VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Essays in Asset Pricing
Keywords: Institutions
Investing skill
Learning
Parameter uncertainty
Prudency
Volatility

In this thesis I study the relationship between investor behavior and asset pricing from two aspects: First, I examine how investors' learning about a firm's stock price in the presence of noisy information impacts the firm's stock return volatility. Second, my co-authors and I investigate how institutional investors vary in the type and extent of skill they exhibit based on prudency requirements and active management. In the first chapter, I examine the relationship between investor learning and firm volatility. Price return volatility is excessive relative to fundamentals (Shiller 1981) and exhibits persistence (Engle 1982). However, empirical research has not focused on providing an explanation that simultaneously addresses both stylized facts. I use a simple rational learning model to predict that the level of return volatility is positively related to the level and uncertainty of cash flow growth rates, and that the dynamics of return volatility reflect the dynamics of investors' uncertainty about cash flow growth rates. Proxying for growth rate variables using analyst earnings forecasts, I show that the data support model predictions. In the second chapter, my co-authors, Mikhail Simutin and Kent Womack, and I examine the relationship between prudency requirements, active management, and the assessment of institutional skill. We hypothesize that the type of skill an institution exhibits depends on how constrained it is by prudency requirements, while the extent of its skill is related to how actively it is managed. We conjecture that less constrained institutions such as hedge funds exhibit skill by trading on near-term information, whereas more constrained institutions such as bank trusts exhibit skill by generating abnormal returns in bad states of the economy. The results from our analysis offer evidence supporting these hypotheses. We employ active share and holdings churn as competing measures of active management and, after controlling for prudency, we find that high active share level is more indicative of skill based trading, whereas high churn level is more consistent with momentum based trading.
Student Engagement: A Qualitative Study Of Extracurricular Activities
Keywords: community building
extracurricular activities
leadership
motivation
relationships
student engagement

This study explores how students engaged with sports and citizenship clubs. Data was generated through semi-structured interviews with students, teachers and the principal, and observations of four extra-curricular clubs. The data revealed that clubs play important roles in students’ educational lives. The study found that students were empowered in all the clubs’ activities and decision-making, and shared and learned from each other’s knowledge and strengths. It also revealed that club leaders had a significant impact on student engagement within the clubs and the entire school. Students engaged in dialogue, shared ideas, and learned from each other. Unlike other studies in the area of extracurricular activities (ECA), this study illustrates just how the interactions of students in the ECA generate community building within the clubs and the entire school. This research does so by featuring students’ own points of view about the support, challenges, and impact of ECA.
Learning in a Militarized Context: Exploring Afghan Women’s Experiences of Higher Education in ‘Post-Conflict’ Afghanistan
Keywords: Afghanistan
Colonialism
Educational policies
Gender
Higher education
Patriarchy

This study examines the repercussions of the war on terror and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan, on the daily (gendered) life experiences of Afghan women. I argue that such wars are markers of the shifts in global capitalist accumulation processes, from exporting ‘goods’ to the Global South, to now exporting capitalism. Specifically, the war on terror is the latest manifestation of monopoly finance capitalism, which leverages wars and insecurity in the Global South as lucrative sites for accumulating profits and (re)investments. Democratic ideals provide a ‘moral’ justification for mass militarism, human rights violations, torture and erosion of existing social and economic inequalities. Notions of freedom, equality or classlessness, which are important objectives of formal democracy, as well, colonialist and racist ideologies of Others have become effective mechanisms for capitalism to sustain and reproduce capitalist class relations. Education is an important site for socializing citizens toward accepting and participating as human capital in monopoly finance capitalism. Through the World Bank, higher education reforms in Afghanistan are endorsing neoliberal policies, even as these policies continue to contradict and exacerbate existing inequalities. Specifically, female education has become a key strategy in continued militarization and occupation in the country. In this study, I examine the contradictory ways in which female university students navigate through an increasingly militarized, violent and patriarchal terrain. Guided by a transnational feminist approach and a dialectical historical materialist framework, 19 female university students from 5 public and private universities were interviewed in Afghanistan. Findings suggest that the university is a contradictory site where participants mobilize new and old strategies for addressing gendered constraints in their lives, while simultaneously creating new ones. The implications of these findings suggest a need for extensive institutional and ideological support for women’s learning, and also improving home-school connections. The participants’ desire to learn and their concerns over increasing violence and insecurity, reveal the militarized nature of their learning, as well, the possibility for critical and transformative learning against imperialism, patriarchy and class relations.
Robust and Energy Efficient Service Provider Networks
Keywords: Communication Networks
Energy Efficiency
Robustness

This thesis focuses on the energy efficiency of service provider networks. It examines methodologies for reducing the energy consumption as well as greening the operation of the network through the integration of renewable energy systems. It studies the impact of these techniques on network performance and robustness. In order to reduce energy consumption we focus on the problem of energy-aware network planning and traffic engineering. Utilizing the network criticality metric, from network science, and an optimization formulation we quantify the energy-robustness trade-off of green traffic flow assignments. We also develop a robust, dynamic lightpath assignment algorithm, which provides energy savings at low loads and an order of magnitude better blocking performance at high loads. We then examine the challenge of integrating renewable energy in core networks to minimize cost and emissions. We show that renewable energy systems can compromise network robustness and increase disruptions in the network because usage must 'follow the sun'. We study the integration of energy storage systems to mitigate these concerns and quantify the potential savings in energy and cost. We develop a distributed, energy management algorithm to make energy storage charging/discharging decisions as well as electricity purchases for a service provider. Finally we examine the problem of content caching in service provider networks. We study the energy consumption of a caching scheme designed for performance and propose energy-aware modifications. We conclude by studying the impact of over-the-top video-on-demand services like Youtube and Netflix on service provider access networks and propose methods to reduce energy consumption and network congestion.
English as the International Language of Science: A Case Study of Mexican Scientists' Writing for Publication
Keywords: English as a lingua franca
English for research publication purposes
ESL/EFL
scholarly writing
scientific knowledge production
writing for publication

Global dissemination of scientific findings is imperative for scientific advancement. However, the domination of English as an international language of science (EILS) has placed a potentially inequitable burden on multilingual periphery scholars attempting to disseminate their research findings in indexed scientific journals. While such scholars have been the focus of much recent research into this English for research publication purposes (ERPP), little empirical research has taken place in Latin America. This instrumental case study examines the experiences of Mexican scientists via an academic writing for publication course (AWC) delivered in Canada and Mexico between 2011 and 2013. This study attempts to better understand scientists’ perspectives on the growing expectations of publishing their research in English, their challenges to achieving publication of research articles in indexed scientific journals, and their perceptions of the efficacy of an AWC at addressing these challenges. Rich, triangulated survey and interview data point to a grudging acceptance of the growing expectations for publishing in English as well as a widespread perception among Mexican scientists of bias against them at international scientific journals. Further findings include a comprehensive list of emerging (PhD student) and established (faculty) scientists’ ERPP challenges as well as improved scholar confidence following an intensive AWC. Critical interpretation of findings leads to discussion of participant perceptions of EILS and ERPP within a market of linguistic exchange where asymmetrical power relations and pervasive ideologies of language underscore significant barriers to multilingual scholars achieving a fuller connection to their desired scientific discourse communities. Implications stemming from the study findings include critical, pragmatic suggestions for those involved in the support, production, revision, and adjudication of scientific writing for publication at Mexico University (pseudonym) as well as suggestions for future research avenues into the complex role(s) of English and ERPP instruction in the global production of scientific knowledge.
Advanced Proton Conducting Polymer Electrolytes for Electrochemical Capacitors
Keywords: energy storage
flexible devices
heteropolyacids
polymer electrolytes
supercapacitors

Research on solid electrochemical energy storage devices aims to provide high performance, low cost, and safe operation solutions for emerging applications from flexible consumer electronics to microelectronics. Polymer electrolytes, minimizing device sealing and liquid electrolyte leakage, are key enablers for these next-generation technologies. In this thesis, a novel proton-conducing polymer electrolyte system has been developed using heteropolyacids (HPAs) and polyvinyl alcohol for electrochemical capacitors. A thorough understanding of proton conduction mechanisms of HPAs together with the interactions among HPAs, additives, and polymer framework has been developed. Structure and chemical bonding of the electrolytes have been studied extensively to identify and elucidate key attributes affecting the electrolyte properties. Numerical models describing the proton conduction mechanism have been applied to differentiate those attributes. The performance optimization of the polymer electrolytes through additives, polymer structural modifications, and synthesis of alternative HPAs has achieved several important milestones, including: (a) high proton mobility and proton density; (b) good ion accessibility at electrode/electrolyte interface; (c) wide electrochemical stability window; and (d) good environmental stability. Specifically, high proton mobility has been addressed by cross-linking the polymer framework to improve the water storage capability at normal-to-high humidity conditions (e.g. 50-80% RH) as well as by incorporating nano-fillers to enhance the water retention at normal humidity levels (e.g. 30-60% RH). High proton density has been reached by utilizing additional proton donors (i.e. acidic plasticizers) and by developing different HPAs. Good ion accessibility has been achieved through addition of plasticizers. Electrochemical stability window of the electrolyte system has also been investigated and expanded by utilizing HPAs with different heteroatoms. The optimized polymer electrolyte demonstrated even higher proton conductivity than pure HPAs and the enabled electrochemical capacitors have demonstrated an exceptionally high rate capability of 50 Vs-1 in cyclic voltammograms and a 10 ms time constant in impedance analyses.
The Making and Unmaking of Elite Athletes: The Body Informed Transition out of Sport
Keywords: Body Studies
Elite Athletics
Identity
Social Psychology
Transitions

While the athletic body is frequently conceptualized and gazed upon as a valourized and productive machine, there is often little consideration given to the fleshy sports body, or the body as a material representation of its temporal immersion in a sports context. Considering the body as a fabric woven deeply in/through sport allows for greater exploration into how one’s athletic corporeality is both formed by, and concurrently forms, the social fabric of the sports environment (Pink, 2011). Conceptualizing the body in this manner is particularly relevant when examining the retirement transition from elite sport, wherein athletes often have their social, psychological and corporeal history materially (re)written through the exiting process. Using sensory data gathered on the transition process of six retired elite sportspeople (Vannini, Waskul, Gottschalk, 2012), I discuss how the retirement body provides insight into the ways in which our physicality is attached to the athletic sense of self and how the breakdown of our material self challenges our epistemic roots. The un-weaving or unbecoming of one’s athletic self, which ensues during re-socialization processes, has the capacity to destabilize the existential foundations upon which individuals are built and challenge the core ideological underpinnings of contemporary elite sport.
Mating System Shifts and Transposable Element Evolution in Plants
Keywords: Genome size
Mating system
Transposable elements

Transposable elements (TEs) are mobile genetic elements that can self-replicate and insert elsewhere in the genome. This movement often comes with a fitness cost and yet TEs are tremendously common. They contribute more than 80% to the largest plant genomes, but are much less abundant in the smallest plant genomes. Combined, these observations raise the two central questions of this thesis. First, why are TEs so common, and the genomes so large, in some species but not others? Second, what prevents TEs from completely taking over and causing genomes to fail to produce functional individual organisms? In this thesis, I have used population and comparative genomics approaches on whole genome data from closely related plant species and syntheisising literature reviews to examine some of the evolutionary causes and consequences of TE proliferation in plants. In particular, I have investigated the role of mating system shifts, from outcrossing to self-fertilization and from sexual to asexual reproduction, in driving variation in TE abundance and genome size. I used the reference genome of Capsella rubella as an outgroup to show that the higher TE abundance and larger genome size of the outcrossing Arabidopsis lyrata compared to selfing A. thaliana is due to TE driven expansion in the outcrosser rather than genome loss in the selfer. I investigated three Capsella species of contrasting mating system and found that the evolution of self-fertilization may have different effects on TE evolution on short and on long timescales. I applied a phylogenetic comparative approach and whole genome sequencing to demonstrate that sex and TEs cannot explain the variation in genome size in evening primroses (Oenothera). Using transcriptome data I showed that the chromosomal distribution (sex chromosomes vs. autosomes) of nuclear gene with organellar origin in Rumex hastatulus is not consistent with either co-adaptation or sexual conflict hypotheses. Finally, I showed that studying the proliferation of TEs offers insights to the cardinal problem of social evolution of what prevents selfish behaviour at lower levels from destroying functionality of the group. Overall, my thesis is a contribution to understanding the evolutionary causes and consequences of TE proliferation.
Impact of Design Expertise and Methodologies on the Usability of Printed Education Materials
Keywords: Design
Healthcare
Human Factors
Knowledge Translation
Printed Educational Materials
Usability

Printed Education Materials (PEMs) are a knowledge translation intervention for disseminating synthesized clinical evidence to end-users. Since end users may have little expertise or may have low numeracy or low levels of other relevant constructs, it is important that PEMS be usable and understandable. Including human factors design and evaluation strategies in general, and usability engineering methods in particular (i.e. iterative design focused on user needs, user testing, and heuristic evaluation) has the potential to enhance usability and user experience in PEMs and lead to increases in their effectiveness. Through a series of four studies and one systematic review, this thesis explores the effect of design expertise and human factors principles on the usability, user experience, and user preference of Printed Education Materials. The results show that including expertise from designers and human factors experts in the development of PEMs can increase user-rated usability scores and user preferences, and can enhance the user experience when using these PEMs. The main contributions of this work include the use of usability testing and heuristic evaluation as new methods for the evaluation of PEMs as well as the use of both methods to triangulate on the most critical issues. This work has also presented new evidence on the effectiveness of PEMs targeted to women's cancers and the beneficial impact of human factors and user experience expertise on PEM usability and user experience. Finally, the observation that not all designers/designs are created equally and these differences can have large impacts on usability and user experience ratings from both users and experts has implications for the way PEMs are currently evaluated.
Broad-spectrum Solution-processed Photovoltaics
Keywords: infrared
photovoltaics
quantum dot
solar

High global demand for energy coupled with dwindling fossil fuel supply has driven the development of sustainable energy sources such as solar photovoltaics. Emerging solar technologies aim for low-cost, solution-processable materials which would allow wide deployment. Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) are such a materials system which exhibits the ability to absorb across the entire solar spectrum, including in the infrared where many technologies cannot harvest photons. However, due to their nanocrystalline nature, CQDs are susceptible to surface-associated electronic traps which greatly inhibit performance. In this thesis, surface engineering of CQDs is presented through a combined ligand approach which improves the passivation of surface trap states. A metal halide treatment is found to passivate quantum dot surfaces in solution, while bifunctional organic ligands produce a dense film in solid state. This approach reduced midgap trap states fivefold compared with conventional passivation strategies and led to solar cells with a record certified 7.0% power conversion efficiency. The effect of this process on the electronic structure is studied through photoelectron spectroscopy. It is found that while the halide provides deep trap passivation, the nature of the metal cation on the CQD surface affects the density of band tail states. This effect is explored further through a wide survey of materials, and it is found that the coordination ability of the metal cation is responsible for the suppression of shallow traps. With this understanding of CQD surface passivation, broad spectral usage is then explored through a study of visible-absorbing organolead halide perovskite materials as well as narrow-bandgap CQD solar cells. Control over growth conditions and modification of electrode interfaces resulted in efficient perovskite devices with effective usages of visible photons. For infrared-absorbing CQDs, it is found that, in addition to providing surface trap passivation, ligands must be used to prevent nanocrystal fusion that leads to introduction of band tail states. The most efficient solution-processed infrared solar cells yet reported are achieved through this approach, opening a path towards low-cost photovoltaics with high spectral usage.
Notch Regulation in Breast Cancer
Keywords: Breast Cancer
Cellular stress
MAPK
Notch
TRB3
USP9x

Breast cancer affects thousands of Canadian women every year, and ranks as the second most common cause of cancer death. Our group has previously shown that patients whose breast cancers abnormally express genes of the Notch family have poor survival rates. In addition, abnormalities in Notch are most common in the aggressive triple negative (TN) subtype of breast cancer for which there is currently no effective treatment. In order to understand what drives Notch activation in TN breast cancer cells, a novel Notch reporter system was developed and optimized for high throughput screens (HTS). Using the Notch reporter system, a chemical kinase inhibitor screen identified the MAPK-ERK signaling pathway as a predominant regulator of Notch ligand (JAG1) expression and Notch activation. Consistent with this, a kinome siRNA screen identified the pseudokinase Tribbles homolog 3 (TRB3), a known regulator of MAPK-ERK, among the most significant hits. We demonstrated that TRB3 is a master regulator of Notch through the MAPK-ERK and TGFβ pathways. Supporting our findings, in vitro and in vivo studies showed that TRB3 inhibition decreases breast cancer cell proliferation in a JAG1-dependant fashion and reduces the growth of MDA MB231 TN breast cancer xenografts. To understand how TRB3 is regulated, a proteomic screen of TRB3-associated cellular complexes was performed and identified the deubiquitinase USP9x as a novel interacting protein for TRB3. We showed that TRB3 serves as a scaffold for USP9x that regulates JAG1 function through two mechanisms: (1) through TRB3 deubiquitination and stabilization and (2) through deubiquitination and activation of Mind Bomb 1 (MIB1), an E3 ligase required for JAG1 activity. We also demonstrated that USP9x is required for TRB3 and JAG1 up-regulation in response to cellular stress. Taken together, the work presented in this thesis, contributes to a better understanding of Notch regulation in breast cancer and identifies novel pathways that may be therapeutically targeted in TN disease.