm. Multiphysics modelling presents a promising future for computational modelling, as it allows the modeller to extract information from many different domains, without the need for elaborate experiments or multiple computational models.
Pathway-Specific Effects of Insulin in an in vivo Murine Model of Restenosis
Keywords: Insulin
Neointima
Restenosis
Type 2 Diabetes

Patients with type 2 diabetes have higher risk of post-angioplasty restenosis due to insulin resistance. In vitro, insulin has a vasculoprotective effect on endothelial cells (ECs) which is likely mediated by phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt pathway, while its mitogenic effects are mainly manifested on vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and likely mediated via mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. Currently, there is not much information about pathway-specificity of insulin’s vascular effects in in vivo models. This study aims to determine the Akt2- and MEK1-mediated effects on neointimal growth in a murine model of restenosis. We found that insulin failed to decrease neointimal growth in both EC and SMC Akt2 deficient mice. EC-specific MEK1 deficiency did not affect insulin’s anti-restenotic effect, while SMC-specific MEK1 deficiency may abolish it. These data suggest that both EC and VSMC Akt2 contribute to the beneficial effects of insulin, and insulin might not have MAPK-mediated adverse effects in vivo.
The Association Between IUCN Threat Status And Biological Traits In Chelonians Of The World
Keywords: Biological Traits
Chelonians
IUCN Threat Status

Turtles and tortoises are remarkable species with great longevity. Chelonian species richness has declined recently with the acceleration of global change, including anthropogenic habitat degradation, road mortality, and climate change. Currently, many chelonian species are at risk at extinction according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). I analyzed and explored the correlation between IUCN extinction risk category for chelonians and three biological traits, range size, body mass, and eggs per year (n= 369 species). I find that both body mass and eggs per year are predictors of IUCN extinction risk category, suggesting that species that take a long time to mature and have fewer eggs per capita are more likely to be threatened with extinction. This pattern is consistent with many tenets of population growth, and helps IUCN assess other chelonian species based on life history traits.
Towards the Synthesis of Borylated (Aminomethyl) Cyclopropanes
Keywords: Aziridine
Boron
Cyclopropane
Diasterioselective
Diborylalkane
Small rings

1,1-Diborylalkanes have become useful pronucleophiles used in nucleophilic additions into a variety of electrophiles, mainly carbonyls and epoxides. Nitrogen-based electrophiles have been relatively understudied as electrophilic coupling partners for this class of compound. This thesis will introduce the reactivity of 1,1-diborylalkanes and utility of these compounds. This thesis will demonstrate that lithiated 1,1-diborylalkanes react with α-bromo and α-tosyl aziridines to form borylated cyclopropyl methylamines with high diastereoselectivity. Access to the starting materials required for the transformation and the scope of the variety of 1,1-diborylalkanes are presented. The difference in reactivity for unsubstituted and substituted aziridines will be highlighted, with examples that show the potential to set up to 3 stereocenters in one reaction. Finally, the current limitations of the method with alkylated 1,1-diborylalkanes and the potential solutions using alkoxide additives, as well as future investigations to access cyclobutylamines are discussed.