VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Vertical Oscillations in the Solar Neighbourhood and the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
Keywords: Galactic dynamics
Galaxy structure
Milky Way
Perturbations
Solar Neighbourhood

Galactic dynamics is an important tool for studying what is happening in our Milky Way, because the kinematics of stars can tell us a lot about their history and the forces that have shaped their orbits. From our position in the Milky Way, we are able to accurately observe the positions of billions of stars and the velocities of millions. Observations of the solar neighbourhood have told us that it is currently undergoing an oscillation from a perturbation with unknown origins. We start by examining the Gaia Data Release 2 positions and velocities of stars in the solar neighbourhood to measure this perturbation. We find evidence in the vertical number count asymmetry and mean vertical velocity of a perturbation to the solar neighbourhood of approximately 10\%. One of the leading theories to-date is that the passage of Sgr caused this perturbation to the Galactic disc. We develop a one-dimensional model which predicts the perturbation to the vertical distribution function of the solar neighbourhood given the force from a passing satellite. By investigating a multitude of possible Sgr orbits, Sgr mass models, and Milky Way halo masses, we show that Sgr is not able to reproduce the observed perturbation. We follow this by running an ensemble of thirteen N-body simulations of the interaction between Sgr and the Milky Way. These simulations span the same parameters of the interaction as the one-dimensional model. We then look at solar-neighbourhood-like volumes in our simulations and find that again none were able to reproduce the observed perturbation to the Galactic disc. We also find that the final mass of Sgr consistently exceeds the true mass measurement of the Sgr progenitor. From this we deduce that the true perturbation from Sgr is in fact much smaller than has previously been assumed. We can therefore conclude the observed vertical perturbations to the solar neighbourhood could not have been caused by Sgr acting alone. We suggest that pinning down the origin of the vertical perturbation to the Galactic disc requires much more complicated modelling.
Teachers’ Perceptions of Students’ Postsecondary Education Aspiration Capabilities
Keywords: Bourdieu
capacity to aspire
postsecondary aspirations
Sen's Capability Approach
Sen-Bourdieu Analytical Framework
teachers' perceptions

This study examines how teachers perceive students’ postsecondary education (PSE) aspirations and whether teachers’ perceptions differ depending on the income levels and PSE application rates of students in secondary schools. The study contributes to research about students’ PSE aspirations by analyzing the kinds of perceptions teachers hold of students’ PSE aspirations and why they might support some aspirations over others. The premise was that teachers’ perceptions could be a limiting factor on students’ aspirational capabilities if teachers perceived students as not having the aptitude to be successful, and that this might further be correlated with students’ family incomes. The research used a mixed methods convergent research design: Quantitative data consisted of teachers’ responses (n =113) to a survey about their perceptions of students’ PSE aspirations, and qualitative data were generated from semi-structured interviews (n =12) with teachers. Participants were drawn from three schools of varying income and PSE participation levels from within the same public-school board in southern Ontario. The findings were interpreted using the Sen-Bourdieu Analytical Framework as proposed by Hart (2019), combining both Sen’s capability approach and Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction. The quantitative data revealed that teachers’ perceptions of students’ aspirations and how teachers prepared students for PSE did not significantly differ across schools. The qualitative data, however, showed that teachers evaluated students’ capacity to aspire on the basis of students’ capability sets, as perceived by teachers, and that teachers’ pedagogy and PSE praxis differed depending on the income level of the school in which they taught. Further analysis revealed that teachers were frustrated with policies that limited their ability to effectively support and encourage students’ PSE aspirations. A conclusion drawn from this study was that, to increase students’ capacity to aspire, teachers must adjust their pedagogy and praxis to address the distinct needs of students with different levels of access to forms of capital and different family habitus; however, secondary and PSE leaders must also collaborate with teachers when developing policies and protocols that enhance students’ aspirational capabilities and functionings so all students, regardless of income level, have equitable opportunities to aspire to a PSE.
Refugee Parental Involvement: A Study of Refugee Parents in the Greater Toronto Area
Keywords: critical qualitative research
cultural and social capital
parental involvement
preferred forms of involvement
refugee
transcultural capital

Parental involvement enhances student learning and educational experiences and can specifically increase equitable access in education. Refugee parental involvement supports children’s learning and development, as well as the child’s and family’s integration into Canadian society, culture and institutions thereby providing the parents and family with beneficial social and cultural capital. This study investigates how refugee parents in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) want to be involved in their children’s education using a critical qualitative research design in order to explore their views, experiences and knowledge. The conceptual framework incorporates key ideas from literature on parental involvement approaches, barriers and applications in order to understand refugee experiences. Twelve refugee parents from GTA schools were interviewed using semi-structured interviews that included questions on involvement practices, knowledge, and desires. The data revealed consistencies and discrepancies with literature on parental involvement, illuminating similarities in the forms of involvement, while revealing differences in how refugee parents participate. In addition, refugee parents had similar barriers, but also had additional challenges due to migration related stressors, and language and cultural abilities. Refugee parents shared their preferred forms of involvement, including effective knowledge sharing, increasing parental agency through collaboration, removal of barriers and inclusion of their needs, and strengths-based and respectful opportunities for involvement. These preferred forms of involvement are the recommendations of this dissertation, and include a discussion on practical applications and implementation. They provide significant changes in practice which should be integrated into policy to ensure that refugee parents can access and use their cultural and transcultural capital.
It’s not, “let’s do more”. It’s, “let’s do different”: Recognizing the Important Associations between Children’s Reading Skill and their Motivation and Engagement in the Elementary School Classroom
Keywords: Autonomy Support
Engagement
Interest
Motivation
Reading
Self-Concept

This dissertation contains a collection of three studies that examined young children’s engagement and motivation for reading concurrently in the context of word reading achievement. Participants across the three studies included students in grades 1 and 2, and their teachers, from public and Catholic elementary schools in the Greater Toronto Area. The goal of the first study was to assess how reading motivation and engagement relate to each other and whether they help to explain variance in children’s reading achievement together as a shared unit, or whether they each contribute something unique. Results showed that reading self-concept, reading interest, and emotional engagement are unique dimensions, but that they have a shared component that is related to children’s word reading skills. The goal of the second study was to explore individual differences in early readers’ motivation and emotional engagement. Using person-centered analyses, results identified more than one profile of reading motivation and emotional engagement in grades 1 and 2. The motivation and engagement construct that most informs these profiles appears to change over time, with reading interest being especially important in grade 2. A latent transition analysis suggested that a student’s motivation and engagement profile in grade 1 is important for their later motivation and engagement. Most students did not change profiles over time—maintaining either positive or poor motivation and engagement from grade 1 to 2. The goal of the third study was to assess teacher autonomy support as an instructional approach that may enable positive reading motivation and emotional engagement by offering choice and teaching relevance of learning tasks. Results showed that the pathway between students’ reading achievement in grade 1 and their later reading self-concept in grade 2 was explained by teacher autonomy support and its relation to students’ emotional engagement and reading interest. The contributions of this dissertation are to enhance an understanding of what young readers’ motivation and engagement looks like in grades 1 and 2. By considering different dimensions of motivation, specifically self-concept and reading interest, in addition to children’s general emotional engagement when learning, we may be able to explain some of the observed differences in children’s reading behaviours and achievement.
Design Factors for Educational Video Games
Keywords: Design research
Education technology
Educational games
Video games

Educational video games can provide an effective learning experience if designers ensure that the games engage the player and achieve learning goals. A fun game with few learning goals will fail to teach the player, while a boring game replete with learning goals will fail to retain the player’s attention. By providing a deeper understanding of the design factors that affect these two outcomes, educational game developers can produce games that better educate the player. This study uses design research to examine design features used in creating educational games for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). 25 design features were found to be significant in the design of educational games. The goal of this research study is to discover the effect that each of these features has on engagement and learning, as well as the correlation that these features have on each other. What makes this study unique and instrumental in discovering the general effects of these design features is the large amount of data collected to validate the results. To study the effects of 25 design features, 25 experiments were run, each of which tested a subset of the design features. Each experiment involved the creation of an educational STEM game, followed by a second version of that game, enhanced with the set of design features. The experiments then measured differences in engagement and learning outcomes between the two versions of the game and then isolated the effects of individual features by performing a correlation analysis on the overall result. The design features with the biggest impact on engagement were the expression of learning goals and immersion in these STEM games. To a lesser extent, user interface, visual cues and level behaviour also enhanced engagement in the player. These generally align with the characteristics of optimal flow, where immersion, action and agency contribute to the optimal player experience. From a learning point of view, subject integration was the most significant design feature, with other features such as increasing challenge, visual instructions and aesthetic elements contributing lesser effects on the player’s learning performance.
Investigating Drought Impacts on Plant Functional Traits Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing
Keywords: Early Drought Detection
Grassland Drought
Hyperspectral Remote Sensing
Plant Functional Traits
Species Classification
Topography-Driven Trait Variation

Grasslands are among the most endangered and least protected ecosystems on Earth due to the impacts of livestock grazing, agricultural land conversion, invasive species, extreme weather events, especially droughts. The characterization and assessment of native and invasive species distribution and functional traits in response to drought provide insights into plant biological and ecological processes and ecosystem functioning. Remote sensing has been used to map grassland species and assess functional traits at various spatial and temporal scales. Furthermore, it has been used to distinguish native and invasive species. However, the use of broadband multispectral or coarse spatial-resolution imagery in previous studies resulted in the over- or under-estimation of plant traits, especially in rugged terrain with small, highly mixed, and highly dynamic species. Airborne hyperspectral imagery, with high spatial resolution and hundreds of contiguous narrow bands, can be used to assess subtle changes in plant traits and species composition. The combination of hyperspectral imagery and topographic data provides insights into the effect of topographic variability on trait variation and trait responses of native and invasive species under drought stress. This study aims to investigate the integration of airborne hyperspectral imagery, field and laboratory measurements, topographic data, and machine learning to detect early drought impact and characterize the compositional and trait responses of native and invasive species. A series of experiments from greenhouse drought simulations to landscape-level natural drought experiments were conducted to understand how species respond to drought stress at different spatial and temporal scales. Results show that hyperspectral images, together with machine learning, outperform the traditional use of spectral indices and multispectral data in early drought detection and species classification. Plant functional trait analyses demonstrate that hyperspectral data can effectively estimate leaf and canopy functional traits and capture their responses to drought between native and invasive species in an area with small-scale topographic variability. This study sets a methodological basis for the advancements of remote assessment of trait response in native and invasive species under stress environments and provides essential information for invasion control and management to protect native ecosystems and wildlife habitats.
Political Economy of Road Building in Nepal: Limits of Social Transformative Change
Keywords: Critical Adult Education
Cultural Politics
Political Economy
Road Building
Rural Nepal
Transformative social change

This dissertation examines the relationship among road building, critical consciousness and social relations in Nepal, with a focus on rural roads as a key site of socio-political action. After the Maoist revolution (1996- 2006), roads have become a primary site, not only of investment in “post-conflict” state-building but also of people’s aspirations for self-governance. At the same time, road building provides opportunities for elites and foreign donors to consolidate power and dominance. Thus, I consider road building as an important but under-examined terrain of hegemonic practice, as well as a potential site for transformative social relations. The dissertation poses three questions: First, what governmental rationalities of road building have shaped planning processes, and what policies and programs have resulted? Second, how do road-building processes manifest prevailing social relations? Third, what critiques or alternative visions have been articulated and what are the limits and possibilities for transformative social change? It draws on three theoretical frameworks. Political economy prompts queries about histories of regional integration and contemporary territorializing regimes. Cultural politics facilitates consideration of how road building reproduces or challenges prevailing social relations, and what critiques or alternative visions have been articulated. Critical adult education emphasizes connecting analysis to praxis. These theoretical inquiries entail dialectically examining how social relations build roads and are in turn constituted through road-building processes. The research design is ethnographic—engaging both semi-structured interviews (with diverse actors involved in road building) and archival analysis (of development grey literature and local media). Participant observation allows for triangulating findings and exploring the gap between what people say and what they do, as well as the gap between what policies indicate and what happens in practice. The dissertation argues that official rationalities become distorted as they encounter social relations, and also that those engaged in road building must navigate complex power dynamics as they seek to enrich themselves and their families. Road development serves to reproduce existing relations of domination; resistance seems futile and is rare. At the same time, there is evidence of critique, which sometimes takes a public form, suggesting that it could become the foundation for more collective action.
Evaluation of Efficacy of Perineural Steroids and Local Anesthetics for Chronic Post-traumatic Neoropathic Pain
Keywords: Compression
Neuropathic
Pain
Perineural
Steroids
Trauma

Trauma leading to entrapment or compression of nerves is an important cause of chronic refractory peripheral neuropathic pain (NP). The aim of this thesis was to evaluate benefits and adverse effects (AE) of administering steroids and local anesthetics around peripheral nerves subject to compression or trauma in patients with chronic peripheral NP. The first study, a systematic review and meta-analysis (SR-MA), showed a modest reduction in pain intensity based on numerical rating scale (NRS; 0-10) pain scores for patients receiving perineural steroids compared with those receiving LA or conventional medical management (CMM) (-0.69 points; 95% CI: -1.27 to -0.12; P = 0.02; I2=85%) at one to three months after the intervention. However, the quality of the studies was low. The second study was a retrospective, sequential, double cohort study in patients who sustained work-related injuries and developed trauma- or compression-related chronic peripheral NP of moderate-to-severe intensity in the ankle or the foot. In this study, the median NRS pain scores were lower in those treated by a combination of perineural local anaesthesia/steroids (LA-S) and CMM compared to those treated only with CMM [5.50(IQR 4.00-7.00) and 7.00(IQR 5.00-8.00) respectively; p
Three Essays on the Impact of Inducement Prizes on Innovation
Keywords: collaboration
inducement prizes
innovation
knowledge production
science policy
technological change

Innovation prizes are an increasingly popular tool used by policy makers, firms, and non-governmental organizations to induce innovation. This is surprising given the paucity of systematic research to justify their use and empirical evidence of their impact. In this dissertation, I explore the relationship between inducement prizes and innovation and shed light on the impact of prizes on the rate and direction of innovation. In the first study, I explore whether inducement prizes increase the relative returns to research collaboration at the level of the individual researcher. I investigate how researchers’ participation in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge affects rates of post-prize research collaboration. Findings suggest that prize participation reduces the costs of future collaboration by incentivizing researchers to learn how to work on complex real-world problems requiring multiple domains of expertise. Increases in collaboration occur on the extensive margin (more unique coauthors) and intensive margin (more papers with existing coauthors) and persist for years after the prize, suggesting that the costs of cross-domain collaboration are fixed rather than variable. In the second study, I examine how inducement prizes influence the discovery of scientific breakthroughs. Focusing on the field of robotics research, I explore the effects of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge on the post-prize salience of a branch of robotics research used heavily by prize-participant teams compared to a control group of contemporaneous research in the same field but unrelated to the prize. I find that prize-relevant research experiences a disproportionate increase in forward citations after the conclusion of the prize and that prize participants’ use of a specific breakthrough technology known as the Kalman filter plays a key role driving the results. Findings suggest that in research fields where prizes provide objective benchmarks for the performance of competing approaches, they may influence the direction of research by resolving uncertainty and enabling the discovery of breakthrough ideas. In the final study, I examine the effects of multiple dimensions of team experience on performance in an annual aerospace engineering competition organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Findings suggest that experienced team leaders are most strongly related to performance and that experience at the leader and team member levels may be partial substitutes. Results also highlight that experience affects performance differently during the design phase compared to the execution phase of the competition.
The Role of Choline in Gestational Diets in the Programming of Food Intake Regulation and Metabolism in Wistar Rat Offspring
Keywords: Choline
Fetal Programming
Folic Acid
Hypothalamus
Maternal Nutrition
Obesity

High (5-fold) folic acid (FA) diets during pregnancy result in obesity in rat offspring, associated with altered DNA-methylation of hypothalamic food-intake neurons. Like FA, the methyl-donor choline modulates fetal brain development, but its long-term programming effects on metabolic phenotype has not been reported. The hypothesis of this research is that choline in the gestational diet, like FA, is a contributor to the in utero programming of hypothalamic food intake regulation, and the later-life metabolic phenotype of male Wistar rat offspring. In study 1, Pregnant Wistar rats were fed an AIN-93G diet with recommended choline (RC, 1 g/kg diet), low choline (LC, 0.5-fold), or high choline (HC, 2.5-fold). Male offspring were weaned to a normal (16%) fat diet for 17 weeks. In study 2, the interaction between the choline content of the gestational diet (RC vs HC) and fat content of the post-weaning diet (normal (16%) vs high (45%)) on metabolic phenotype of male Wistar rats was assessed. In study 3, pregnant Wistar rats were fed an AIN-93G diet with recommended choline and FA (1X, RCRF, control), or high (5X) FA with choline at 0.5X-(LCHF), 1X-(RCHF), or 2.5X-(HCHF). Male offspring were weaned to the control diet for 20 weeks. In study 1, choline content in the gestational diet (below or above recommended intakes) programmed changes in food intake, body weight, energy expenditure and hypothalamic energy-regulatory neuropeptides. In study 2, choline additions reduced long-term body weight-gain and improved the later-life metabolic phenotype of offspring fed a high fat, but not a normal fat, post-weaning diet. In study 3, high gestational choline reduced high FA induced increases in long-term food intake and body weight and modified expression of regulatory genes in the hypothalamus. In studies 1 and 3, both early and later-life brain and plasma 1-carbon metabolites were affected by the choline content in gestational diets. In conclusion, maternal choline contributes to the in utero programming of hypothalamic food intake regulation and the metabolic phenotype of male rat offspring, and its effects are dependent on the composition of the gestational and post-weaning diets.