VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Creation of a New Payload Operations Planning Software for Complex Small Spacecraft Mission Operations
Keywords: Aerospace
Operations
Planning
Software

As small spacecraft become more capable, so too does the complexity of their operations. Searching for potential concurrent observation or access opportunities and ensuring they are compatible with one another may become tedious and repetitive for operators to manually compute. Currently available commercial-off-the-shelf tools that automate this process are capable but expensive. To address this problem, a new payload operations planning tool has been developed by the Space Flight Laboratory to handle the deterministic aspects of mission planning, such as: detecting observation opportunities, validating observations in a schedule, and generating lists of commands to be sent to satellites. This lightweight tool is generalizable to any Earth-observing mission configuration, and can support complicated observation geometries. Opensource libraries were used to reduce the overhead for development as they decrease the amount of code that must be newly created and maintained. Functionality has been compartmentalized through a containerized service-based architecture. In this way, new functionality can be added or replaced as needed. To enhance usability, a user may interact with the tool through a browser-based user interface. This thesis outlines the features of the Payload Operations Planning Software, as well as details about its architecture and development.
The Role of Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in Adipose Tissue Inflammation: a Longitudinal Analysis in the PROMISE Cohort
Keywords: Adipose Tissue Inflammation
Epidemiology
Fatty Acids
Obesity
Observational
Omega-3

The role of adipose tissue (AT) as the initiating organ of the sub-clinical inflammation phenotype characterizing obesity-associated chronic disease is being actively investigated. Pre-clinical evidence suggests that n-3 PUFAs modulate AT inflammation, although human data are limited and inconclusive. This thesis aimed to (1) map existing literature on n-3 PUFAs and AT inflammation in healthy humans in a scoping review; and (2) investigate longitudinal associations of circulating levels and dietary intake of n-3 PUFAs with AT-specific biomarkers using data from a cohort study of Canadian adults at high risk for type 2 diabetes. The scoping review documented inconsistent findings in published studies (n=25), as well as considerable heterogeneity in important methodological features. Cohort analysis indicated significant inverse associations of circulating n-3 PUFAs, more specifically EPA, DPA, and DHA, with AT-specific biomarkers. Collectively, these results suggest n-3 PUFAs may have a beneficial effect on modulating AT inflammation in humans, although additional well-designed studies are needed.
Mixedness in Motion: Challenging Contemporary Narratives of Mixed-Raciality and Physical Movement through Aesthetic Mixedness
Keywords: Aesthetics
Mixed-Race
Mixedness
Physical Cultural Studies
Physical Movement
Research-creation

Although often celebrated as a sign of a post-racial society, Mixed-race identities are incompatible with the racial categories constructed by Whiteness and coloniality/modernity, regardless of how these are reconfigured within our current society. Race as a social construct is inseparable from the body and thus movement; therefore, a relational and interdisciplinary analysis is required. Entering the gap in research on Mixedness and physical movement in Canada, this study deployed focus group interviews and arts-based creation workshops with eight (8) Mixed-race participants to explore racial identity and physical movement. Findings revealed insights into how to reconceptualize what it means to be Mixed-race beyond colonial/modern and neoliberal constructions and explore negativity and paradox to reveal new possibilities for Mixedness and physical movement.
The Relationship between Dispositional Mindfulness and Psychological, Cognitive, and Functional Outcomes following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
Keywords: cognition
dispositional mindfulness
functional disability
mindfulness
return to work
traumatic brain injury

Most individuals who sustain a mild uncomplicated Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) recover within 1-3 months. However, a significant proportion consistently report ongoing cognitive, psychological, and somatic sequelae, which can be functionally disabling and hinder active participation in society. This study examined dispositional mindfulness as a targetable protective factor as it pertains to psychological, cognitive, and functional outcomes in the post-acute stage. 45 litigating individuals with persistent symptoms in the post-acute stage following mTBI completed a neuropsychological assessment, including current and retrospective, pre-injury ratings of the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. Mindfulness was significantly associated with depression and anxiety but not with attention or working memory. Lower mindfulness was observed in individuals who had returned to work compared to those who had not. Pre-injury mindfulness significantly predicted scores on the Psychiatric Impairment Rating Scale, with higher Observing scores predicting worse functioning. Future research employing experimental and longitudinal designs can further elucidate these relationships.
Biomimetic Optogenetic Stimulation of Ventral Tegmental Area GABAergic Projections to the Tegmental Pedunculopontine Nucleus is Sufficient to Elicit Artificial Naïve Opiate Reward
Keywords: Behaviour
Biomimetic
Opioids
Optogenetics
Pedunculopontine nucleus
Ventral tegmental area

Morphine injections into the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) produce reward behaviour. Lesions of the Tegmental Pedunculopontine Nucleus (TPP) block these rewarding effects in formerly drug-naïve animals. We hypothesize TPP-projecting VTA GABA neuron circuits produce morphine reward in previously opiate-naïve animals. We employed optogenetics to activate TPP-projecting VTA GABAergic neurons in real-time place preference (RTPP) paradigms. GAD65-cre mice expressing a high fidelity channelrhodopsin in the axon terminals or cell bodies of TPP-projecting VTA GABA neurons received biomimetic laser stimulation that replicated the action potentials of a VTA GABA neuron firing trace recorded from a mouse acutely injected with morphine. Stimulation of the cell bodies or axons of this TPP-projecting VTA GABA population (and not other projection populations) led to reward responses, even during dopamine antagonism. This work indicates dopamine-independent direct projections from VTA GABA neurons to the TPP may underlie the rewarding effects of morphine in previously naïve mice.
The Influence of Shelter on the Establishment of the Invasive Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, at its Northern Range Limit
Keywords: Climate Change
Dandelion
Plant invasion
Shelter
Subarctic
Taraxacum

Invasive species represent a threat to many ecosystems but are nearly absent from arctic and subarctic Canada. The subarctic town of Churchill, Manitoba, has an unusually high number of invasive species due to the presence of a grain port and railway, but few of these species have spread to the surrounding tundra. I am attempting to understand why one of these species, common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), currently is restricted to town, focusing on the tendency of buildings to provide shelter and, thus, allowing it to persist. I surveyed the distribution of T. officinale and a native congener, T. lacerum, relative to existing structures. My results show that T. officinale's distribution is influenced by the availability of human-created microclimate more than that of T. lacerum. These results suggest T. officinale may spread beyond these refuges as the climate continues to warm.
Social Connection Measurement Tools for Older Adults in Long-Term Care Homes: A Scoping Review
Keywords: dementia
elderly
long-term care
measurement
social connection
tool

Background: Tools measuring social connection in long-term care (LTC) home residents use inconsistent terminology, leading to ambiguous operationalization. This study analyzes how distinct but related aspects of social connection have been measured in LTC homes.Methods: A content analysis with a deductive-inductive approach was used to analyze measurement items and an adapted Framework Method was used for data management. Dementia and non-dementia-specific tools were compared according to content, mode of administration and scoring options. Results: 57 studies reporting on 31 tools were identified, which assessed seven aspects of social connection: social network, social interaction, social engagement, social support, social isolation, social connectedness and loneliness. Dementia-specific tools focused on social interaction and non-dementia-specific tools focused on social network and social support. Conclusion: Tools vary in their operationalization of social connection based on seven measured aspects and target population (dementia or non-dementia-specific). Future research should assess these tools’ psychometric properties.
Explore the Origins and Analyze the Space of Ghosts and the Space of Immortals in Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異
Keywords: Early Imperial China
Liaozhai zhiyi
Spatial Study
Zhiguai

Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異 written by Pu Songling 蒲松齡 (1640-1715) in the Qing Dynasty 清 (1644-1912) is considered a monument in the history of zhiguai 志怪. As one of the representatives of Ming and Qing novels, Liaozhai zhiyi is usually discussed in the context of late imperial China. From the perspective of rhetoric and narrative, Liaozhai zhiyi is indeed influenced by literary forms such as chuanqi 傳奇 and baihua 白話 popularized from the Tang Dynasty 唐 (618-690, 705-907) to the Ming Dynasty 明 (1368-1644), but its storyline and the space in which the story takes place are always the same as those of strange tales from the Six Dynasties 六朝 (222-589). Therefore, this thesis will explore how shifts in the political system and the practice of religious beliefs in early imperial China influenced the creation of zhiguai, and how this far-reaching influence is reflected in the space of ghosts and the space of immortals in the Liaozhai zhiyi.
Beyond Feelings: The Impact of Emotional Intelligence and Learning Challenges on Youth Substance Abuse Treatment Outcomes
Keywords: Emotional Intelligence
Learning Challenges
Residential Treatment Settings
Substance Abuse
Substance Abuse Treatment
Youth Substance Abuse

This study explored the relationship between emotional intelligence, learning challenges, and treatment outcomes in youth receiving substance abuse treatment. It investigated the extent to which different aspects of emotional intelligence were associated with treatment outcomes in youth with and without learning challenges. These treatment outcomes were measured by internalizing problems. The findings indicated that emotional intelligence played a significant role in reducing internalizing problems for youth without learning challenges, while this effect was moderate for youth with only a learning challenge. Notably, the study highlighted youth with a learning challenge and comorbid attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were particularly vulnerable, as they had the highest risk of reverting to pre-treatment levels of internalizing problems after six months. To validate the findings from this study, future research should replicate the results in non-residential care setting to determine if similar patterns emerge.
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in Women: Neuropathological Features and Neuroinflammatory Gene Expression Profile
Keywords: Cellular senescence
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy
DNA damage
Domestic violence
Mild traumatic brain injury
Neuroinflammation

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) impacts millions annually, producing debilitating neurological sequelae that potentially persist long-term. It is commonly held that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is the neuropathology of repetitive mTBI, being well-studied in male professional athletes and service members. However, there are known sex differences in mTBI outcomes, and CTE is virtually unstudied in women, bringing into question whether CTE is the overarching pathology of mTBI in all demographics. This is the first large post-mortem cohort study to assess CTE in the brains of women with a history of mTBI sustained through intimate partner violence. To search for novel markers of mTBI, this study also performed gene expression profiling on human brain tissue to assess neuroinflammatory gene expression, finding evidence of DNA damage and cellular senescence. Altogether, this study demonstrated that the effects of mTBI can be observed in women’s brains, even in the absence of CTE.
Cross-Subject Transfer Learning for Visual Processing in the Human Brain
Keywords: BOLD Signal
Computational Neuroscience
fMRI
Latent Representations
Transfer Learning
Visual Processing

In this work, we analyze cross-subject transfer learning (CSTL) for predicting fMRI-measured brain activity in a target subject, using perceptual features of visual processing learned from source subjects. We demonstrate transferability of perceptual feature spaces derived from deep learning networks across different performance metrics. We show perceptual feature spaces outperform baseline and current state-of-the-art functional alignment approaches, such as neural code converters and hyperalignment, at small training sizes for overlapping sets of stimuli between subjects. Additionally, we show inter-individual encoding approaches perform better for lowerorder vs. higher-order visual cortices (LVC and HVC, respectively). Transferability of perceptual feature spaces is more pronounced in the LVC, and less significant in the HVC. Moreover, we show perceptual features generated using latent representations of BOLD signals exhibit better CSTL properties compared to those generated using BOLD signals in voxel space. While shown for overlapping stimuli, this was particularly evident for sets of disjoint stimuli.
Exploring the Existence and Impact of Borderline Personality Disorder Stigma in the General Population
Keywords: Borderline personality disorder
Diagnosis
Personality disorder
Stigma
Symptoms

A lack of research has focused on stigmatizing beliefs about borderline personality disorder (BPD) held by the general population. This study examined (1) the general population’s BPD objective knowledge and whether this influences stigma (2) the relationship between diagnostic label and symptomatic behaviour, as well as factors affecting this relationship (3) and whether stigma differs for BPD symptoms. A total of 295 participants read vignettes and completed a battery of questionnaires. The general population has low BPD objective knowledge, and higher objective knowledge predicts lower stigma for most BPD symptoms. Stigma is higher for BPD symptomatic behaviour than for the diagnosis. Attaching a BPD diagnosis to BPD symptomatic behaviour did not significantly impact stigma; though, the diagnosis led to increased stigma for non-relevant behaviour. Intense anger was the most stigmatized BPD symptom; however, stigma varied for the remaining BPD symptoms. Gender interacted with BPD stigma in a number of ways.
Selection of Priority Population and Health Outcome Performance Indicators by Integrated Healthcare Networks: An Exploratory Multiple-Case Study
Keywords: Decision-making
Influencing factors
Integrated care
Performance indicator
Priority population
Sense-making

Background: Integrated care requires shared sense-making and decision-making processes among stakeholders, which are often affected by empirical evidence, and interactions and relationships between stakeholders. This dissertation explores the selection processes of priority population and performance indicators of OHTs, while identifying factors influencing them. Method: The study followed an exploratory multiple-case study design with theoretical replication. Two cases were selected based on set criteria; 12 interviews were conducted (six each) with the decision-making committee members. Data were analyzed using a case-based approach to cross-case synthesis. Results: Findings showed that sense-making and decision-making of OHTs were intricately connected and were not always governed by data. Organizational expertise, stakeholder interest, previous experience, and feasibility often guided the understanding of health system issues, thus influencing population and indicator prioritization. Conclusion: Different sense-making processes may lead to variations in decisions across integrated care networks, adapting to individual contexts.
The Role of NINJ1 in Hepatic Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury
Keywords: Ischemia-reperfusion injury
Liver
Lytic cell death
Pyroptosis
Transplant

Hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) inherent to liver transplantation contributes to adverse transplantation outcomes such as graft dysfunction and rejection. The acute phase of hepatic IRI is characterized by an injurious inflammatory response, driven by lytic cell death pathways such as pyroptosis that result in plasma membrane rupture and subsequent release of proinflammatory molecules. Recently, the protein ninjurin-1 (NINJ1) has been found to mediate this terminal plasma membrane rupture process in macrophages. However, the role of NINJ1 in hepatic IRI and the function of NINJ1 in hepatocytes remain to be elucidated. Using genetic knockout and pharmacologic approaches in a mouse model of segmental hepatic IRI, we demonstrate that the inhibition of NINJ1-mediated plasma membrane rupture protects against hepatic IRI. Using primary mouse hepatocytes, we show that hepatocytes are capable of NINJ1-mediated cell rupture. Thus, our findings position NINJ1 as a potential therapeutic target to limit hepatic IRI.
Thermal Control for a 1000 Km Orbit Microsatellite
Keywords: Deorbit
Orbits
Satellite
Spacecraft
Testing
Thermal

The Space Flight Laboratory, with its focus on the micro-space philosophy, strives to make space more accessible. This thesis describes the thermal design for a DEFIANT microsatellite, a prime example of the laboratory's modular spacecraft platforms. To be operated at an altitude of 1000 kilometers, this spacecraft pushes the limits of what the DEFIANT platform has achieved. The many stages of spacecraft thermal model development and testing are described. Reference thermal designs are presented that prove the viability of thermal control for the mission. This higher altitude mission also requires an active de-orbiting strategy. The impact this additional phase has on spacecraft lifetime thermal behavior is investigated. The challenges of multi-altitude thermal design are highlighted. Finalized thermal control for launch is detailed using findings from de-orbiting investigations. The unique aspects of this mission demonstrate the Laboratory's ability to innovate and redefine what can be achieved with small spacecraft.
Investigating ROI-independent Segmentation and Classification of Glioma in MR Images and of Liver Fibrosis Detection in CT Images
Keywords: Classification
Computed tomography
Glioma
Liver fibrosis
Magnetic resonance imaging
Weakly supervised segmentation

Segmentation and classification of anomalies is a critical problem in medical imaging. Machine learning has demonstrated potential in automating this problem but generally relies on manually annotated segmentations or regions of interest to train the machine learning models. Acquiring the manual annotations demands extensive time and resources from radiologists, and hinders the development and deployment of machine learning solutions for medical imaging problems without fully annotated datasets. This thesis presents a novel approach to brain tumor segmentation in magnetic resonance images that uses generative adversarial networks to remove the need for manual annotations. These segmentations can be successfully applied to downstream clinical tasks such as genetic marker prediction and pathology prediction. This thesis also presents the optimal approach to liver fibrosis detection in computed tomography images using Radiomics and insights into how to develop liver fibrosis detection solutions without the need for manually annotated regions of interest.
Approximation for Flash Memory to Reduce Energy and Increase Lifetime
Keywords: Approximate Computing
Computer Architecture
Flash Memory
IoT

Flash memory is commonly used in IoT devices for both data and code storage. Relative to the overall device, flash consumes a significant fraction of energy. This is problematic because IoT devices are energy constrained due to reliance on batteries or energy harvesting. To reduce this energy consumption, we exploit a significant asymmetry; notably, flash operations take unequal amounts of energy depending on if we are flipping a 1→0 versus a 0→1. We propose FlipBit, a hardware-software approximation approach that limits costly 0→1 transitions in flash. Instead of performing an exact write, we write an approximated value that avoids any costly 0→1 bit flips. On machine learning models, we reduce energy by an average of 39% and up to 71% with only a 1% accuracy loss. Additionally, by reducing the number of program-erase cycles, we increase the flash lifetime by 68%.
Geometry-Free Prediction of Inertial Lift Forces in Microchannels
Keywords: Cell separator
Lift force
Machine learning
Microfluidics
Neural network

Inertial microfluidic devices (IMDs) are a low-cost and high-throughput means of manipulating, separating, and focusing suspended particles on the micrometer scale. The precise nature of the lift force affecting particle motion within IMDs is difficult to determine analytically. As a result, designing these inertial microfluidic devices typically requires either financially costly physical design cycles or computationally costly direct numerical simulation. Existing data-driven attempts at alleviating these costs require the impractical step of generating a new model for every new channel cross-sectional geometry. Herein, we re-formulate traditional expressions for lift force to be completely independent of channel geometry and then use this geometry-free re-formulation to parameterize a fully-connected neural network (FCNN). We train this FCNN on a publicly available lift force dataset for rectangular channels and show that with our parameterization the FCNN is able to generalize to triangular, semicircular, and trapezoidal channel geometries. We suggest possible ways to improve the generalizability of the model --- mostly centered around increasing training data heterogeneity --- with the hope that our model will eventually be integrated into computational fluid dynamics software to drastically reduce the computational burden of simulating IMDs.