VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Making Sense of the First Nation, Metis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework
Keywords: policy implementation
co-construction
teacher sense-making
leadership

Abstract In 2007 the Ministry of Education in Ontario identified Aboriginal education as one of its key priorities with the release of the First Nation, Métis and Inuit Education Policy Framework (FNMI). Improving educational outcomes and closing the achievement gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students is the focus of this policy. This study examines the policy implementation process in one school board in Ontario by focusing on how teachers in two elementary schools made sense of the policy expectations and how this sense-making impacted their professional practice. In order to examine how implementation was understood and acted upon by these teachers, the sense-making/co-construction model developed by Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan (2002) provides the starting point for analysis. This study seeks to make visible the sense-making cues that teachers used to notice and select new information and to examine how these cues impacted teacher enactment of the FNMI policy. Sense-making theory supports the examination of change at the micro level of local policy actors; while the co-construction model with its meditational system of individual agency, organizational structure/culture, and environmental messaging contextualizes the individual sense-making of teachers within a larger social environment. The research methodology included teacher interviews designed to collect evidence of teacher sense-making during the policy implementation process, and school visits to observe evidence of school culture and structure. Interview responses of 15 elementary teachers and 2 principals were analyzed for sense-making cues. The findings revealed clusters of sense-making cues connected to three main sense-making frameworks or discourses. These discourses included the teacher as professional, equity and inclusion, and leadership and change. These findings support previous research on sense-making and policy implementation and contribute further insight into the micro processes of policy implementation, which could be leveraged to improve policy implementation. Key Words: policy implementation, teacher sense-making, leadership, co-construction model
Circuit and System Design for mm-wave Radar and Radio Applications
Keywords: mm-wave
radar
radio
CMOS
SiGe
power amplifier
packaging
antenna
system
noise figure
receiver
transitter
transceiver
output power
stacked cascode
high frequency
multi-Gb/s
last mile

Recent advancements in silicon technology have paved the way for the development of integrated transceivers operating well inside the mm-wave frequency range (30 - 300 GHz). This band offers opportunities for new applications such as remote sensing, short range radar, active imaging and multi-Gb/s radios. This thesis presents new ideas at the circuit and system level for a variety of such applications, up to 145 GHz and in both state-of-the-art nanoscale CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS technologies. After reviewing the theory of operation behind linear and power amplifiers, a purely digital, scalable solution for power amplification that takes advantage of the significant ft/fmax improvement in pFETs as a result of strain engineering in nanoscale CMOS is presented. The proposed Class-D power amplifier, features a stacked, cascode CMOS inverter output stage, which facilitates high voltage operation while employing only thin-oxide devices in a 45 nm SOI CMOS process. Next, a single-chip, 70-80 GHz wireless transceiver for last-mile point-to-point links is described. The transceiver was fabricated in a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology and can operate at data rates in excess of 18 Gbps. The high bitrate is accomplished by taking advantage of the ample bandwidth available at the W-band frequency range, as well as by employing a direct QPSK modulator, which eliminates the need for separate upconversion and power amplification. Lastly, the system and circuit level implementation of a mm-wave precision distance and velocity sensor at 122 and 145 GHz is presented. Both systems feature a heterodyne architecture to mitigate the receiver 1/f noise, as well as self-test and calibration capabilities along with simple packaging techniques to reduce the overall system cost.
Frameworks for Personalized Privacy and Privacy Auditing
Keywords: Privacy
Ontology
Audit log
Linked Data
Personal Health Record
Personal Web
Compliance queries

As individuals are increasingly benefiting from the use of online services, there are growing concerns about the treatment of personal information. Society’s ongoing response to these concerns often gives rise to privacy policies expressed in legislation and regulation. These policies are written in natural language (or legalese) as privacy agreements that users must agree to, or presented as a set of privacy settings and options that users must opt in or out of in order to receive the service they want. But comprehensibility of privacy policies and settings is becoming increasingly challenging as agreements become longer and there are many privacy options to choose from. Additionally, organizations face the challenge of assuring compliance with policies that govern collecting, using, and sharing of personal data. This thesis proposes frameworks for personalized privacy and privacy auditing to address these two problems. In this thesis, we focus our investigation on the comprehensibility issues of personalized privacy using the concrete application domain of personal health data as recorded in systems known as personal health records (PHR). We develop the Privacy Goals and Settings Mediator (PGSM) model, which is based on i* multi-agent modelling techniques, as a way to help users comprehend privacy settings when employing multiple services over a web platform. Additionally, the PGSM model helps privacy experts contribute their privacy knowledge to the users’ privacy decision-making task. To address the privacy auditing problem, we propose two light-weight ontologies, L2TAP and SCIP, that are designed for deployment as Linked Data, an emerging standard for representing and publishing web data. L2TAP (Linked Data Log to Transparency, Accountability and Privacy) provides flexible and extensible provenance-enabled logging of privacy events. SCIP (Simple Contextual Integrity Privacy) provides a simple target for mapping the key concepts of Contextual Integrity and enables SPARQL query-based solutions for two important privacy processes: compliance checking and obligation derivation. This thesis validates the premise of PHR users’ privacy concerns, attitudes and behaviour through an empirical study. The usefulness of the PGSM model for privacy experts is evaluated through interviews with experts. Finally, the scalability and practical benefits of L2TAP+SCIP for log-based privacy auditing are validated experimentally.
Modeling Three-dimensional Flow and Heat Transfer in Variable Surface Tension Two-phase Flows
Keywords: Two-Phase Flows
Variable Surface Tension
Volume of Fluid

In the present study a parallel three dimensional Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is developed to simulate Marangoni force in immiscible fluids with variable surface tension. Conservation equations are solved based on cell-averaged one-field volume tracking scheme. Evaluating the convective term in the energy equation along the boundary between the fluids highly depends on the position and orientation of the interface; hence, using average cell values simply ignores the interface shape and leads to computational uncertainty. As a remedy to this issue, the original idea behind the volume tracking method is used not only to advect mass and momentum but also energy across cells. To verify the proposed algorithm, results are compared against theoretically predicted thermocapillary migration velocity of a droplet at the limit of zero Marangoni number. However, at relatively high Marangoni numbers, thermal boundary layers are very thin and challenging to resolve. To demonstrate the capabilities of the heat transfer module, simulations of a Fluorinert droplet moving in silicon oil under applied temperature gradient in microgravity are compared against the available experimental results and the migration velocity of the droplet are reported.
Citizens, Complexity and the City Lessons from Citizen Participation in Urban (Transport) Planning in Santiago Chile, 1997-2012
Keywords: active citizenship
anti-highway coalition
citizen participation
urban planning
transport planning
complexity

Abstract Twentieth century, citizen “revolts” against highway projects have influenced thinking about public transport (Toronto, Vancouver, New York), governance (Portland), and cycling (The Netherlands) to this day. Less is known about how these emerge in developing countries, and what they can tell us about citizens’ role in innovation to achieve more socially just, good and livable cities.  Using a complexity-based approach, this dissertation explores lessons from an anti-highway movement in Santiago, Chile (1997), which challenged authoritarian planning paradigms inherited from the Pinochet regime (1973-1990). In 2000, these leaders of diverse communities founded a citizen institution, Living City (Ciudad Viva), which today is a prize-winning, citizen-led planning institution.  Participation is recognized as important to community development, health and urban planning. Nonetheless, a rich literature notes many limitations. Is improving participation just a matter of “getting the process right”? Or does it require re-formulating frameworks to redistribute power, fostering self-generating civil society organizations, and treating democratization as ongoing rather than a “steady state”?  Re-formulating frameworks has far-reaching implications. It requires acting consistently with the premise that the local is central to change in human living systems, and the need to create the civic “infrastructure” conducive to citizen learning and the emergence of multiscalar citizen organizations, able to mobilize ecology of actors for innovation. To effectively address the challenges of climate change, loss of biodiversity, the social determinants of health, the “obesity epidemic” and other issues, the answers lie in city neighbourhoods and human settlements.  If we aspire to good, just and livable cities, uncertain futures require planning for change. This research suggests that we can identify dynamics likely to leverage significant change and activate capacities throughout a system. This requires moving to an inclusive planning paradigm that fully integrates citizen planners.
Bayesian Inference for Bivariate Conditional Copula Models with Continuous or Mixed Outcomes
Keywords: Conditional Copula Model
Bayesian Inference
adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo
cubic spline
mixed outcomes
deviance informtaion criterion
cross-validated marginal log-likelihood criterion
additive model

The main goal of this thesis is to develop Bayesian model for studying the inﬂuence of covariate on dependence between random variables. Conditional copula models are ﬂexible tools for modelling complex dependence structures. We construct Bayesian inference for the conditional copula model adapted to regression settings in which the bivariate outcome is continuous or mixed (binary and continuous) and the copula parameter varies with covariate values. The functional relationship between the copula parameter and the covariate is modelled using cubic splines. We also extend our work to additive models which would allow us to handle more than one covariate while keeping the computational burden within reasonable limits. We perform the proposed joint Bayesian inference via adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. The deviance information criterion and cross-validated marginal log-likelihood criterion are employed for three model selection problems: 1) choosing the copula family that best ﬁts the data, 2) selecting the calibration function, i.e., checking if parametric form for copula parameter is suitable and 3) determining the number of independent variables in the additive model. The performance of the estimation and model selection techniques are investigated via simulations and demonstrated on two data sets: 1) Matched Multiple Birth and 2) Burn Injury. In which of interest is the inﬂuence of gestational age and maternal age on twin birth weights in the former data, whereas in the later data we are interested in investigating how patient’s age aﬀects the severity of burn injury and the probability of death.
Open and Shut
Keywords: Music
Opera
Score

Open and Shut Fiona M. Ryan Doctor of Musical Arts Graduate Department of Music University of Toronto 2013 Abstract “Open and Shut” is a short opera in two scenes composed with concert opera performances in mind; it could be performed with or without staging. There are five characters in this work. The protagonist is Bridget (Soprano). In the first scene Bridget encounters Martha (Soprano) and Rose (Mezzo Soprano), two fundamentalist Christians who are handing out religious pamphlets on the street. In the second scene Bridget meets her friends Frank (Tenor) and Paul (Baritone) in a café and tells them of her encounter with these two women (Martha and Rose); a heated discussion of religion ensues. Each character is represented by a distinctive style of music that fits with their personality and ideology. Martha's music and singing style is inspired by Baroque and Classical sacred music (well suited to a coloratura voice) to represent her traditional and authoritarian viewpoint: the instrumentation for her music is similar to a Baroque orchestra (strings, oboe, bassoon, and sometimes brass). Rose's music is inspired by traditional folk hymns and spirituals to represent both her traditional ideals and her earnest simplicity: her vocal lines feature repetition and gospel-inspired inflections, she is accompanied by textures featuring piano, bass, and flute. Frank is an opinionated, cynical atheist whose music is atonal (flexibly based on 12 tone procedures) and is filled with harsher chords and jagged melodies to represent his modern but rigid view; his vocal lines are often paired with cello. Paul is a hippie who supports people exploring spirituality, but is opposed to institutions; Paul's music is based on use of non-traditional modes and aleatoric principles with an emphasis on the interaction of percussion and voice. Bridget is caught between all of these worlds so her music is an intuitively composed fusion of tonal, modal, and atonal styles; Bridget's individuality is represented by a recognizable melodic theme (introduced at measure 41 and repeated throughout the piece by alto flute, viola, clarinet, and piano). Additionally, each scene starts with music inspired by the sounds of a city.
Spiritual African and Africentric Leadership for Social Justice:Understandings, Experiences and Spiritual Influences
Keywords: educational leadership
critical spirituality
Africentric
African
social justice
leadership for equity
community educational leadership
school-based leadership
integrative antiracism
leadership for social justice
spiritual leadership in schools
spirituality
Africentric educational leadership
equity in schools
democratic schooling
African educational leadership
critically just leadership
Black educational leaders
inclusive education

The imprint of spiritual African and Africentric educational leadership is deeply entwined in the struggle over education and educational spaces. Despite this robust and contentious history, research pertaining specifically to spiritual African and Africentric educational leaders is noticeably miniscule within the field of educational leadership. This discrepancy is alarming when one considers how spiritual African and Africentric leaders have been actively involved in shaping the nature and quality of education within various contexts. This dissertation explores the conceptions and experiences of spiritual African and Africentric leaders and the function of spirituality within leaders’ practices toward social justice. Based on qualitative interviews with 10 school- and community-based participants, this research deliberately centres the perspectives of individuals who proclaim the spiritual as a natural and transformative force within their personal and professional lives. Furthermore, the present research study offers an informed understanding of African and Africentric spiritualities within the context of educational leadership for social justice and outlines the meanings, influences and tensions which participants believe to entwine the task of leading. The practice of spiritual African and Africentric leadership arises in opposition to the threat of racialization and against barriers which restrict a more inclusive understanding of education. Narratives construct leadership for social justice as an indigenous and embattled endeavour imbued with tensions, risks and prohibition. Spiritual African and Africentric leaders understand and experience their practice beyond the rudiments of functionality as leaders respectfully enter into the arena of leadership with a concern towards instituting individual, communal and systemic change. Leadership endeavours contest marginalization, initiate inclusive engagement and strategically reconstruct education within a more democratically just space. Moreover, participants depict spiritual African and Africentric leadership as a hopeful and relationally influential undertaking.
Portrait of Moral Agency
Keywords: moral education
moral agency
moral dimensions of teaching
teaching morality
micro ethnography
single-case study
teaching morally

Over the past several decades, secular schools in North America have been expected to impart moral education to students. An array of approaches, strategies, methods, and philosophical and theoretical orientations for doing so are promoted in education literature. Two, in particular, have also been politically endorsed in Ontario, Canada—character education and community service. Yet, there remains discrepancy among teachers’ practices, knowledge, awareness, and intentions. Anecdotal reports indicate that relatively few teachers provide a consistent and comprehensive moral education, and those who do, act primarily on their own initiative and at their own discretion. Previous empirical evidence suggests that teachers who are moral agents conceive of, enact, and reflect on a personally developed form of moral education, which is embedded in the moral and ethical dimensions of school and classroom life, curriculum, and pedagogy. This single-case study aims to broaden and deepen the scholarship of moral agency as moral education, by exploring the question How does a teacher, who prioritizes the moral education of students, envision, enact and reflect on that moral education. Positioning myself as a conduit, within what is often considered to be a closed-door culture of teaching, I metaphorically opened one teacher’s classroom door and exposed her practices. The result is a uniquely comprehensive and genuine portrait of moral agency, which details the use of a variety of strategies and methods for imparting morality. These include intentionally modelling moral behaviours, conduct and dispositions; fostering relationships with and among students; creating a classroom community; delivering virtues lessons and messages; encouraging discussions of a moral nature; nurturing self-discipline in students; providing opportunities for community service; and assessing students’ social and moral development. The harmonious co-existence of these strategies and methods within one classroom and one teacher’s practice; the complementary and supportive way in which the teacher makes use of them; and their independence of any particular philosophical or theoretical orientation for moral education, represent the main insights of this study. These insights suggest that moral education in a secular classroom might be more comprehensively understood and promoted as moral agency.
Effects of Chronic Oxidative Stress on TRPM2 and TRPC3 Channels: Potential Implications for Bipolar Disorder
Keywords: Transient receptor potential channels
Bipolar disorder
Calcium signalling
Oxidative stress

Intracellular calcium and oxidative stress dyshomeostasis, which can be highly interactive, occur in bipolar disorder (BD), but the pathogenesis of these disturbances is unknown. The transient receptor potential (TRP) melastatin subtype 2 (TRPM2) and canonical subtype 3 (TRPC3) calcium-permeable non-selective ion channels, already implicated in BD, are involved in calcium and oxidative stress signalling. Thus, I sought to determine whether the expression and function of these channels are modulated by oxidative stress exposure in rat cortical neurons, astrocytes, and in human B lymphoblast cell lines (BLCLs), a cell model that reports diagnostically relevant abnormalities in BD. This thesis work demonstrated that TRPC3 expression and function are decreased after chronic, but not acute oxidative stress exposure in both human and rat cell models. TRPM2 expression, on the other hand, was increased after both acute and chronic stressor treatments in rat cortical neurons. In BLCLs, TRPM2-mediated calcium entry was blunted although no difference in TRPM2 mRNA expression was detected. Moreover, BLCLs from BD-I patients exhibited greater susceptibility to cell death and a differential sensitivity of TRPM2-mediated calcium influx to acute oxidative stress compared with healthy subjects, further supporting reduced cellular resilience in the pathophysiology of BD-I. I also demonstrated that TRPC3 protein is expressed in human brain from 8 days to 83 years old supporting an ongoing role in the developing and adult human brain. These findings support an important role for TRPM2 and TRPC3 in sensing and responding to oxidative stress, and in transducing oxidative stress signalling to intracellular calcium homeostatic and cellular stress responses, which have been implicated in the pathophysiology of BD. Finally, this work has highlighted an inherent difference in TRPM2 channel functionality in BD type I subjects compared with controls, adding functional evidence to the genetic and differential expression findings implicating TRPM2 dysfunction in BD.