VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Measure of Emotion During an Attention Demanding Task and Mindfulness Biofeedback for Improved Selective Attention
Keywords: Appraisal Theory
Emotion Regulation
Mindfulness Biofeedback
Psychophysiology
Scholar Athletes
Teens

Teenage scholar-athletes are at risk of mental health concerns, including high levels of stress due to the constant demands across academic and athletic domains (Lavallee Wylleman, 2000; Watt Moore, 2001). One must be able to self-regulate to reach optimal levels of attention (Gross, 1998a). Additionally, one must have the ability to deliberately shift into a state of attention for optimal performance in sports and academics (Wilson et al., 2018). Research indicates that practicing mindfulness is beneficial in improved executive functioning, and in well-being (Zanesco et al., 2018, Farb et al. 2015; Kabat‐Zinn, 2003). Biofeedback training is a method of self-regulation of autonomic responses (Moss, 2016). Mindfulness biofeedback (MB) has recently gained attention regarding its benefits (Khazan Moss, 2020). MB improves athletic performance (Perry, 2018); however, the effect of MB on selective attention has yet to be investigated. This study details the effects of MB induction on selective attention scores and psychophysiological changes in electrodermal activity (EDA). Method: 71 high-school scholar- athletes were randomly assigned to play a multiple object (MOT) game with MB (experimental) and without MB (control). EDA recordings of alerting and orienting phases provided an active measure of emotional arousal throughout the MOT phases and a selective attention test was conducted pre and post (Cambridge Brain Science [CBS]). Results: Significant effects of MB were evident through higher selective attention scores. As predicted, EDA decreased during the orienting phase; however, a decrease in EDA variability in the orienting phase of the MOT (Coefficient-of -Variability) had a mediating effect on MB and the CBS test. A 1-month-follow-up survey showed MB was applied by participants to regulate preperformance in sport and academic domains. Conclusion: The experience of (a) conscious awareness (mindfulness) of psychophysiological feedback regulation (Biofeedback-EDA changes) and (b) MB significantly impacted selective attention scores (CBS). The effect of MB on selective attention is mediated by a decrease in the variability of emotional arousal. The study design and results capture the dynamic relationship between cognition and emotion as explained by theory and Gross’ Process Model of Emotion Regulation. Follow-up-questionnaires revealed that students applied MB beyond the experiment in everyday life.
Bayesian causal inference with longitudinal data
Keywords: Bayesian estimation
Causal inference
Latent class
Longitudinal data
Marginal structural models
Repeated measurements

Bayesian statistical methods are becoming increasingly in demand in clinical and public health research. In the context of causal inference, Bayesian methods propagate estimation uncertainty, allow direct probability summaries of the causal parameters of interest, and afford us the ability to incorporate prior clinical/expert beliefs. Despite their unique estimation features and wide applicability, Bayesian causal inference methods for handling longitudinal data under observational designs have received little attention in the statistical literature. Under the observational setting, treatment assignment at each clinical visit follows a patient-adaptive decision strategy, where the clinician tailors treatment to the individual patient based on the current and past clinical measurements, as well as the treatment histories. Given the inherent time-dependent structure with longitudinal data, any additional data complexity, such as a repeatedly measured outcome, censoring, and high dimensional time-dependent covariates, brings substantial analytical challenges. In this thesis, two novel Bayesian causal methods to account for time-dependent confounding and time-dependent treatment in longitudinal observational studies are proposed. The first method extends Bayesian propensity score analysis and Bayesian marginal structural models to estimate visit-specific treatment effects with a repeatedly measured outcome. The second method introduces a Bayesian latent class approach to achieve causal inference from a joint model of time-dependent covariates, treatment and an end of study outcome. These proposed methods are compared to existing frequentist causal methods in simulation studies and their use is illustrated using real-world pediatric clinical data.
Characterizing Star Formation Processes in Clumpy Turbulent Disk Galaxies with DYNAMO
Keywords: Extragalactic astronomy
Galaxy evolution
Galaxy kinematics
High-z Universe
Interstellar medium
Star formation

The redshift range 1 < z < 3 (referred to as “cosmic noon”) defines a characteristic epoch for the formation of stars and heavy elements in galaxies. Understanding the processes that drive and regulate star formation at this period is essential for linking the earliest phases of galaxy evolution with those observed in the local Universe and remains a key missing component of a comprehensive evolution model for galaxies. The population of systems dominating this era of massive galaxy assembly and disk growth are particularly important in that they are responsible for the majority of stellar mass density in the Universe. However, efforts to directly resolve star formation in z > 1 galaxies are substantially challenged by redshift and resolution effects. This doctoral thesis aims to investigate the mechanisms driving clumpy star formation in turbulent, high-z disks using a subset of galaxies from the DYnamics of Newly-Assembled Massive Objects (DYNAMO) sample. DYNAMO comprises a sample of extremely rare, nearby (z ∼ 0.07 & 0.12) galaxies whose system properties closely resemble those observed in z ∼ 1 − 2 main-sequence galaxies. Using a combination of CO[1-0] NOEMA-PdBI observations and blackbody modeling of infrared Herschel data we assess the molecular gas content and explore the state of the ISM in DYNAMO. Coupling these measurements with resolved kinematics, we test predictions from Toomre instability theory and find the first direct observational evidence indicating the role the internal gas velocity dispersion plays in the formation of massive star forming clumps within galaxies. Using high-resolution imaging from Keck Telescope we discover 32 stellar clumps in 5 DYNAMO targets via KP -band maps of star light and perform robust stellar mass estimates for these clump-like structures. For one galaxy in DYNAMO, G04-1, we present a detailed case study of stellar clumps using multi-filter follow-up observations from Hubble Space Telescope and find evidence of radial gradients in clump mass and color. These findings provide new, crucial insight into the global and resolved star formation properties of z ∼ 1 − 2 galaxies and underscore how advantageous high-z analogue samples are for obtaining the high-resolution imaging and kinematics necessary for a comprehensive study of star formation at cosmic noon.
Normative Approaches to Understanding Stereotyping and Group-based Inferences
Keywords: Bayesian models
impression formation
morality
social categories
stereotyping

People often make inferences about others based on beliefs or stereotypes about the social groups a person belongs to. These types of inferences can often be problematic (e.g. overgeneralizing based on a stereotype can lead to less accurate inferences, and exacerbate moral and social problems like discrimination). Yet group-based types of inferences can also be a necessary and even beneficial part of life (e.g. using accurate beliefs about groups can make inferences more accurate, and recognizing real group differences can serve as a basis addressing problematic social inequalities). The current research clarified the epistemic and moral standards that can be used to distinguish the problematic from non-problematic cases, and then used this to empirically examine several reasons people might fail to live up to these standards. Part 1 re-examined the idea that certain types of social categories (e.g. demographics, occupations) might often be overused compared to “individuating information” (e.g. traits, behaviours) as a heuristic to simplify inferences. Results did not support this idea, instead suggesting that these two types of information are largely used similarly. Part 2 re-examined whether certain biases in people’s information (due to lacking first-hand knowledge or having biased second-hand knowledge about a group) might lead people to think that groups are overly homogeneous, and thus be overconfident in their group-based inferences. Results suggested that, while both sources of bias can lead groups to appear more homogeneous, only second-hand knowledge leads to greater confidence when making inferences. Part 3 examined the moral norms used to judge group-based generalizations, and showed how differences or errors in people’s beliefs might lead people to freely use generalizations that are widely seen as violating these moral norms. Overall, this work helps bring clarity to the epistemic and moral standards that can be applied to evaluate group-based inferences, and helps better understand when people will or will not live up to these standards.
Modality and Validity in the Logic of John Buridan
Keywords: John Buridan
Logical consequence
medieval logic
modal logic
modality

What makes a valid argument valid? Generally speaking, in a valid argument, if the premisses are true, then the conclusion must necessarily also be true. But on its own, this doesn’t tell us all that much. What is truth? And what is necessity? In what follows, I consider answers to these questions proposed by the fourteenth century logician John Buridan († ca. 1358). My main claim is that Buridan’s logic is downstream from his metaphysics. Accordingly, I treat his metaphysical discussions as the key to his logic. As has been often noted, Buridan’s metaphysics are radically anti-realist about universals, though I think the depth and scope of his anti-realism has often been papered over by his recent commentators. Buridan constructs his logic on an amazingly spartan ontology, and this accomplishment is overdue for reconsideration. To the foregoing questions: truth is a feature of propositions, and of propositions only—not of proposition-like states of affairs, or anything like that. It is a function of the reference or supposition (suppositio) of their terms, which depends on predication in a propositional context. And necessary truth is grounded in causation: a predication is necessary if it cannot be falsified by any power, natural or supernatural, without annihilating what its terms stand for. “Socrates is a human”, for instance, can only be falsified by annihilating Socrates, and so it is a necessary truth. These considerations provide an ample theoretical basis for a thorough examination of Buridan’s modal logic. This is what the thesis culminates with. In the final chapter, I set forth some novel and surprising findings, chief of which is this: Buridan’s modal syntax and semantics are nothing like Kripke’s—and indeed are incompatible with them. This has significant implications not only for modal logic and metaphysics, but for how we think about medieval logic and philosophy more generally. Throughout the thesis, I advocate a methodology of emphasising the differences, rather than the similarities, between past and present thought. Buridan is wildly unlike what we’re used to, and we should let him speak for himself.
A Study of the Interactions among Zoroastrian, Jewish and Roman Legal Systems during the 7th and 8th Centuries CE Based on a Critical Edition of Īšō‛-boḵt’s Corpus Juris with Commentary and an English Translation
Keywords: Church of the East
Comparative History of Law
Īšō‘-boḵt
Middle Persian
Sasanian legal system
Syriac

This project is a comprehensive study of a Syriac legal text of the late seventh century CE of the literary heritage of the Church of the East. The text is known as Īšō‘-boḵt Corpus Juris (ICJ) after its author. In this regard, this dissertation consists of two main parts: 1) a study of legal tradition in the Church of the East, 2) an edition and a translation of ICJ followed by a commentary. The first part is composed of two sections. It begins with a study of the legal tradition in the Church of the East from its advent in the late fifth century with figures such as Barṣauma, Mār Acacius and Mār Abā down to the end of the seventh century and Ḥenān-Išo‘ I, the last influential individual in the tradition prior to Īšō‘-boḵt. The main purpose of this study is to understand ICJ against the backdrop of the rich tradition to which it belongs. The second section of the first part is an analysis of ICJ itself. The study tries to locate the text at the intersection of the aforementioned legal traditions of Sasanian and post-Sasanian Zoroastrian, Jewish and Roman legal cultures. However, these legal cultures did not evenly distribute their traces on every section of ICJ. The Jewish and Roman influences are more recognizable in the first four chapters before they gradually fade out while parallels to the Zoroastrian legal system become numerous in the last two chapters. For the second part of this thesis, this study provides a critical edition of ICJ based on the Vatican manuscript and Abdišō‘ collection of laws with an English translation facing the edition. This edition and translation are accompanied by commentary discussing details of almost every passage of the text. The final part of the thesis is the appendices including translations of three Syriac texts and one Middle Persian text which are of crucial importance for understanding ICJ.
A Qualitative Examination of the Impacts of Police Practices on Racialized and Marginalized Young People in Toronto
Keywords: Legitimacy
Policing
Urban Inequality
Youth Justice

Canada enjoys an international reputation for tolerance, diversity, and inclusivity. However, a closer examination reveals Canada’s long-standing history of systemic racism, including in its public-sectors organizations and, most notably, the criminal justice system. In particular, Black people are among the primary recipients of disparate treatments at the hands of the police. However, while these issues are well-studied in the United States and United Kingdom, there remains a lack of Canadian scholarship examining the intersections of race and the criminal justice system. My dissertation seeks to better inform the discourse around these issues through an examination of the lived experiences of young people in Toronto, Ontario with policing, violence, and community safety. Drawing on 42 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with young people, ages 16-29, my study explores how aggressive, order-maintenance policing, economic marginalization, and geographic segregation have impacted young people’s perceptions of the police, the criminal justice system, and Canadian society. In doing so, I engage with dominant theoretical perspectives related to urban policing, including procedural justice and legitimacy, subcultural violence, legal cynicism, and social disorganization. My findings explore several important themes, including the contours of long-standing rivalries between non-gang youth who reside lower-income communities or ‘opp blocks’ (Chapter 2); the salience of anti-snitching discourses among young people and the relationship between perceptions of police legitimacy and efficacy and willingness to comply with police investigations (Chapter 3); and the collective impacts of police practices through a comparison between Black and white youths, including the role of direct and vicarious contacts in shaping perceptions of the police (Chapter 4). Taken together, my findings demonstrate the pervasive and wide-spread impacts of proactive policing practices that have disproportionately targeted Black youths and Black communities, including diminished perceptions of the police, reduced social and spatial mobility, and involvement various self-help behaviours, including private violence. I conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of my findings, which are particularly salient as Toronto continues to face mounting levels of youth violence, racialized poverty, and spatial segregation.
Computational Approaches to D. rerio Retinal Organogenesis
Keywords: Bayesian statistics
circumferential marginal zone
nested sampling
retinal progenitors
stem cells
zebrafish

Increasing integration of statistical and computational techniques into the analysis of cell and molecular biological data has created opportunities for explaining organogenic phenomena by numerical analysis. This thesis first examines the suitability of the most developed of these explanations for the development of the \textit{D. rerio} eye, the stochastic mitotic mode explanation (SMME) for retinal progenitor cell (RPC) function, and demonstrates that it is neither the best available explanation, nor theoretically sound. It is shown that a deterministic alternative model is an improved explanation for the data, and that the SMME cannot explain postembryonic RPC function. These studies support earlier hypotheses of a linear progression of competency phases over the hypothesized ``stochastic'' nature of RPC lineage commitment. A Bayesian model comparison framework, relying centrally on the Galilean Monte Carlo nested sampling algorithm for estimation of model evidence and posterior parameter distributions, is subsequently elaborated as an improved method for testing models in organogenesis. The utility of this approach is proved by comparing models of \textit{D. rerio} RPC populations in the postembryonic Circumferential Marginal Zone (CMZ). The inferential framework is used to show that the activity of CMZ RPCs in the postembryonic period is best characterised by a decaying cell cycle rate, with similar activity across morphological axes, despite asymmetrical population dynamics. Changes to RPC lineage commitment over this time suggest an explanation for the changing photoreceptor mosaic. These studies establish that CMZ RPC behaviours change over time, whose postembryonic function is not adequately described as a recapitulation of an embryonic program. Finally, the \textit{D. rerio} mutant \textit{rys} is shown to arise from a lesion in the npat locus, and the apparently paradoxically enlarged CMZ RPC population observed in these animals is demonstrated to arise from a failure of these cells to specify and exit the proliferative niche, and not from a proliferative defect. Nested sampling is used to show that unique populations of nucleosome positions in \textit{rys} mutants and sibling arise from separate causal processes. A mechanism for these observations involving simultaneous changes to the subunit composition of the nucleosome pool, and loss of positioning control, is suggested.
Parallel Architecture Exploration for Data-intensive Applications
Keywords: architectural exploration
data-intensive applications
FPGA
parallel architectures
Reconfigurable logic
system simulation

The work presented in this thesis focuses on the exploration of alternative architectures and computer paradigms for data-intensive applications. Our goal is to design and build a scalable and low-power solution to the emerging high-volume, low locality problem. Instead of parting from an existent computer architecture or trying to adapt and accelerate an existing implementation, our approach is to extract the essential requirements of data-intensive applications to turn them into easy to scale building blocks that can make better use of new,highly parallelizable technologies. This work is divided into two main components. First, Compass, an architecture-agnostic simulation framework. Compass allows the modeling of the functions performed by a data-intensive application without the need of defining an underlying architecture. We focus on a specific type of data-intensive application: the in-memory store, due to the challenges and possibilities it presents. The second component of the research is Prismatic, a hardware architecture for data-intensive applications. To test Prismatic, we create a key-value in-memory store based on the results we obtained from Compass. In this store, small modules perform individual tasks to attend a request from a client. When new data arrives, these modules try to hold the necessary resources in the system, and perform their function to then pass the output to the modules in the following stage. We implement Prismatic in an FPGA board using the relatively new High Bandwidth Memory, which offers 32 independent memory channels. Prismatic is able to attend requests from remote clients through TCP/IP. Our proof-of-concept in-memory store is compatible with the Memcached binary protocol, so both clients and benchmark tools that support this protocol can interact with our system.
Pedagogies of Be[Ing], Be[Longing] and Be[Coming]: Social Justice and Peacebuilding in the English Curriculum of a Marginalized Colombian Public High School
Keywords: Colombia
Decolonization
English Language Teaching
Ethnography
Peace Education
Social Justice

Colombia has experienced over five decades of political unrest and extreme violence. This has caused suffering not only for those involved in the armed conflict, but for marginalized populations in general, and specifically for disadvantaged students in public schools. Although the education system has required that issues of peace, conflict resolution, citizenship and social justice be addressed in history and social studies classes, this has not been the case for English classes. In fact, English language teaching has mainly focused on linguistic aspects of the language through content that is sometimes irrelevant to the most vulnerable communities. Starting with a personal onto-epistemological paradigm as a point of entry, this critical ethnographic case study considers how lived social justice and peacebuilding curriculum (SJPBC) occurs in three English classrooms, and how this helps high school students to learn English communication skills that allow them to discuss issues of social justice, as well as to help resolve problems that are relevant for their communities. From May to December 2018, fieldwork was carried out in a public high school, in Bogotá, Colombia with three English teachers and students from Grades 6 to 11. Data collected included teacher interviews, student focus groups, field observations, and artifacts which were used content and theme analysis as interpreted through the lens of grounded theory. Findings revealed four major theoretical ideas related to 1) how teachers create a social justice-inspired curriculum that guides students to learn English, 2) how this curriculum reflects the students’ and teachers’ sense of community and, 3) how selected classroom activities raised social awareness towards a more humanizing pedagogy for English, and 4), how to create a novel research-based model for teaching English that resonates with the students’ needs, expectations, and dreams for their future . Ultimately, in this project I juxtapose the teachers’ classroom pedagogy with the students' lived experiences. Research and pedagogical implications are provided to shed light on the future of English language teaching, especially in marginalized countries such as Colombia.