VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Youth, Poker Facebook: Another Case of Candy Cigarettes?
Keywords: facebook
gambling
gaming
prevention
youth

A surge of unregulated gambling opportunities, referred to as social network gambling has emerged on social media platforms such as Facebook. This dissertation is a critical examination of social network gambling, more specifically, a virtual ethnographic case study, focusing on Zynga Poker (ZP). Through a two-phase qualitative research study, the aim was to: 1) examine the intentions of the game application and the influences of the ZP game design that youth are exposed to while playing; 2) explore the various perspectives of key stakeholders; and 3) investigate youths’ (aged 18–24 years) lived experiences of poker play on Facebook, to understand what motivates them to play, and how they perceive their participation. My study is rooted in self-determination theory (Deci Ryan, 1985), Goffman's frame analysis (1986), and the social networking theory of homophily (McPherson, Smith Cook, 2001). Data were collected through personally participating in ZP, and interviews conducted with 15 key industry stakeholders and 15 youth (aged 18-24). Results found that social game developers are designing and framing social network gambling games as a harmless form of entertainment, shielded from regulation that accompanies a legal distinction of gambling. Further, results indicate three motivation themes as to why youth play ZP: 1) a way to relax and escape boredom; 2) to connect socially; and 3) to satisfy their desire for competitive gameplay. Youth perceive that under certain circumstances, ZP is a form of lower-stakes gambling and a potential training ground to develop the skills and confidence to migrate over to real money gambling on professional sites. Based on the analysis, this dissertation presents a Public Health Framework and Spectrum Model of Social Network Gaming/Gambling that emphasize dissolution of the dualism that currently exists between gambling and gaming. The Spectrum Model focuses on six dimensions: money, competitiveness, training environment, temporality, chasing losses, and rituals. The model illustrates the transitory and fluid nature of social gambling gameplay at the individual level, ranging from healthy to problematic. This study provides new understandings and warnings as we move forward to comprehend the possible benefits and unintended consequences of these gambling opportunities. The findings have particular implications for the protection and prevention of gambling-related harms to vulnerable populations, such as youth.
Multi-band Microwave Antennas and Devices based on Generalized Negative-refractive-index Transmission Lines
Keywords: all-pass
antennas
electromagnetics
Metamaterials
microwave

Focused on the quad-band generalized negative-refractive-index transmission line (G-NRI-TL), this thesis presents a variety of novel printed G-NRI-TL multi-band microwave device and antenna prototypes. A dual-band coupled-line coupler, an all-pass G-NRI-TL bridged-T circuit, a dual-band metamaterial leaky-wave antenna, and a multi-band G-NRI-TL resonant antenna are all new developments resulting from this research. In addition, to continue the theme of multi-band components, negative-refractive-index transmission lines are used to create a dual-band circularly polarized transparent patch antenna and a two-element wideband decoupled meander antenna system. High coupling over two independently-specified frequency bands is the hallmark of the G-NRI-TL coupler: it is 0.35位0 long but achieves approximately -3 dB coupling over both bands with a maximum insertion loss of 1 dB. This represents greater design flexibility than conventional coupled-line couplers and less loss than subsequent G-NRI-TL couplers. The single-ended bridged-T G-NRI-TL offers a metamaterial unit cell with an all-pass magnitude response up to 8 GHz, while still preserving the quad-band phase response of the original circuit. It is shown how the all-pass response leads to wider bandwidths and improved matching in quad-band inverters, power dividers, and hybrid couplers. The dual-band metamaterial leaky-wave antenna presented here was the first to be reported in the literature, and it allows broadside radiation at both 2 GHz and 6 GHz without experiencing the broadside stopband common to conventional periodic antennas. Likewise, the G-NRI-TL resonant antenna is the first reported instance of such a device, achieving quad-band operation between 2.5 GHz and 5.6 GHz, with a minimum radiation efficiency of 80%. Negative-refractive-index transmission line loading is applied to two devices: an NRI-TL meander antenna achieves a measured 52% impedance bandwidth, while a square patch antenna incorporates NRI-TL elements to achieve circular polarization at 2.3 GHz and 2.7 GHz, with radiation efficiencies of 70% and 78%, respectively. Optical transparency of 50% is then realized by cutting a grid through the antenna and substrate, making the device suitable for direct integration with solar panels. Therefore, this research provides several proof-of-concept devices to highlight the flexibility and multi-band properties of the G-NRI-TL which extend the capabilities of microwave transceiver systems.
Modeling, Optimization and Large-scale Grid Integrations of Solar Photovoltaic Energy in Ontario's Electricity System
Keywords: Electric vehicles
Energy storage
Ontario
Renewable energy
Solar PV
Wind

Modern societies' increasing demand for and reliance on energy, primarily supplied by fossil fuels, and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions that lead to climate change is a complex issue with significant implications for the future well-being of society and the environment. Decoupling economic activity and energy production from carbon is essential to effectively deal with both issues simultaneously. Solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity has the potential to help meet future energy demands while significantly reducing the climate impact of energy production; however, large-scale integration of solar PV into existing electricity systems presents technical challenges that must be addressed if solar is to contribute to a sustainable energy future. This thesis presents four research modules that form a comprehensive evaluation of the technical and economic feasibility of integrating renewable energy, specifically solar PV energy, into the Ontario electricity system. The findings indicate that solar PV can supply a significant portion (8-30%) of total electricity supply if substantial changes are made to the existing grid. Specifically, energy storage and more flexible supply are required to deal with increased ramping rate requirements. As the effects of global warming and peak oil become apparent, and as new technologies for smart grids and distributed generation are introduced into the grid, it will be useful to have a comprehensive understanding of how to plan for the integration of renewables from an electricity generation perspective. The research in this thesis is a thorough analysis of one aspect of solar PV deployment that will be useful to encourage grid integration. This research can be combined with similar assessments by others of storage, demand management, wind and biomass energy sources to give a comprehensive understanding of how to plan energy generation investments to sustainably meet future needs.
Diminished Cerebrovascular Reserve in the Cerebral White Matter of Elderly Individuals with Leukoaraiosis
Keywords: Cerebral White Matter
Cerebrovascular Reactivity
Diffusion Tensor Imaging
Leukoaraiosis
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Perfusion Imaging

The cerebral white matter contains millions of fibers that serve to connect different regions of the brain and supports sophisticated information processing. A sudden loss of these fibers in a brain region as seen in a stroke to a large blood vessel, can lead to severe loss of function especially when the affected fibers are in a strategic location. Little is known about the fine network of blood vessels supplying nutrition to the white matter that can become diseased with age, producing a very similar pattern of injury to the white matter termed "leukoaraiosis". Considerable research has been carried out studying the effects of injury to large vessels supplying the gray matter of the brain. However, understanding of the relationship between dysfunctional white matter blood vessels and injury to the white matter itself is limited. The purpose of the present research is to study this relationship in a unique way. The present work will use MRI and manipulation of blood carbon dioxide (CO2) levels for mapping the capacity of the cerebral vasculature to control blood flow, i.e. assessing cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR). CVR is a measure of the response of the arterial vasculature to respond to a vasoactive stimulus, such as CO2. The response to vasodilatory stimuli can fail in diseases that affect the integrity of the vasculature leading to interruption of blood supply, resulting in varying degrees of brain injury, including slowly progressive ischemic demyelination in the white matter. Research within this thesis has demonstrated that: CVR is reduced in leukoaraiosis compared to normal-appearing white matter (NAWM); (2) Cross-sectionally, abnormalities in diffusion and perfusion MRI metrics have been observed in the NAWM with steal physiology; (3) Reduced CVR is associated with the subsequent development of visible white matter injury when subjects completed a follow-up MRI scan separated 12-months apart from baseline and (4) The speed of the vascular response is also abnormal in leukoaraiosis compared to NAWM. This thesis provides insight into the mechanism of white matter injury and highlights a novel method for predicting injury in susceptible individuals.
Disordered Eating as a Leitfaden through Late Eighteenth-century Psychiatry
Keywords: Eating Disorders
History
Medicine
Psychiatry

My thesis expands the histories of insanity, psychiatry and eating disorders. It explores the myriad intersections between the diagnoses of ‘insanity’ and ‘disordered eating’, using the latter as a guide to changing conceptualisations about the former. The parallels between the relabelling of disordered eating as a manifestation of psychological disorder and the reimagining of insanity as mental illness are complex but illuminative. Disordered eating cases show that, from 1750 to 1830, somatic signs were usurped by sociobehavioural, emotive and cognitive symptoms. This thesis argues that psychiatry evolved when geographic, cultural and intellectual groups adopted that position. This thesis treats medical knowledge and practice as independent but interdependent. The years 1750-1830 were seminal, transitory years. Hospitals and asylums reshaped not only the basic dynamics between practitioners and patients and the rate at which practitioners encountered the poor and the insane. Psychological types developed in print but evolved into clinical categories as asylums changed the face of medical practice. Although this period has long interested historians of medicine it has been neglected by historians of eating disorders. But disordered eating was among the most commonly accepted indications of insanity, abnormality and irrationality. Varying in intensity and form, disordered eating symptoms documented a spectrum of illness. This was critical for the broader acceptance of psychiatry as a legitimate discipline and mental illness as a valid medical condition. Finally, my thesis presents the American medical world as, in essence, a subset of English culture. This is qualified in four ways: asylum strategies; (re)publications of medical texts; newspapers reports; and legal decisions.
Magnetized Astrophysical Flows
Keywords: accretion
gamma ray bursts
magnetic fields
magnetohydrodynamics
outflows
protoplanetary disks

This thesis combines two studies of astrophysical flows in which magnetic fields play a dominant role. The first concerns outflows from compact objects in which plasma is accelerated to highly relativistic speeds by strong, ordered magnetic fields. We generalize the theory of relativistic, ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) outflows by including an intense radiation source as is likely to occur in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). This represents a hybrid of the traditional fireball and electromagnetic models of GRBs, which posit respectively that the acceleration is accomplished by thermal pressure or magnetic stresses. We find that acceleration is more efficient and occurs over a larger range of radii than in a pure Poynting jet. We also uncover a distinct observational signature in the emitted spectrum when the Poynting flux exceeds the radiation energy flux due to the Compton up-scattering of photons within the relativistic flow. We then turn to study the accretion of magnetized protoplanetary disks (PPDs) in which the assumptions of ideal MHD begin to break down due to the low level of ionization. We develop a novel model that prescribes the profiles of the magnetic field and mass flux in PPDs by tying them to the field of a magnetized, radial protostellar wind. We find that the inner disk is more strongly magnetized and thus supports a higher accretion rate by both large scale stresses and turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability (MRI). This leads to an inside-out clearing of the inner disk that stalls at a low column density when particles are lofted from the midplane to higher altitudes where they suppress MRI turbulence. We calculate the long-term evolution of such a disk and show that the migration of planets is significantly slowed (or reversed), perhaps alleviating one of the central problems concerning the formation of planetary systems.
High-fidelity Aerodynamic Shape Optimization for Natural Laminar Flow
Keywords: aerodynamics
aerodynamic shape optimization
computational fluid dynamics
laminar flow
laminar-turbulent transition
optimization

To ensure the long-term sustainability of aviation, serious effort is underway to mitigate the escalating economic, environmental, and social concerns of the industry. Significant improvement to the energy efficiency of air transportation is required through the research and development of advanced and unconventional airframe and engine technologies. In the quest to reduce airframe drag, this thesis is concerned with the development and demonstration of an effective design tool for improving the aerodynamic efficiency of subsonic and transonic airfoils. The objective is to advance the state-of-the-art in high-fidelity aerodynamic shape optimization by incorporating and exploiting the phenomenon of laminar-turbulent transition in an efficient manner. A framework for the design and optimization of Natural Laminar Flow (NLF) airfoils is developed and demonstrated with transition prediction capable of accounting for the effects of Reynolds number, freestream turbulence intensity, Mach number, and pressure gradients. First, a two-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) flow solver has been extended to incorporate an iterative laminar-turbulent transition prediction methodology. The natural transition locations due to Tollmien-Schlichting instabilities are predicted using the simplified e^N envelope method of Drela and Giles or, alternatively, the compressible form of the Arnal-Habiballah-Delcourt criterion. The boundary-layer properties are obtained directly from the Navier-Stokes flow solution, and the transition to turbulent flow is modeled using an intermittency function in conjunction with the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model. The RANS solver is subsequently employed in a gradient-based sequential quadratic programming shape optimization framework. The laminar-turbulent transition criteria are tightly coupled into the objective and gradient evaluations. The gradients are obtained using a new augmented discrete-adjoint formulation for non-local transition criteria. Using the e^N transition criterion, the proposed framework is applied to the single and multipoint optimization of subsonic and transonic airfoils, leading to robust NLF designs. The aerodynamic design requirements over a range of cruise flight conditions are cast into a multipoint optimization problem through a composite objective defined using a weighted integral of the operating points. To study and quantify off-design performance, a Pareto front is formed using a weighted objective combining free-transition and fully-turbulent operating conditions. Next we examine the sensitivity of NLF design to the freestream disturbance environment, highlighting the on- and off-design performance at different critical N-factors. Finally, we propose and demonstrate a technique to enable the design of airfoils with robust performance over a range of critical N-factors.
A Developmental Theory of Intention
Keywords: Action
Intention
Moral Psychology
Philosophy of Mind
Practical Knowledge
Teleology

In this dissertation, I advance a developmental theory of intention, according to which an intention is an action under development. In chapter 1, I define and explain the major theories in contention and offer some motivations for each. The theory that an intention is a belief (cognitivism) can help us explain practical knowledge, the theory that an intention is a sui generis mental state (DPA non-cognitivism) can help us explain the distinctive role of intention, and the theory that an intention is a process (radicalism) can help us explain rational teleology. In the rest of the dissertation, I try to show what considerations could drive us away from cognitivism and DPA non-cognitivism and toward radicalism. In Chapter 2, I show how cognitivism makes forming an intention into wishful thinking. DPA non-cognitivism has the advantage of avoiding this problem, but it maintains the idea that intention is a mental state and (most naturally) explains acting with an intention in terms of causation by a state. In Chapter 3, I show how this explanation faces the famous problem of causal deviance. I argue that this problem cannot be solved by a retreat to cognitivism as it is often understood, since the source of the problem is the assumption that an intention is a state and cognitivists often share this assumption. This, together with the previous problem, is why we should consider a non-cognitivist radicalism. In Chapter 4, I present and motivate what I take to be the best non-cognitivist radicalism: a developmental theory of intention. This theory, I argue, can overcome serious objections to a crude view-naive action theory-according to which an intention is an action in progress. In Chapter 5, I show how a developmental theory can avoid the problems that plague cognitivism and DPA non-cognitivism, and I show how it can help explain practical knowledge and the distinctive role of intention, thereby undercutting the motivation for accepting cognitivism or DPA non-cognitivism in the first place.
Tayinat's Building XVI: The Religious Dimensions and Significance of a Tripartite Temple at Neo-Assyrian Kunulua
Keywords: Nabu Temple
Neo-Assyria
oath tablet
religious architecture
storm god
Tell Tayinat

After the collapse of the Hittite Empire and most of the power structures in the Levant at the end of the Late Bronze Age, new kingdoms and powerful city-states arose to fill the vacuum over the course of the Iron Age. One new player that surfaced on the regional scene was the Kingdom of Palistin, which was centered at Kunulua, the ancient capital that has been identified positively with the site of Tell Tayinat in the Amuq Valley. The archaeological and epigraphical evidence that has surfaced in recent years has revealed that Palistin was a formidable kingdom, with numerous cities and territories having been enveloped within its orb. Kunulua and its kingdom eventually fell prey to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which decimated the capital in 738 BC under Tiglath-pileser III. After Kunulua was rebuilt under Neo-Assyrian control, the city served as a provincial capital under Neo-Assyrian administration. Excavations of the 1930s uncovered a palatial district atop the tell, including a temple (Building II) that was adjacent to the main bit hilani palace of the king (Building I). Renewed excavations of recent times led to the 2008/2009 uncovering of a tripartite temple (Building XVI) located near Building II. The newly discovered temple had been occupied under Assyrian administration, but a spectacular conflagration brought its use to a fiery end in the seventh century BC. Fortunately for posterity, though not so much for the original inhabitants, the intense fire preserved some spectacular remnants. Among the finds in the temple's cella was a cache of cuneiform tablets, including an oath tablet that can be described as a Syrian version of those found at Kalhu that recorded sworn oaths of loyalty to Esarhaddon by Median rulers. Building XVI and its artifactual finds raise new questions about religious practices at Tayinat during the Neo-Assyrian administration, including the identity of the deities worshipped in each temple and the reasons why various deities appear on the oath tablet as those who would inflict curses on all potential oath-breakers. Therefore, the present study seeks to describe the characteristics, architectural style, and material finds of Building XVI in the context of Tayinat's citadel, in order to determine what can be learned from the religious architecture and artifacts that were excavated at the site, and to reconstruct the role and expression of religion at Tayinat, as well as can be known presently.
Optical Linear Algebra for Computational Light Transport
Keywords: 3D scanning
active illumination
computational photography
light transport
optical computing

Active illumination refers to optical techniques that use controllable lights and cameras to analyze the way light propagates through the world. These techniques confer many unique imaging capabilities (e.g. high-precision 3D scanning, image-based relighting, imaging through scattering media), but at a significant cost; they often require long acquisition and processing times, rely on predictive models for light transport, and cease to function when exposed to bright ambient sunlight. We develop a mathematical framework for describing and analyzing such imaging techniques. This framework is deeply rooted in numerical linear algebra, and models the transfer of radiant energy through an unknown environment with the so-called light transport matrix. Performing active illumination on a scene equates to applying a numerical operator on this unknown matrix. The brute-force approach to active illumination follows a two-step procedure: (1) optically measure the light transport matrix and (2) evaluate the matrix operator numerically. This approach is infeasible in general, because the light transport matrix is often much too large to measure, store, and analyze directly. Using principles from optical linear algebra, we evaluate these matrix operators in the optical domain, without ever measuring the light transport matrix in the first place. Specifically, we explore numerical algorithms that can be implemented partially or fully with programmable optics. These optical algorithms provide solutions to many longstanding problems in computer vision and graphics, including the ability to (1) photo-realistically change the illumination conditions of a given photo with only a handful of measurements, (2) accurately capture the 3D shape of objects in the presence of complex transport properties and strong ambient illumination, and (3) overcome the multipath interference problem associated with time-of-flight cameras. Most importantly, we introduce an all-new imaging regime---optical probing---that provides unprecedented control over which light paths contribute to a photo.