VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Leviathans, Act I: big and small
Keywords: Composition
Electronics
Monodrama
Opera
Orchestra
Voice

Leviathans, Act I: big and small is the 20-minute first act of a monodrama for baritone, orchestra, and electronics. The first act of this dramatic work includes an overture and four scenes and depicts a world where the seas have risen above the earth, leaving only those aboard ships alive. The narrative situates an exploration of trauma within a post-apocalyptic future, creating fragmentation of self-reflection and musical material. The music in this piece contextualizes human perspective within wild nature. To achieve this, the musical seed material of this work is derived from the sea shanty known as either ‘A Drop of Nelson’s Blood’ or ‘Roll the Old Chariot Along’. The shanty’s chorus seems to originate from a hymn from the 1800s. This sea shanty is particularly interesting as it has evolved drastically, and is still performed in various versions today. I studied an early 1920s wax cylinder recording of an old sailor, where the tune is in a major mode, primarily using stepwise melodic motion. More recent versions, like those made by Fisherman’s Friends and David Coffin, substitute different verses, and use either a minor mode or a mixture of minor and major. In depicting a post-apocalyptic future, I leaned into this concept of evolving folk culture by creating an altered version of the sea shanty to represent that world. The shanty tune informs both melodic and harmonic content in the orchestra, while existing through the electronics as field recordings, contextual sound (i.e. the crew upstairs singing) and distorted material in processed soundscapes. The live electronics, which affect only the singer, serve to further exemplify the subjective perspective of Mara, our lead character, through the effects of reverb, delay and distortion. All of this human created material (i.e. the sea shanty) is filtered through ocean wave motifs and compressed into whale calls, reframing humanity as part of the sea’s wildness.
The Economics of Social Capital: An Analysis of the Factors that Affect Individual Social Capital Investment and Accumulation
Keywords: Child Health
Economic Preferences
Economics
Polygenic Scores
Social Capital

Introduction: Although there is a large literature examining the effects of social capital on health, the literature examining the factors affecting investment in and accumulation of social capital is less developed, especially in the economics literature. Therefore, this dissertation examined the effects of three different sets of factors on adult social capital: 1) time preferences, risk preferences and survival expectations; 2) childhood mental and physical health; 3) genetic endowments (i.e., polygenic score) for education. Methods: This dissertation used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a cohort of American adolescents recruited in 1994-95 (N=20,745) and followed up in 2001-02 (Wave 3: 15,197), 2008 (Wave 4 N=15,701), 2016-18 (Wave 5 N=12,300). Siblings were oversampled (Wave 1: 1,251 groups). Polygenic scores were available for 80% of Wave 4 respondents in the Genome-Wide Association Study sub-sample. Social capital investments were defined as Waves 3-5 volunteering, religious service attendance, and Waves 3-4 team sports participation, while social capital stock was defined as Wave 4 number of friends, social isolation, and Wave 5 available social support. Results: In individual fixed effects models, we found that time preferences had negative effects while risk preferences had positive effects on social capital investments. Similar associations were found with cross-sectional stock measures. Survival expectations were only associated with stock measures of social capital. In sibling fixed effects models, child self-rated health had a positive effect on team sports participation, social support and decreased social isolation. Child mental health conditions only had effects on isolation. The education polygenic score had significant associations with volunteering, religious service attendance and friendship; however, only effects on volunteering were significant in sibling fixed effects models. Conclusions: Lower levels of time preferences and higher levels of risk preferences, child health, and the education polygenic score likely have causal positive effects in building adult social capital, highlighting that investment frameworks similar to those used for human and health capital can be used to analyzed social capital and they should be considered in the development of policies to address social capital.
Strategic, Tactical, and Operational Decision-making in Crowd-shipping
Keywords: Approximate Dynamic Programming
Crowd-shipping
Last-mile delivery
Mobile Depot
Parcel Locker
Stochastic Programming

The burgeoning last-mile delivery market coupled with the rapid evolution of sharing economy led to the emergence of crowd-shipping. This thesis studies three separate crowd-shipping problems involving strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making, particularly contributing to incorporating of uncertainties in decision-making via state-of-the-art optimization methods and solution strategies. The first crowd-shipping problem studies the strategic decision on parcel locker locations, considering both customer pickup and crowd-shipping. This problem considers customers' and crowd-shippers’ behavioural models to capture the decision dependency with respect to parcel locker locations and the delivery fee. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model for a given crowd-shipper compensation. The results suggest that companies can obtain a significantly higher profit by allowing customer pickup and crowd-shipping compared to the two alternative models, i.e., customer pickup and crowd-shipping in isolation. The numerical experiments demonstrate the value of the parcel locker location solution from the proposed model compared to the locations obtained from the customer pickup model. The second problem proposes a novel two-tier delivery system with crowd-shipping and mobile depots, considering the uncertainty in the availability of crowd-shippers. The problem is formulated as a two-stage stochastic programming model for tactical decisions on mobile depots stopping locations, and assigning customer packages to mobile depots. Enhanced decomposition algorithms are developed, which enable solving real-life instances. The computational experiments demonstrate the value of incorporating stochasticity and provide managerial insights from the stochastic model in the risk-averse versus risk-neutral settings. The third problem investigates a dynamic crowd-shipping problem with in-store customers as crowd-shippers for delivering online orders within a few hours. The problem is formulated as a Markov decision process for operational decision-making in matching online orders to crowd-shippers. An approximate dynamic programming (ADP) policy based on value function approximation is developed to obtain a highly scalable and real-time policy on matching orders to crowd-shippers while considering temporal and spatial uncertainty in the arrival of online orders and crowd-shippers. Our numerical analysis demonstrates the value of the proposed ADP policy over a myopic policy based on various performance measures.
A Head-Mounted Display-Based Augmented Reality Platform for Image-guided Media Delivery to the Heart
Keywords: Augmented Reality
Computer Vision
Deep Learning
Head-Mounted Displays
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Surgical Navigation

Heart disease is the leading cause of global mortality and is a significant precursor to heart failure. Recent advances in regenerative medicine have shown promise in improving cardiac function, but challenges in cell retention, targeting, and delivery remain to be explored prior to clinical use. During media delivery, surgeons rely on information from three-dimensional (3D) preoperative imaging, displayed using a two-dimensional (2D) monitor located adjacent to the surgical scene. This guidance strategy requires that surgeons mentally map information from the 2D monitor to their current 3D surgical context—potentially contributing to reduced accuracy during cell targeting and diminished therapeutic efficacy. The purpose of this thesis was to design an optical see-through head-mounted display (OST-HMD) led navigation framework to address the challenges associated with scar tissue visualization during targeted media delivery. Informed by prior failures and poor clinical uptake of OST-HMDs in surgical domains, we set out to address the human factors and workflow limitations which remain key hurdles to widespread adoption, including perception, registration, and context. To this end, my contributions are presented through three main bodies of work: (1) assessing user perception and usability with different locations of virtual content placement and display mediums; (2) reducing the contribution of occlusion and complex marker setup to tracking and registration error; and (3) investigating the feasibility of context-relevant information display during surgical tasks. In a point-and-trace task that simulated surgical targeting, I demonstrated the clear benefits of directly superimposed virtual content on an OST-HMD with regards to perceptual accuracy and task load. I then introduced a marker-free strategy to hand and surgical tool tracking that was robust to occlusion and demonstrated reasonable performance on a commercially available OST-HMD. Finally, I indicated the feasibility of context-relevant virtual assistance, for a set of predefined surgical tasks, to lessen the interaction burden on users during OST-HMD led guidance. I envision that my contributions will serve as meaningful steps towards the design and implementation of effective OST-HMD led navigation platforms to provide virtual guidance in the delivery of therapeutics to the heart—or for other interventions which benefit from virtual guidance.
Neurodegenerative Diseases in Two Ontario Mining Cohorts
Keywords: brain
metals
mining
occupational epidemiology
radon
vehicle emissions

Neurodegenerative diseases are a group of progressive neurological disorders with continuously rising incidence rates. Aluminum, diesel engine exhaust, and radon have been studied as risk factors for neurodegenerative diseases, but no research has been performed on populations of miners with high levels of exposure. This dissertation used one mining cohort and one occupational disease surveillance cohort from Ontario, Canada, to understand the patterns of neurodegenerative diseases among miners and to estimate the association of mine type, aluminum dust, diesel engine exhaust, and radon with risk of neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s disease, Alzheimer’s with other dementias, Parkinson’s disease, parkinsonism, and motor neuron disease). Two Ontario cohorts were used for my analysis, one subset of over 1.2 million workers from a linked surveillance cohort, the Occupational Disease Surveillance System (ODSS), and the other linked cohort of 36,836 Ontario miners, the Mining Master File (MMF). Poisson regression models were used to examine incidence rate ratios of different neurodegenerative outcomes. McIntyre Powder exposure was assessed using both cleaned self-reports and reconstruction of powder use from historical records. Radon exposure assessed using job-exposure matrices that were developed using results of radon measurements carried out in Ontario mines. Different exposure assessment approaches were explored for diesel exhaust exposure, including a mine-based diesel equipment use indicator and reconstructions of diesel use for underground mines through historical records and expert assessments. In the ODSS cohort, an elevated incidence rate of motor neuron disease was suggested among workers in metal mines, as well as an indicative elevation of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease rates among workers of gold and miscellaneous metal (primarily nickel-copper ore) mines. In the MMF cohort, I observed a 30% increased rate of Parkinson's disease and 10% increased rate of Alzheimer's with other dementia in association with respirable aluminum dust exposure. However, my findings do not support positive associations between cumulative radon exposure level and diesel exhaust exposure duration and risk of neurodegenerative outcomes. My findings support aluminum as a risk factor for Parkinson’s disease, yet more epidemiological research is needed to understand the role of aluminum, radon, and diesel exhaust in the development of neurodegenerative outcomes.
Shifting Pedagogies during COVID-19: The Professional Learning of Teacher Educators regarding Digital Technology in a Time of Crisis and Change
Keywords: Digital Technology
Pandemic Pedagogies
Professional Learning
Teacher education
Teacher educator
Teaching during COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis that began in March 2020 presented teacher education with many challenges, among them the urgent need to support teacher educators with the sudden move to remote teaching. Teacher educators immediately started rethinking their pedagogy for a new digital classroom environment as universities rushed to provide overnight supports to help with this transition. Empirical research on how teacher educators have navigated their professional roles during this period of uncertainty is limited. There is also limited research on the professional learning of teacher educators, particularly in the area of digital technology. The aim of this study was to explore teacher educators’ shifts in views and pedagogy using digital technology as they adapted to teaching in an online environment. Investigating those shifts also required examining teacher educators’ backgrounds and experiences with digital technology and their professional learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this qualitative multi-case study, I explored the experiences of six teacher educators within a graduate teacher education program in a large urban university in Canada. Each participant took part in two semi-structured interviews and described teaching and learning artifacts that reflected a change in their pedagogy. Three key findings emerged from this study. First, the COVID-19 pandemic served as a catalyst for change in teacher educators’ enacted pedagogies. Second, teacher educators displayed heightened responsivity in two ways. They placed teacher candidate learning at the center of the online classroom and offered flexible and accessible learning experiences. Also, teacher educators’ changes in pedagogy were frequently shaped by inequities exacerbated by the pandemic. Lastly, study participants discussed different possibilities for teacher educator pedagogies, with an emphasis on flexible approaches to teaching and learning, a changed role in an online setting, and digital technology integration. Implications for teacher educators include the need to engage in ongoing learning, understand the role and uses of digital technology in the teacher education classroom, and recognize their ongoing responsibility to foreground equity and social justice in their teaching. Thus, teacher education programs must include formal and informal structures and resources that support the individualized and diverse professional learning of teacher educators.
Optimization and Loss Landscape Geometry of Deep Learning
Keywords: deep learning
machine learning
optimization

The impressive success of deep learning is powered by models that are rapidly growing in size along with the computational resources that are used to train them. Despite these growing demands, the dominant tools used to train these networks have not evolved significantly to match these needs. One natural hypothesis for this limitation is our lack of understanding of the training dynamics of deep neural networks. In this thesis, I present our research on understanding and improving the optimization of deep learning models. The thesis begins by presenting two first-order optimization algorithms for deep learning: the Aggregated Momentum and Lookahead optimizers. We demonstrate their success on modern deep learning optimization problems and provide theoretical analyses of both optimizers in convex settings. However, our theoretical understanding of optimization for practical training of deep neural networks is severely limited. Following this, we turn towards building a better understanding of deep learning optimization. We achieve this by studying the loss landscape geometry of deep neural networks. This is extremely challenging due to non-convex objective functions and extremely high-dimensional parameter spaces. We address this by first studying a simple class of neural networks: two-layer linear networks. Despite their simplicity, these models capture some core challenges of deep learning optimization effectively. Within this class, we investigate regularized linear autoencoders and linear variational autoencoders and carefully characterize their loss landscape geometry theoretically. We then move beyond the simple class of two-layer linear networks to investigate a phenomenon that arises across a vast set of deep learning optimization problems. This phenomenon, which we term the Monotonic Linear Interpolation (MLI) property, describes a global property of the loss landscape geometry of deep learning models. We provide the first theoretical explanation of this phenomenon and conduct a thorough empirical investigation to better understand the pervasiveness and limitations of the MLI property. In the final chapter, the thesis is discussed as a whole and promising directions for future research are presented.
The Ubiquitous Acceptance of an Exterminatory Legality: Rights, Framing, and Legal Opposition to Animal Farming
Keywords: Animal law
Animal rights
Constitutional law
Framing
Public law
Social movements

Animal farming is a seemingly intractable problem, but it can and should be resisted and opposed. Animal advocates can provide significantly more potent opposition than current reform strategies do. The main reform strategy is the pursuit of legal rights for animals. Yet, animal’s rights are rendered ineffective by background social conditions. The first part of this thesis explores these issues with reference to legal rights animals already possess. Considering the significance of background conditions, the second part deploys insights from social movement framing literature to propose how animal advocates can seek to alter those conditions, producing a social environment more conducive to meaningful protection for animals. This involves countering the scientific and legal narratives (scientific animal welfare and the legality of farming) which obfuscate the wrongfulness of animal farming. The third part justifies why the legality of farming can be denied, with legal theoretical, doctrinal, and public/constitutional law arguments.
An Exploration of Eating Disorders in Canada: Towards Equitable Access to Care
Keywords: Access to Care
Barriers to Care
Eating Disorders
Latinx
Mental Health

At any given time, approximately 1.5 million Canadians meet the diagnostic criteria for anorexia or bulimia, not including individuals experiencing other eating disorder subtypes or those who are in recovery. Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions linked to severe distress, deterioration of physical health, mental health comorbidities, and loss of life. Individuals of different cultural backgrounds, genders, ages, and socio-economic status are all at risk of developing eating disorders, yet not all are able to access eating disorder diagnoses and treatment equally. The goal of this dissertation is to contribute towards expanding eating disorder care options for care-seekers, with particular attention to those left out of formal treatment options, such as Latinx individuals. Towards this goal, my work research focuses on eating disorders in Latinx individuals in Canada and care options available to people who may not be able to access clinical care. Research in these areas in a Canadian context is sparse. Thus, this project uses a variety of research methods and methodologies to address gaps in understanding eating disorder care options outside of clinical treatment and the case of eating disorders among Latinx individuals in Canada. I first present quantitative work on correlates of eating disorders to provide data on the prevalence of eating disorders in racialized population groups in Canada. I then present findings on barriers to eating disorder care identified by non-profit eating disorder organizations in Canada. I also show that these eating disorder organizations play an important role in expanding access to care by helping individuals access clinical treatment and by providing non-clinical care alternatives. Finally, I present work produced through a community-based project, in partnership with a Latinx organization in Toronto. Together, this body of work demonstrates a continued need for research on assessing the extent to which certain individuals are unable to access timely, appropriate, and affordable eating disorder treatment. Additionally, my findings highlight an urgent need to provide reliable and robust funding for eating disorder–related work, and in particular expand funding for eating disorder organizations in Canada, given their critical role in improving access to eating disorder care.
Three Pictures of Lusztig’s Asymptotic Hecke Algebra
Keywords: affine Hecke algebra
asymptotic Hecke algebra
Hecke algebra
Iwahori-Hecke algebra
Schwartz space of basic affine space

Let $\Waff$ be an extended affine Weyl group, $\HH$ be its Hecke algebra over the ring $\Z[\bq, \bq^{-1}]$ with standard basis $\{T_w\}_{w\in\Waff}$, and $J$ be Lusztig's asymptotic Hecke algebra, viewed as a based ring with basis $\{t_w\}_{w\in\Waff}$. This thesis studies the algebra $J$ from several perspectives, proves theorems about various incarnations of $J$, and provides tools to be applied for future work. We prove three types of results. In the second and third chapters, we investigate $J$ as a subalgebra of the $(\bq^{-1})$-adic completion of $\HH$ via Lusztig's map $\phi$. In the second chapter, we use Harish-Chandra's Plancherel formula for $p$-adic groups to show that the coefficient of $T_x$ in $t_w$ is a rational function of $\bq$, depending only on the two-sided cell containing $w$, with no poles outside of a finite set of roots of unity that depends only on $\Waff$. In type $\tilde{A}_n$ and type $\tilde{C}_2$, we show that the denominators all divide a power of the Poincar\'{e} polynomial of the finite Weyl group. As an application, we conjecture that these denominators encode more detailed information about the failure of the Kazhdan-Lusztig classification of $\HH$-modules at roots of the Poincar\'{e} polynomial than is currently known. In the third chapter, we reprove the results of the second chapter without using any tools from harmonic analysis in the special case $\G=\SL_2$. In this case we also prove a positivity property for the coefficients of $T_x$ in $t_w$, that we conjecture holds in general. We also produce explicit formulas for the action of $J$ on the Iwahori invariants $\mathcal{S}^I$ of the Schwartz space of the basic affine space. In the fourth chapter, we give a triangulated monoidal category of coherent sheaves whose Grothendieck group surjects onto $J_0\subset J$, the based ring of the lowest two sided cell of $\Waff$, equipped with a monoidal functor from the category of coherent sheaves on the derived Steinberg variety. We show that this partial categorification acts on natural coherent categorifications of $\mathcal{S}^I$. In low rank cases, we construct complexes lifting the basis elements $t_w$ of $J_0$ and their structure constants.