VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Identifying Potential Factors Regulating the Fear Extinction Switch in Mice
Keywords: amygdala
circuit maturation
early life stress
extinction
fear conditioning
prefrontal cortex

Anatomical, synaptic and behavioural data suggest that prefrontal cortex (PFC)-amygdala synaptic strengthening coincides with changes in behaviour dependent on this circuit, such as fear extinction, in early life. Still, very little is known about how circuit maturation affects the maturation of behaviour, or which factors may interfere with this ontogeny. This thesis investigates the effects of three early life stress paradigms (maternal separation, limited bedding and unpredictable postnatal stress), three bedding materials (1/8” corncob, 1/4” corncob and 1/4” cellulose), and three different strains of mice (C57BLK/6J, C57BLK/6Tac, and 129S1/SvlmJ x C57BLK/6J or hybrids) on the fear extinction switch in mice. Although we failed to see any meaningful effects with the ELS studies, we report altered fear extinction trajectories across bedding materials and strains of mice. In fact, unlike cellulose bedding, corncob results in a clear extinction switch in mice between postnatal day (P) 16 and P30. We also found that C57BLK/6Tac and hybrid (JAX) mice likely transition to the adult extinction system by P21, while C57BLK/6J mice demonstrate the switch by P25. Taken together, our experiments identify important variables to consider when designing follow-up models of stress or enrichment when investigating the extinction switch in mice.
The Role of Adenomatous Polyposis Coli in Slit2/Robo1 Signaling and Actin Remodeling
Keywords: Actin
APC
Monocyte
Robo
Signaling
Slit

A hallmark of many pathogenic diseases is localized inflammation and influx of leukocytes. The neuronal guidance cue, Slit2, acting through receptor, Robo1, constitute a signaling pathway which has inhibitory effects on leukocyte chemotaxis and adhesion by regulating Rho family GTPase activity. To further elucidate the Slit2/Robo1 signaling pathway, a BioID assay was performed and the protein adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) was found to differentially associate with Robo1 in the presence/absence of Slit2. APC regulates Rho family GTPase activity and in cellular functions such as migration, adhesion, and spreading. We found that APC knockdown inhibited monocyte chemotaxis and adhesion on endothelial cells to the same extent as control monocytes exposed to Slit2. Additionally, APC overexpression in COS-7 cells reversed inhibitory effects of Slit2 on cell spreading. suggesting that APC functions downstream of Slit2/Robo1 signaling, and may promote a vital first step in Slit2/Robo1-induced modulation of actin remodeling.
Deep Learning Aided Runtime Opcode Based Malware Detection
Keywords: Deep Learning
Malware Detection
Runtime Opcodes

Thousands of new malware codes are developed every day. Signature-based methods, which are employed by common malware detectors, are susceptible to code obfuscation and novel malware. In this paper, we present an alternative method for malware detection which makes use of assembly opcode sequences or frequencies obtained during runtime. First, for sequential opcode data, we utilize natural language processing and deep learning techniques to facilitate the extraction of deeper behavioral features. Due to these features, this method can be impervious to code obfuscation and effective against novel malware. Finally, these features are fed to various machine learning algorithms for classification. The experiments on 26027 samples that were conducted demonstrated high MCC (Matthew Correlation Coe ficient) scores are achievable with this approach. Secondly, for the frequency dataset, we conduct another experiment that indicates the runtime opcode approach can achieve %70 accuracy for 16 malware labels on 59424 samples. ii
An Investigation of Cross-frequency Interactions in a Gas Turbine Combustor at Flight-relevant Conditions
Keywords: Combustion
Cross-frequency interactions
Experimental
Gas turbines
Modal decompositions
Thermoacoustics

This thesis presents the analysis of experimental thermoacoustic data obtained from experiments on an optically accessible aeronautical gas turbine combustor operating at elevated pressures to mimic flight-relevant conditions. High-speed optical diagnostics, including chemiluminescence of several species, laser Mie scattering and stereoscopic particle image velocimetry, were used to characterize the heat release rate, fuel spray and velocity fields respectively. Simultaneous dynamic pressure measurements also were obtained. Spectral analysis and mode isolation via spectral proper orthogonal decomposition indicated potential cross-frequency interactions between the fundamental acoustic frequency and its first harmonic observed in the heat release, velocity and fuel spray oscillations. Synchronization analysis was conducted using three different metrics for comparison. The analysis revealed that the cross-frequency interactions are related to the intermittency detected in the pressure fluctuations, where the pressure exhibited bursts of oscillations dominated by the fundamental frequency interspersed with incoherent intervals.
Comparing Apples to Apples: Measuring Mental Representations with Linked and Complete Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Keywords: Categorization
Experimental design
Markov chain Monte Carlo
Mental representation

Previously, research exploring mental representations of categories has faced two challenges: 1) Preselection of stimuli by the experimenter limited full exploration of the mental representation. 2) No task was applicable across age ranges to assess a developmental trend. Here, we utilized a novel methodology in the categorization literature, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) with people. Stimuli were directly sampled from the participant’s mental representations through a series of two-alternative forced-choice questions. In our first experiment, we replicated Sanborn, Griffiths, and Shiffrin’s (2010) findings on fruit categories where participants completed full Markov chains. In our second experiment, chains were completed by linking multiple participants to reduce the number of questions asked to each person. Stimuli produced were reflective of our intuitive representation regardless of the number of participants in a chain and were similar between Experiment 1 and 2. Our results highlighted MCMC’s potential to explore the developmental trend in categorization.
An Autoethnography: A Research into my Educational Journey of Self Discovery and Coming to Know through the Lens of African Indigenous Knowledge
Keywords: African Ancestors
African Cultural Worldview
African Culture
Spirituality Science
African History (African OurStory)
African Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Africans/Blacks

This is an autoethnographic study that examines the personal, professional and scholarly aspects of my learning, unlearning and relearning, with the goal to find my African Indigenous cultural roots. Beginning this study as a colonized African woman, I achieved this goal by considering critically the ongoing challenges of how colonization, through western education inflicts spiritual and mental injury upon African/Black people through imposing its alien systems; while systematically endeavouring to annihilate and extinguish any traces of Indigenous education, knowledge and collective ancestral memory. Working with a theoretical framework of African Indigenous Knowledge, I articulate some of the knowledge gained from this autoethnographic research, which was by way of undergoing the most challenging process of decolonizing the self. Through the result of this process, I found my spiritual core – my centre - within my African Indigenous cultural roots, which now grounds/intertwines my personal, professional and scholarly practice, thus creating a holistic being.
Peer Coaches’ Perceptions: Can Coaches Support Teachers in Enacting Transformative Classroom Practice?
Keywords: Equity
Inclusive Education
Instructional Coaching
Peer Coach
School Reform Intiative
Transformative Classroom Practices

The need for educational practices to be responsive to Ontario’s diverse student population is urgent. As such, many Ontario school districts look to peer coaches, to initiate school reform aimed at inclusive pedagogy. This study explored peer coaches’ perspectives on how their relationship with educators can transform classroom practices. Open-ended interviews and a focus group session were conducted. Two main themes emerged. First, when teachers worked with peer coaches to develop an inquiry question linked to a teaching challenge, the coaches tended to embrace a “learning by doing” stance encouraging teachers to explore various strategies to become more inclusive while addressing gaps in student achievement. Second, it appears that a peer coach’s open stance and willingness to co-construct the goals of this type of teacher learning provide a strong foundation for growth and change. This qualitative thesis contributes to our understanding of the role of peer coaches in supporting inclusive teaching practices.
Caring on the 'Inside': Tales of a Critical Educator in a (More) Punitive Space
Keywords: carceral education
caring pedagogy
criminal justice system
formal education
prison education
warm demander

As a secondary-level educator with experiences in formal educational including mainstream, alternative, and programs in male correctional facilities, my learners seem to thrive because they feel cared-for. Ironically, I was never quite sure about what it means to be a caring educator. Through this narrative inquiry, I explore my experience teaching within two maximum security jails, in a metropolitan area of Canada. I explore and reflect on my pedagogical strategies and interactions to argue that caring teaching cannot fully interrupt/counteract the violence imposed by carceral systems but are capable of impacting individuals positively. This study, grounded in the narrative of teaching inside, considers how the procedures/expectations of jails work for and against caring pedagogies. I consider how it feels to teach within, how these learners identify me as a caring educator, and whether the teacher can sustain a caring pedagogy in a criminal justice system that enacts enduring harm.
Aortic Luminal Remodeling After Intravascular Stent Therapy for Coarctation: Intermediate Results
Keywords: coarctation
coarctation of the aorta
congenital heart defect
imaging
remodelling

It is perceived that repaired aortic coarctation no longer requires surveillance. Furthermore, it is unknown what happens to the aorta post-stent therapy. To understand whether and how the aorta remodels, we analyzed paired serial imaging of patients post-stent therapy against baseline data. A total of 135 patients underwent coarctation stenting. Mean follow-up time was 3.98 years, where 5% of patients underwent re-intervention due to complications, 3% developed aneurysms and 3% had stent fractures. There was significant reduction in aortic diameter immediately proximal to the left carotid artery, left subclavian artery, and the aorta distal to the stenosis (p
Dosimetrist Workload Management Framework for Radiation Therapy Pre-treatment Operations
Keywords: Assignment Problem
Operations Research
Optimization
Process Flexibility
Radiation Therapy
Workload Management

Dosimetrists are responsible for treatment plan formulation in radiation therapy. Management of dosimetrist workload should balance utilization and encourage fulfillment of plan deadlines. In this work we develop a methodology to manage dosimetrist workload using a mixed-integer linear program which considers partial future patient demand, dosimetrist skillsets, and capacity constraints. Dosimetrists’ workload and schedule are represented by state variables which incorporate plan’s planning time, deadline, and dosimetrists’ autonomy. We show a greater utilization balance between dosimetrists and decreased overtime compared to historical policies using a simulation designed with data from Odette Cancer Center in Toronto, Ontario. Finally, we introduce and evaluate methods to increase assignment flexibility through selective dosimetrist training and relaxation of dosimetrist assignment constraints.
Embodied Emissions in Rail Infrastructure: A Critical Study
Keywords: Embodied Emissions
Excavated Station
Green House Gas
Infrastructure
Rail

This study investigates the state of knowledge in quantifying the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in rail infrastructure and develops a novel underspecified model to evaluate the effect of external design factors on the embodied construction materials of an excavated rail station infrastructure. Starting with a critical literature review that identified 22-publications, containing 57 rail infrastructure case studies, the study examines the GHG impact per kilometre of infrastructure reported across the case studies and compares the boundaries, functional units, methods, and data used. This study presents the need for standardization in embodied emissions reporting and shows that different external factors (which are water table, soil type, floor height, number of train cars, station length and building codes) uniquely influence the embodied rail infrastructure construction materials. The study provides a flexible planning level method for engineers, urban planners, and policy makers to preliminarily analyze embodied emissions associated with rail station infrastructure.
Measuring the Extended Phenotype using a Dimensional Model of Personality in Bipolar and Gambling Disorder
Keywords: Bipolar Disorder
Gambling Disorder
Impulsivity
Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5)

The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) was used to determine whether pathological personality domains can discriminate between gambling disorder (GD) participants and community controls, and also bipolar disorder (BD) participants and community controls, and if so, which of the PID-5 domains best distinguish between the groups. Understanding personality traits associated with impulsivity may assist with diagnostic accuracy and contribute to the understanding of the etiology of the disorders. GD participants, BD participants and community controls completed the PID-5 questionnaire on an online platform. The findings revealed significant group differences on all PID-5 domains, except Antagonism. At the domain level, Disinhibition best discriminated between the diagnostic and control groups for both GD and BD. The facets Impulsivity and Distractibility contributed the most to the discrimination between groups, for GD and BD participants respectively. The results emphasize the potential clinical utility of the PID-5 in distinguishing between normative and maladaptive impulsive behaviours.
The Effect of Empagliflozin on Kidney Injury Markers in Subjects with Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease: A Sub-analysis of the EMPA-HEART CardioLink-6 Trial
Keywords: Biomarkers
Diabetic kidney disease
Sodium glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors
Type 2 Diabetes

Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors confer profound cardiorenal protection in type 2 diabetes (T2D). To better define potential mechanisms that underlie the renal benefits of SGLT2 inhibition, we assessed changes in various urinary biomarkers, sodium and glucose excretion, in a prespecified sub-analysis of the EMPA-HEART CardioLink-6 trial. In a cohort of patients with T2D at relatively low risk for diabetic kidney disease progression, empagliflozin treatment for six months reduced urinary kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1) excretion by 34% (p=0.03). No significant differences were observed with the other renal biomarkers. The reduction in KIM-1, in the absence of changes in albuminuria, raises the possibility that SGLT2 inhibitors act primarily to protect the proximal tubule, thus delaying the progression of diabetic kidney disease. Importantly, empagliflozin treatment did not significantly increase sodium excretion, suggesting that SGLT2 inhibitor-induced plasma volume reduction is a consequence of osmotic (glucose) diuresis rather than natriuresis.
Spiralling Back To The Spark: A Spiritual Journey Towards Authentic Creativity
Keywords: Authenticity
Creativity
Holistic Education
Personal Development
Spiritual Education
Teacher Development

Grounded in the philosophical assumptions associated with holistic education and transformative teacher development, this narrative inquiry is a collaborative self-study that explores how spiritual practices contribute to the creative process through the primary research question; How do I connect with my soul through spiritual practices? Core themes emerging from this study include Intention, Identity, Intuition, Integration, Paradox, Voice, Embodied Teaching, Social Justice, and Death/Pain as Teacher. Its findings include the inextricably entangled nature of soul, authenticity, and creativity and demonstrates the imperative role spiritual practices play in spiralling back along the path through and beyond the layers we’ve built up, made up of false identities, fear, and perfectionism towards our own true essence—our souls in creating a more loving and unified way forward for all living things both inside and outside of the classroom.
Identifying the Effects of Different Juvenile Stress Protocols on Adult Fear and Anxiety-like Behaviours in C57BL/6J Mice
Keywords: Amygdala
Anxiety
Fear extinction
Medial prefrontal cortex
Sensitive period
Stress

Both chronic1–3 and sub-chronic4,5 stress experienced in early life are associated with the development of psychopathologies such as anxiety and greater adulthood stress susceptibility, along with atypical medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)-amygdala circuitry maturation6–8. mPFC-amygdala circuitry, which mediates anxiety-like behaviours9,10, undergoes significant developmental changes in juvenility, specifically11,12. Therefore, it is thought that juvenility might constitute a period of neurodevelopmental sensitivity to the effects of stress for behaviours dependent on mPFC-amygdala circuitry. To test this theory, our study targeted the precise ages in juvenility that are associated with significant mPFC-amygdala circuit maturation in C57BL/6J mice with both chronic and sub-chronic stress. However, we failed to detect a clear effect of stress on anxiety-like behaviour, fear learning and extinction, and susceptibility to stress when the mice were tested in adulthood. These results do not support juvenility as a sensitive period to the effects of stress for behaviours mediated by mPFC-amygdala circuitry.
Leveraging Proposals and Shape Reconstruction for Monocular 3D Object Detection and Object-centric Stereo Matching for 3D Object Detection
Keywords: 3D Object Detection
Autonomous Driving
Autonomous Vehicles
Scene Understanding

Safe autonomous driving requires reliable 3D object detection-the task of estimating 3D bounding boxes for objects of interest in the scene. This thesis introduces a monocular 3D object detector that accurately estimates the 3D position of objects by first generating 3D proposals, using a novel 2D bounding box prior, then refining them in a second stage. Depth information is further learned by jointly optimizing these predicted object positions and the task of point cloud reconstruction. A stereo 3D object detector is also introduced. Compared to previous methods, it only estimates disparities for pixels belonging to objects of interest, which mitigates point cloud artifacts seen in full scene depth maps and improves runtime speed. Moreover, a novel point cloud loss is presented to combat the issue that typical disparity loss functions insufficiently penalize far depths. Both detectors achieve state-of-the-art results on the KITTI dataset when compared to other camera-based methods.
Predicting Mutual Fund Redemptions with Collaborative Filtering
Keywords: collaborative filtering
deep learning
finance
machine learning
mutual funds
redemptions

In this thesis, various collaborative filtering (CF) approaches with latent variable models were investigated for predicting sparse, large mutual fund (MF) redemptions by advisors. CF with weighted matrix factorization (WMF) was shown to produce the highest precision and recall on the proprietary dataset provided by a financial institution (FI). Different advisor characteristics were tested for applicability in the CF framework. External data sources such as a stock market index and a short term interest rate were reviewed for potential extensions to the work presented. The work presented in this thesis provides a technique for the FI to predict large MF redemptions to potentially prepare more effective client sales interactions with advisors.
Antipsychotic Treatment-resistance in Schizophrenia: Subtypes, Treatment Response, and Long-term Outcome
Keywords: Clozapine
Schizophrenia
Treatment-Resistance

Background: Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia (TRS) is a sub-group of schizophrenia (20%-30%). Some patients present with no initial response to non-clozapine compounds (TRS from the outset), while others develop it over time. Methods: We explore short-term response trajectories and long-term outcome (symptom severity, functioning, cognition, subjective well-being) among 120 clozapine-treated patients with standardized algorithm. Differences between TRS sub-types are identified. Results: In total, 78/120 patients present with TRS from the outset while 42/120 develop TRS, achieving remission rates of 65.4% and 85.7%, respectively. Significant time-illness group interactions (p
Feature Engineering and Machine Learning Methodologies using Customer Debit and Credit Transactions for Predicting Savings Account and Home Equity Line of Credit Acquisition
Keywords: feature engineering
financial services
gradient boosting
machine learning
xgboost

The objective of this thesis is to investigate feature engineering methodologies for customer credit and debit transaction data and evaluate their utility in developing machine learning models on the Apache Spark framework for two common marketing targets: savings account acquisition and home equity line of credit acquisition. The utility of the new features (predictor variables) is evaluated in comparison to the Bank’s previous marketing models, and in combination with an existing library of predictor variables aggregated from various databases. The results show that there is potential to both automate the process of creating features from transaction data using word embeddings, and to use them in combination with gradient boosted decision trees to increase model performance. However, the parameters, methods, and applications tested in this thesis are not exhaustive, and should serve as an example for further exploration.
Exploring the Relationship between Performance on a Series of Squat based Movement Tasks and Passive Range of Motion Capacity – Is Successful Performance a Valid Method of Ruling out Range of Motion Restrictions?
Keywords: Active Range of Motion
Movement Screens
Passive Range of Motion
Rule out
Squat

The squatting task is commonly employed as an expedient tool to evaluate the passive range of motion capacity of ankle dorsiflexion (DF-PROM) and hip flexion (HF-PROM). However, it is unclear if performance on this active task can be used to make inferences regarding the passive range of motion available at these joints. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between DF-PROM and HF-PROM, and performance on screens consisting of low demand squat derivatives, scored using different grading criteria. Two hundred and sixty-six collegiate athletes participated in this investigation. Strong statistical evidence (p