VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Syntactic Categories Informing Variationist Analysis: The Case of English Copy-raising
Keywords: British English
Canadian English
copy-raising
dialectology
language change
syntax

This thesis uncovers and investigates of two levels of syntactic change progressing in tandem in Canadian English. One involves the complementizers (Rooryck 2000:48; López-Couso and Méndez-Naya 2012a) that link perception verbs to finite subordinate clauses, e.g. It seems (like/as if/as though/that/Ø) she's getting better quickly. The predominant variant in Canadian English is like (López-Couso and Méndez-Naya 2012; Brook 2011a, 2014) – an incoming form that now represents 68.2 percent of comparative complementizers across corpora of sociolinguistic interviews from Ontario (Tagliamonte 2003-06, 2006, 2007-10, 2010-13, 2013; Tagliamonte and Denis 2014). Looking beyond the variable context, as per Aaron (2010), suggests that a second, broader change is occurring. The entire seem* like structure is overtaking Subject-to-Subject raising (seem* to VP). Younger speakers are increasingly saying It/she seems like she’s getting better quickly rather than She seems to be getting better quickly. I find that the key variationist concept of orderly heterogeneity (Weinreich et al. 1968) applies readily to the covarying syntactic constructions despite their abstract nature. I also address the question of whether one level of change has led to the other. A methodologically comparable corpus from York, England (Tagliamonte 1996-1998, 1998) shows a low proportion of like (13.2 percent) and no broader-level change; I hypothesize that the broader-level shift depends on a certain threshold of like in the community grammar. Since like, unlike its remaining covariants, allows copy-raising (Rogers 1974, Horn 1981, Asudeh 2002, Asudeh and Toivonen 2007, Gisborne 2010, inter alia), it gives speakers the choice of a matrix NP or matrix expletive subject. Experimental/acquisitional research indicates that these two options correspond to different evidential/epistemic values (Rett and Hyams 2014); I argue that with a high proportion of like they together comprise a clear, streamlined binary system that makes Subject-to-Subject raising much less useful in comparison, accounting for its emerging decline.
The Effects of Latent Categories on Product Performance: Discovery, Identification and Firm Strategy in the Context of the Motion Picture Industry
Keywords: big data
categories
movies
strategy

My dissertation, composed of three chapters, explores the effect of product categories, as revealed by consumers' online rental behavior, on firm performance and strategy in the movie industry. Research in sociology suggests that sorting products into cognitive categories matters for performance, but empirical studies find an inconsistent relationship between category-spanning and performance. Importantly, they do not establish the causality of this hypothesized relationship. To address these issues, the first chapter empirically identifies the relationship between category-spanning and movie performance, based on a measure of latent category coherence, entitled latent similarity, which is adapted from Zuckerman (2004). This represents a departure from existing research that relies on third-party categories to measure category-spanning, as this may not capture how consumers categorize. I evaluate a movie's latent similarity from consumers' movie rental patterns on Amazon Instant Video, which are observable in movies' "Customers who rented this also rented..." co-rental lists. The idea behind the measure is that if all of a movie's co-rentals cross-reference each other (forming closed set), then that movie has a high latent similarity measure, suggesting it is in a clear category. I find a strong positive relationship between the measure and performance, and I provide causal evidence through an identification strategy composed of instrumental variable and control function. The second chapter explores what exactly the latent similarity measure is picking up. I identify the latent categories implied by the Amazon rental data through clustering algorithms. Then, I employ topic modeling to show that the derived categories differ in the extent to which their movies share common attributes, and I develop a theoretical model to explain how consumer preferences can lead to these differences. The third chapter is an empirical investigation of studio strategies regarding their movies' category-spanning, exploring the role played by studio type in this decision. My dissertation has several contributions. First, it provides causal evidence that variation in category coherence affects performance. Second, it provides several methodological innovations for strategy in (1) adapting the Zuckerman measure to use with novel digital data, and (2) applying machine learning tools to identify and describe latent product categories.
Mixed-Signal Architectures for Spectrum Sensing
Keywords: Cognitive Radio
Energy Detection
Short-time Fourier Transform
Spectrum Sensing

The radio spectrum is subject to temporal and geographic variations and measurements indicate low utilization below 6GHz. In response, the Federal Communications Commission sent a notice of proposed rulemaking to facilitate cognitive radio use in the licensed digital television bands. Cognitive radios identify unused spectrum segments for data transmission while minimizing interference with licensed radios. Spectrum sensing is the enabling technology and detects the presence of a signal within a frequency band. Mixed-signal architectures offer potential power savings by performing signal detection in the analog domain, significantly reducing the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) sampling rate. The integrating mixer is a novel mixed-signal architecture for spectrum sensing that is based on the short-time Fourier transform (STFT). The architecture consists of a folded double balanced mixer with capacitive loads that implements current-domain windowing in the first stage while downconversion mixing and integration is implemented in the second stage. A load capacitor array enables integration with programmable time constant. A prototype was designed and fabricated in IBM's 0.13Âľm CMOS process. The measured results indicate an average dynamic range (DR) of 24.2dB over a 2.2GHz bandwidth (BW) with a power dissipation of 1.55mW. The integrating mixer architecture is extended by utilizing binary-weighted load capacitors, which integrates the STFT signal and acts as the sampling capacitors for a successive approximation register (SAR) ADC. An array of folded mixers are utilized to remove current restrictions on the selection of the window function, which improves side-lobe reduction and fall off in the frequency domain. A prototype was designed and fabricated in IBM's 0.13Âľm CMOS process. The measured results indicate an average DR of 26.8dB over a 1.25GHz BW. The integrated SAR ADC achieves a peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio of 45.4dB at a sampling frequency of 200kHz for an effective number of bits of 7.25. The power dissipation is 0.88mW for a full quadrature implementation. In comparison to recent spectrum sensing implementations, the integrating mixer prototypes achieve the lowest power dissipation while obtaining a DR that falls within the reported range. The prototypes are well suited for integration within low power cognitive radio transceivers that target portable IEEE 802.22 applications.
Unobtrusive Storage Maintenance
Keywords: File Systems
Maintenance
Operating Systems
Storage Performance
Storage Reliability
Storage Systems

Storage systems rely on maintenance tasks, such as backup and defragmentation, to provide a multitude of guarantees that range from data availability and security, to good performance. These tasks access large amounts of data and can significantly impact foreground applications. The work presented as part of this thesis outlines the challenges of storage maintenance and provides mechanisms that lower its impact, allowing it to be performed more efficiently. Maintenance operations act as insurance for storage systems. To avoid the prohibitive cost incurred in their absence, storage operators pay the price of performing them periodically. In the case of reliability, for example, we find that the error characteristics of hard disk drives in Google's data centers are diverse across models and operating environments. Due to this unpredictability, the use of periodic maintenance becomes unavoidable. Furthermore, recent research efforts on disaster prediction depend on metrics collected through periodic maintenance operations. Unfortunately, periodic storage maintenance requires data to be accessed multiple times. As a case in point, we find that customers of Symantec and Veritas schedule backups multiple times a week. This often results in excess maintenance work that fails to complete within the scheduled downtime periods. At this point, foreground workload impact becomes unavoidable in order to maintain the same reliability guarantees. To lessen this impact, maintenance I/O can be scheduled only when storage devices are otherwise idle. To achieve this, idleness must be predicted accurately. Fortunately, our extensive study of disk workloads reveals characteristics that allow idleness to be predicted accurately by simple models. Given the number of maintenance tasks available today, idle time can prove insufficient. For such scenarios we present Duet, a framework that provides notifications to tasks about relevant changes in the system cache. Using this mechanism, tasks can reduce their I/O by prioritizing processing of cached data. Data can be cached either due to other maintenance tasks requesting it previously, or due to overlapping foreground I/O activity. In other words, tasks running concurrently can implicitly collaborate, collectively reducing the I/O required for maintenance and, by extension, the idle time needed to execute it.
The Triangle Arts Trust: Contemporary - Art and Transnational Production
Keywords: Canadian Art
Contemporary Art
Globalism
Modern Art
South African Art
Transnationalism

This dissertation presents a historical overview and contemporary analysis of the Triangle Arts Network, an international network of artists and arts organizations that promotes the exchange of ideas and innovation within the contemporary arts. It was established in 1982 through a workshop held in Pine Plains, New York and quickly grew into an international network of artist led workshops around the world. More than twenty years later the network continues to grow and includes a roster of ongoing workshops as well as artist led organizations and centres. This dissertation situates Triangle as a major global phenomenon, yet one that operates outside the mainstream artscapes. My research follows the networkâ s historical links from Saskatchewan, Canada, to New York and onto South Africa. This web-like evolution demonstrates the complexity of global art networks and the fluidity of boundaries needed for contemporary art discourse. This research explores how the movement of ideas, artists and infrastructures complicate our understanding of clearly defined boundaries within contemporary art and globalization. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a metaphor for the Triangle Network, I attempt to unpack the complexities of an art system without objects, a process without product and the entangled relationships between artists, workshops and grassroots models of production.
Steam Cured Self-Consolidating Concrete and the Effects of Limestone Filler
Keywords: Delayed Ettringite Formation
Durability
Early Age Strength
Limestone
Precast Concrete
Steam Curing

The purpose of this thesis is to determine the effect and the mechanisms associated with replacing 15% of the cement by limestone filler on the mechanical properties and durability performance of self-consolidating concrete designed and cured for precast/prestressed applications. This study investigates the role of limestone filler on the hydration kinetics, mechanical properties (12 hours to 300 days), microstructural and durability performance (rapid chloride permeability, linear shrinkage, sulfate resistance, freeze-thaw resistance and salt scaling resistance) of various self-consolidating concrete mix designs containing 5% silica fume and steam cured at a maximum holding temperature of 55°C. This research also examines the resistance to delayed ettringite formation when the concrete is steam cured at 70°C and 82°C and its secondary consequences on the freeze-thaw resistance. The effect of several experimental variables related to the concrete mix design and also the curing conditions are examined, namely: limestone filler fineness, limestone filler content, cement type, steam curing duration and steam curing temperature. In general, the results reveal that self-consolidating concrete containing 15% limestone filler, steam cured at 55°C, 70°C and 82°C, exhibited similar or superior mechanical and transport properties as well as long term durability performance compared to similar concrete without limestone filler. When the concrete is steam cured at 55°C, the chemical reactivity of limestone filler has an important role in enhancing the mechanical properties at 16 hours (compared to the concrete without limestone filler) and compensating for the dilution effect at 28 days. Although, at 300 days, the expansion of all concrete mixes are below 0.05%, the corresponding freeze-thaw durability factors vary widely and are controlled by the steam curing temperature and the chemical composition of the cement. Overall, the material properties indicate that the use of 15% limestone filler as cement replacement is a viable option for the precast/prestressed concrete applications, and in addition, would also have economic and environmental benefits.
Aspects typologiques de l'alternance de codes: les paires de langues russe/anglais et russe/français
Keywords: alternation
code-switching
insertion
language contact
typology

Since the 1970s, grammatical constraints proposed to account for forms and sites of code-switching (CS) have been numerous. They differ in which observed behaviours they account for. Muysken (2000) reconciles many contradictions by suggesting, instead of one model for all language pairs, three CS patterns : insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalization. Each is governed by different constraints and linked to numerous factors, linguistic and social, that characterize bilingual situations. He suggests a diagnostic tool of 27 criteria to identify the three patterns. These feature sets need to be more precisely defined to allow testing. This thesis aims to optimize these definitions to establish a quantitative profile for the identification of two patterns (insertion, alternation). It evaluates the effects of linguistic typology on differentiation of two types of CS. For these purposes, two conversational corpora, collected from six Russian/English and four Russian/French bilinguals (all dominant in Russian) were recorded, transcribed and analyzed (38,512 words). The CS patterns are analyzed in terms of language variation : insertion and alternation are each separately considered as the dependent variable. 21 diagnostic factors (derived from Muyskenâ s original 27) operate as independent linguistic variables. Each factor conditions, to different degrees, the choice between variants of the dependent variable. Thus, each CS type is quantitatively defined according these diagnostic features and redefined by the multiple regression analysis (1,793 tokens). The 11 diagnostic criteria which play a significant role in selection between insertion and alternation play different roles for the two CS patterns, allowing the establishment of a hierarchy of their relative predictive power. I argue that there is a correlation between the importance of diagnostics features and the typological distance between the languages. Insertion is more sensitive to typological effects than alternation. The typological differences between the languages is important when the dominant pattern is insertion and but not for alternation. Specifically, the relative morphological complexity of Russian and French prevents morphological integration and leads to frequent omissions of some elements. The two CS types differently react to the typological distance : Russian and English share more linearly equivalence, thereby decreasing syntactic conflict and enabling more possibilities to switch.
Card Carrying Christians: Credit, Debt, and Believing in Emerging Colombia
Keywords: Belief
Christianity
Colombia
Credit
Debt
Finance

This dissertation addresses the entanglements of Christianity and financializing capitalism in Colombia, South America. At its most empirical, this dissertation details ethnographically the debt upon which the Gospel of Prosperity rests. The ethnographic research, collected over two and a half years of sustained fieldwork, assesses Colombiaâ s largest mega-church, a Protestant micro-credit program in BogotĂĄ, various commercial banks, a rural Pentecostal community, and a multi-level marketing company. Together, this evidence establishes that financializing capitalism in Colombia depends upon a Christian morality. The evidence also makes possible the dissertationâ s more theoretical claim: that credit is a matter of belief. The argument begins with some reflection on the etymological fact that both words, credit and belief, share the same Latin root, credere, but then leans on participant observation, extended interviews, and life narratives to demonstrate how credit has become a matter of belief at the level of lived experience in Colombia.
Placental Pharmacology -- Implications for Therapy in Pregnancy
Keywords: anticoagulants
drug safety
placenta
pregnancy

Medication use during pregnancy requires a balance between treating a condition in the mother, and minimizing potential risks in the fetus. In recent years, it has been estimated that between 50 and 70% of pregnant women in North America will take at least one prescription medication during their pregnancy. The decision to begin or continue treatment during pregnancy relies heavily on evaluating the risk-benefit ratio, and an important determinant in this risk assessment is estimating fetal drug exposure. The use of medications in pregnant women can be especially challenging, as there is very limited safety data in pregnancy. Recently, novel oral anticoagulants have been developed and approved for clinical use. However, the information regarding their fetal safety and placental transfer in humans is unknown. We used the ex vivo placenta perfusion model to investigate anticoagulant (dabigatran, rivaroxaban, apixaban) transfer across the human placenta. Rivaroxaban and apixaban rapidly crossed the term human placenta, while dabigatran crossed the placenta to a lesser extent. The placenta perfusion results were adjusted to account for protein binding and pH differences between the mother and fetus. We also developed a pharmacokinetic model that adequately described the transplacental transfer of anticoagulants by using data from our experiments. While the placenta perfusion model can be technically challenging, its results strongly correlate with in vivo placental transfer data. By evaluating the success rate of the perfusion model in our laboratory, we determined that establishing the fetal circulation is an important stage of the protocol. This information can be used to create a focused training program to help increase the overall success rate of this model and productivity of the lab. Drug use in pregnancy is multifactorial, and placental transfer data is important in assessing which drugs can be used to treat the mother while protecting the unborn.
The Equivariant K-Theory of Commuting 2-tuples in SU(2)
Keywords: Algebraic topology
Equivariant K-theory
quasi-Hamiltonian systems

In this thesis, we study the space of commuting n-tuples in G = SU(2), Hom(Zn, SU(2)). We describe this space geometrically via providing an explicit G- CW complex structure, an equivariant analog of familiar CW- complexes. For the n = 2 case, this geometric description allows us to compute various cohomology theories of this space, in particular the G-equivariant K-Theory KG*( Hom(Z2, SU(2))), both as an R(SU(2))-module and as an R(SU(2))-algebra, where R( SU(2)) denotes the representation ring of SU(2). This space is of particular interest in the study of quasi-Hamiltonian spaces M, which come equipped with a moment map that takes values in the Lie group, &phis; : M → G. For the specific example M = G × G with moment map given by the commutator map, &phis;–1( e) = Hom(Z2, G). Finite dimensional quasi-Hamiltonian spaces have a bijective correspondence with certain infinite dimensional Hamiltonian spaces, and we compute relevant components of this larger picture in addition to &phis; –1(e) = Hom(Z 2, SU(2)) for this example.
Understanding How the Student Success Strategy Has Developed and Contributed to Student Outcomes in One Ontario District
Keywords: Disengagement
Engagement
Partnerships
Programs
Student Success
Teaching and Learning

In 2003 the Ontario Ministry of Education launched the Student Success Strategy, a game changing initiative of whole system reform. Since that time Ontario’s graduation rate has risen from 68% to 85.5% by 2015, but surprisingly few studies have examined the strategy. The purpose of this study was to better understand how the Student Success Strategy developed and contributed to student outcomes in one school district. A qualitative research approach was used for the study, which was also complemented by administrative data. Schools which would be considered were identified using a purposeful sampling technique. Qualitative data was derived from interviewing educators who were members of their schools’ Student Success Team. Interview questions were focused on four key pillars of the strategy: efforts at connecting with students, providing programs that enable achievement, improving teaching and learning, and connecting with the community. Administrative data originated from Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office test scores, as well as district and Ministry reports. Six key findings from the study emerged. The first revealed that fostering positive connections with secondary students takes time, requiring a multi-tiered differentiated approach involving layers of interventions and support. The second finding demonstrated that improving the range of programs, notably the Specialist High Skills Major, led to an enrolment surge and improved academic performances. The third main finding confirmed on-going efforts at improving teaching and learning, and the critical role administrators play as instructional leaders driving improvements. The fourth finding noted mixed results in connecting with the community, with no gains in engaging parents, however gains were made in accessing community supports for students as well as through dual-credit opportunities with positive post-secondary outcomes. The fifth finding revealed strong commonalities on how the Student Success Strategy had developed over time. The sixth key finding exposed the challenges connected to the strategy, notably replacing key staff, and the desire to retain greater school autonomy. What clearly was unquestionable was the impact policy, programs, and people – both within the school and community - could have in connecting with students, meeting their varied and individual needs, including pathways for their future success.