VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Strategic Coopetition - A Conceptual Modeling Framework for Analysis and Design

In complex socio-technical multi-agent systems, agents cooperate and compete simultaneously to increase combined welfare through cooperation while maximizing individual gains through competition. Coopetition requires agents to adopt strategies that maximize benefits and minimize costs from concomitant cooperation and competition. Analyzing coopetition can be challenging since cooperation and competition are paradoxical social behaviours that are undergirded by contradictory logics, hypotheses, and assumptions. Therefore, the ability of systems designers to represent and reason about coopetition in a structured and systematic manner can benefit their efforts to design win-win strategies.This thesis proposes an approach for modeling and analyzing strategic coopetition. This approach was developed by following three main steps: (i) first, we identified primary characteristics for modeling and analyzing strategic coopetition (complementarity, trustworthiness, interdependence, and reciprocity) by surveying scholarly literature; (ii) second, we developed requirements for articulating and assessing these characteristics; and (iii) third, we constructed a framework comprised of artefacts for expressing and evaluating these characteristics. This framework consists of a modeling language, analysis techniques, knowledge catalogues, and a method. It is used to discriminate among alternative coopetitive strategies, and to generate strategies in search of positive sum outcomes. We combine and extend extant modeling approaches including strategic actor modeling, value modeling, and game-theoretic modeling to represent and reason about strategic coopetition. Strategic actor modeling, based on i* (iStar), is used to articulate and assess interdependence among actors as well as trustworthiness of actors. Value modeling, based on e3value, is used to express and evaluate the complementarity between actors as well as synergy among activities. Game-theoretic modeling, specifically Game Trees, is used to articulate and analyze reciprocity of actions by actors. This modeling framework is supported by catalogs of design knowledge that include: (i) generic strategies for competing and cooperating; as well as (ii) targeted approaches for information-sharing and assessing trustworthiness. We evaluated the usability and usefulness of this modeling framework by applying it to: (i) a published case study of coopeting mega-vendors in the global software industry; and (ii) an empirical study of startups under coopetition in the market of data science professional development.

Keywords: Conceptual Modeling
Coopetition
Knowledge Representation
Multiagent Systems
Software Ecosystems
Systems Analysis
Advisor: Yu, Eric
Kant and Heidegger on Judgment and Understanding

The dissertation reconstructs and argues for Heidegger’s claim in Being and Time that the particular kind of understanding of entities judgment allows for is explanatorily derivative on a prior, non-judgmental form of understanding. I apply this argument to Kant’s judgmental theory of understanding and criticize it on two accounts. I argue that (i) the basic understanding “something as something” that judgment accomplishes by way of predicating a subject requires that the entity so grasped already be understood (and not simply given or simply synthesized), and (ii) as Kant locates understanding a derivative or secondary phenomenon, his transcendental philosophy overlooks the conditions that inform the more basic, contextual understanding (the conditions that together constitute and underpin what Heidegger calls the “worldhood of the world”). The key to establishing my position lies in seeing the sense in which the non-judgmental, conceptual understanding of entities Heidegger argues for is informed by an “a as b” structure, as opposed to the “a is b” structure that characterizes judgmental understanding. In the first formulation (“a as b”), the a variable refers to an entity or entities, whereas the b variable refers to a context Heidegger calls “world.” My argument will be that the explanatorily primary way in which we understand entities “as something” (e.g., a table or chair) is by locating such entities, the a variable, within a relational context, the b variable. This b variable is the “world” – a teleological structured web of relations that “discloses” entities as significant. To “disclose” entities as significant is to understanding them as something “in-order-to” or as something to bring about Dasein’s ends. It is only by first “disclosing” entities in this way – by allowing them to be significant within a “world” as “in-order-to” – that it is possible to then predicate them by way of a judgment or understand them “as something” via the “a is b” structure. Judgments do not, in and of themselves, give entities significance, but presuppose and modify such significance insofar as they highlight some aspect of the entities we have already discovered within in a “world.”

Keywords: Heidegger
Judgment
Kant
Phenomenology
Transcendental
Understanding
Advisor: Stang, Nicholas
Biochemical Studies on Enzymatic Treatment of Pulp and Paper Mill Biosludge and Polymeric Lignin

Anaerobic digestion is just becoming popular for the treatment of pulp and paper mill effluents. However, hydrolysis of complex organic matter represents the rate-limiting step of anaerobic digestion. Hence, this project is focused on improving the anaerobic digestibility of pulp and paper mill biosludge using enzymatic pretreatment. The abundance of proteins, carbohydrates, and lignin in pulp and paper mill biosludge prompted us to focus our research on the application of proteases, glycosidases, and lignin-oxidizing enzymes for enzymatic treatments of pulp and paper mill biosludge. Biosludge pretreatment with two proteases (from Bacillus licheniformis and Aspergillus oryzae) and two glycosidases (the SCO6604 glycosidase from Streptomyces coelicolor and lysozyme from chicken egg white) improved the anaerobic digestibility of pulp and paper mill biosludge, resulting in increased biogas yields (i.e., 6-26%).To identify novel lignin-oxidizing enzymes, we developed a high-throughput screen for oxidase activity of purified proteins against polymeric lignin, where we screened 45 purified bacterial multicopper oxidases (MCOs) and heme-peroxidases and identified oxidase activity against polymeric lignin in 22 proteins. Among them, the Bacillus subtilis laccase BSU0630 (CotA) demonstrated the highest activity towards both soluble substrates and polymeric lignin. Structure-based site-directed mutagenesis of BSU0630 revealed active site residues critical for catalytic activity, and three mutant variants with increased activity against polymeric lignin. Analyses of BSU0630 activity against kraft lignin using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), mass spectrometry (MS), liquid chromatography, and bright-field microscopy suggested oxidation and repolymerization of reaction products. We determined crystal structures of dye-decolorizing peroxidases (DyPs) FC2591 (from Frankia casuarinae), PF3257 (from Pseudomonas fluorescens), and PR9465 (from Pseudomonas rhizosphaerae). Using structure-based site-directed mutagenesis of FC2591, we identified active site residues essential for oxidase activity against polymeric lignin, as well as the S370A mutant showing enhanced oxidase activity against both soluble substrates (ABTS) and polymeric lignin. Similar to BSU0630, analysis of reaction products of the FC2591 activity towards lignin using liquid chromatography suggested polymerization of reaction products. Overall, these studies confirmed lignin transformation by oxidases, introduced a high throughput lignin screening assay, and indicated that enzymes have potential for improving biosludge digestibility, but further research is needed on protein engineering and reaction optimization.

Keywords: Anaerobic digestion
laccase
Lignin
peroxidase
Advisor: Yakunin, Alexander
Edwards, Elizabeth
Ocean of Storms: Vietnam War Photography and Queer Transpacific Critique of Militarized Intimacies

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study into Vietnam War photography as a site of relational struggles that exceed the vision of violence, freedom, and humanity currently normalized by liberal humanist imaginaries of war. It forwards what I am calling a “queer transpacific critique”, which disrupts normative Cold War epistemologies by interrogating the Pacific region as a place of relations, connections, desires, and racial and sexual formations that are disciplined by and diverge from liberal humanist thought. It examines disciplinary, historical, conceptual, social and intellectual connections that are made possible by the war, but are masked under liberal narratives of progress and freedom. The radical relationality the Vietnam War’s visual archive performs makes visible the co-implication of settler colonialism, mass incarceration, and racial-sexual violence in overseas war, and relatedly, the co-constitution of Asian, Black, Indigenous, and queer histories. The Vietnam War’s visual archive brings into relation often separated histories of colonial and racial subjection, and opens a discussion about how these entangled histories might found the basis of another collectivity beyond Man and its inhuman Others. Indeed, the Vietnam War was made possible by the violent, militarized intimacies of contemporary life, and but was also a site and moment of collective refusal of the liberal humanist episteme that mandates such violences. It is my hope that this work can announce a different politics of “being with” in the world. That is, a desiring orientation towards one another, and an elsewise possibility for modern relationality grounded in the struggles and joys of those who exist outside of state-organized human life. It is these intimacies between those struggling against imperialism that offer possibilities of new ways of being with each other without conquest.

Keywords: Asian diaspora
liberal humanism
militarism
queer diaspora
transpacific studies
visual studies
Advisor: Yoneyama, Lisa
Diaz, Robert
Design for Assessment of Engineering Problem-solving Skills

Problem-solving is central to engineering education and assessment has been identified as a weak link in learning to problem solve. Our goal in this research is to improve feedback provided on problem-solving activities in engineering courses. I first examined how teaching assistants (TAs) perceive marking using a typical freeform approach to marking problems. Surveying 30 participants I identified seven themes that represent challenges with freeform feedback delivery. Insufficient time and lack of assessment guidance were noted most frequently. I also found that the efficiency and consistency of freeform feedback delivery were highly correlated. To examine conventional marking practice more fully, I propose a novel classification scheme to code notations on problem solutions. I then analyzed the feedback notations TAs provided in 440 problem solutions in three undergraduate circuits courses. Findings revealed that failing solutions on average received a lower and less consistent degree of elaborating feedback in comparison to passing solutions. Further, both the total mark and granularity (i.e., marking breakdown) set by the instructor significantly correlated with the quantity of TA feedback. These gaps motivated us to design a new instrument called the Constructive Alignment Integrated Rating (CAIR) system. CAIR enables a theory-informed connection between the type and depth of errors made in engineering problem-solving. Teaching Assistants (n=52) were tasked with marking student solutions from three electrical engineering courses: two first-year circuits, and one second-year electromagnetics course. The participants marked the solutions in a three-part study using either CAIR or a conventional grading scheme in each part. Factors such as apparency (e.g., descriptive quality and quantity of feedback), consistency (e.g., consistent speed and frequency of feedback delivery), and usability and mental workload were examined. The CAIR tool significantly improved the apparency and consistency of feedback delivery. However, the usability of conventional practice was rated significantly higher. This motivated us to offer a novel conceptual design of a display to situate CAIR in a digital space and improve its usability. Future work should focus on testing of CAIR with students, TAs, and instructors using the digital display.

Keywords: Assessment
Display
Feedback
Information Visualization
Problem Solving
Usability research
Advisor: McCahan, Susan
Magic Mirrors: Body Politics and Representations of Femininity in Contemporary Hispanic and French Caribbean Women’s Writing

This dissertation examines femininity as mythological imagery, historical narrative, cultural cornerstone, and physical entity, both sexual and sexualized in a selection of short stories by Caribbean women authors who consider the French and Spanish Caribbean home. This study aims to unpack ways in which women are re-creating femininity through writing and story-telling, and how they are challenging pre-existing structures of “History” and institutionalized metanarrative as a community of writers, while also addressing corporeality on individual and personalized levels. This project positions this type of writing as an emerging genre that pushes for open dialogue surrounding conceptualizations of femininity and women’s sexuality as intrinsic components of identity. Comparative readings of experience-oriented literary texts with critical theory, developed by female scholars and writers, show that sharing and participation establish a platform for dialogue from which socio-historical change may ensue. The first chapter utilizes theories of corporeality and writing, and themes of sexual fluidity emerge in the study of female-authored short stories, traditionally disseminated in the Caribbean through orality and periodical-style publications. Within the framework of feminist theory, the writing female body is posited as a surface of inscription and projection, but also as a site of production and revolution. The second chapter focuses on ecofeminism as a theoretical mechanism that may bridge the gaps between socially constructed notions of femininity and living women. The importance of physical experience and relationships with the natural world are prominent here, as explored through texts that tie environmental preservation to corporeal ideology through supernatural aspects of being. The third and final chapter highlights the role of collective consciousness and memory-keeping in the creation and development of history and human narrative, where femininity and desire are positioned on an energetic continuum rather than a purely gendered abstraction. The overarching scope of this project is to explore a body of work that is novel, subversive, specifically female-produced, and of critical importance in an ever-globalized world, and that reveals the power of the personal in the collective, and of the collective in the personal.

Keywords: Caribbean
Cuentos
Gender
Women
Advisor: Munjic, Sanda
Biogeochemical Investigations of In-Situ Dolomite Formation: Providing New Insights into an Old Enigma

temperature dolomite has remained an enigmatic mineral for over a century. The formation mechanisms have been controversial debated as there are large abundances of low-temperature dolomite in ancient rocks, but a continual decrease as time progressed with little to no low-temperature dolomite forming today. Indeed, the mechanisms controlling ancient abundances of dolomite can still not be explained. Recent laboratory experiments have shown that dolomite can be mediated by functional groups along cell surfaces and excretions referred to as exopolymeric substances (EPS). It has been theorized that biologically formed functional groups of EPS act as nucleation surfaces which reduced the energy required to form dolomite. Although, the formation of low-T dolomite in association with EPS has been shown in the laboratory it does not explain observations in the rock record. It also remains unclear why many modern environments do no host dolomite despite its supersaturation. Thus, this thesis aimed to examine in-situ formation of dolomite from a select modern environment, the hypersaline sabkhas of Qatar, and to provide new insight into an old enigma. Through a series of field and laboratory investigations this thesis shows that specific environmental drivers, such as salinity, facilitated a particular microbial community dynamic that produced EPS specifically suited to nucleating dolomite. The microbial community dynamics were represented by fluctuations in oxygenic and anoxygenic phototrophs which appear to have become sparse through geologic time due to the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere. This connection provided a possible explanation for the decreased abundance of low-T dolomite in the rock record. Furthermore, this work has shown through laboratory experiments that natural extracted EPS achieves rates of carbonate/dolomite nucleation at many times the rate of abiotic surfaces, such as clays. Additionally, the presence of carotenoid pigments associated with these dynamics provide potential targets for biomarker analysis, which have implications for astrobiology as well as oil and gas exploration. Overall, these findings help improve established models of dolomite precipitation and highlight the importance of considering microbe communities-mineral interactions with regard to global bio-geochemical cycles.

Keywords: Biomineralization
Dolomite
Environmental Microbiology
Global Biogeochemical Cycles
Microbial Mats
Advisor: Dittrich, Maria
The Role of Type VIII Collagen in Carotid Artery Stiffness and Physiology

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Over the last decade, arterial stiffening of conduit vessels has emerged as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease development and mortality. In elastic arteries, stiffening refers to the gradual loss and fragmentation of elastic fibers, with a progressive increase in collagen fibers. Type VIII collagen (Col-8) is dramatically upregulated in aged and diseased vessels characterized by arterial stiffening, yet its biophysical impact on the vessel wall remains unknown. The purpose of this thesis was to test the hypothesis that Col-8 functions as a matrix scaffold to maintain vessel integrity during extracellular matrix (ECM) remodelling. In my first study, I determined a novel interaction between Col-8 and elastin. Mice deficient in Col-8 (Col8-/-) had reduced blood pressure and increased vessel compliance, indicating an enhanced Windkessel effect. Differences in both the ECM composition and VSMC activity resulted in a Col8-/- carotid artery that displayed increased diameters with pressure, but enhanced catecholamine-induced VSMC contractility to compensate. In vitro studies revealed that the absence of Col-8 dramatically increased tropoelastin mRNA and elastic fiber deposition in the ECM, which was hindered with exogenous Col-8 treatment. These findings suggest a causative role for Col-8 in reducing mRNA levels of tropoelastin and the presence of elastic fibers in the matrix. In my second study, I tested the hypothesis that Col-8 deficiency would improve carotid artery compliance in two murine models of vessel stiffening, ApoE-/- and Eln+/-. I determined that the reliance on Col-8 was model dependent since there were no differences in vessel stiffness between Col8+/+;ApoE-/- and Col8-/-;ApoE-/- mice. In contrast, Col8-/-;Eln+/- mice had increased carotid artery compliance and reduced blood pressure indicative of an rescued Windkessel effect. These results further potentiate the inverse relationship between elastin and Col-8. In summary, the research presented in this thesis outlines a novel role for Col-8 in regulating elastin which impacts on vessel stability and function. These studies further our understanding of Col-8 function and open a promising new area of investigation related to elastin biology.

Keywords: Arterial Stiffening
Cardiovascular
Collagen
Elastin
Extracellular Matrix
Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells
Advisor: Bendeck, Michelle
The Nonprofitized Welfare State: Examining the Relationship between Social Welfare Nonprofitization and Service Expansiveness in Canada and the United Kingdom

When governments reach out to nonprofit organizations to provide social welfare services, a common argument posits, service expansiveness is weakened: either contracting out is an explicit abdication of public duty or it creates incentives that undermine service expansiveness over time. And yet the evidence does not seem to support this simple explanation of welfare state nonprofitization. This dissertation presents a comparison of nonprofitized welfare in two countries – Canada and the United Kingdom – and two policy areas – homelessness and emergency management. It argues, first, that there is no necessary relationship between the level of nonprofitization and social welfare expansiveness. Nonprofitization occurs within a context where the public duty is being continuously renegotiated, meaning that the boundaries of the welfare state are always in flux. Two pathways to nonprofitization result from the different directions of these fluctuations: cost-cutting and co-optation. While the cost-cutting pathway is linked to service contraction, co-optation is linked to the expansion of public duty. Thus, there is no single overarching relationship between welfare nonprofitization and service expansiveness: nonprofitization operates in both directions. However, this dissertation also argues that the choices that governments make about how to institutionalize nonprofit social welfare can influence whether welfare expansiveness erodes over time or, indeed, actually increases. Service expansiveness is undermined when institutions of acquisition embed values of free-market competition, rather than collaboration or service stability. Service expansiveness is facilitated where the policy structure offers opportunities for nonprofit voice through advocacy, shaping the service, and piloting.

Keywords: Comparative politics
Nonprofitization
Political economy
Public policy
Social policy
Welfare state
Advisor: Breznitz, Dan