VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Violin Pedagogy and the Physics of the Bowed String

The paper describes the mechanics of violin tone production using non-specialist language, in order to present a scientific understanding of tone production accessible to a broad readership. As well as offering an objective understanding of tone production, this model provides a powerful tool for analyzing the technique of string playing.The interaction between the bow and the string is quite complex. Literature reviewed for this study reveals that scientific investigations have provided important insights into the mechanics of string playing, offering explanations for factors which both contribute to and limit the range of tone colours and dynamics that stringed instruments can produce. Also examined in the literature review are significant works of twentieth century violin pedagogy exploring tone production on the violin, based on the practical experience of generations of teachers and performers.Hermann von Helmholtz described the stick-slip cycle which drives the string in 1863, which replaced earlier ideas about the vibration of violin strings. Later, scientists such as John Schelleng and Lothar Cremer were able to demonstrate how the mechanics of the bow-string interaction can create different tone colours. Recent research by Anders Askenfelt, Knut Guettler, and Erwin Schoonderwaldt have continued to refine earlier research in this area.The writings of Lucien Capet, Leopold Auer, Carl Flesch, Paul Rolland, Kat贸 Havas, Ivan Galamian, and Simon Fischer are examined and analyzed. Each author describes a different approach to tone production on the violin, representing a different understanding of the underlying mechanism. Analyzing these writings within the context of a scientific understanding of tone production makes it possible to compare these approaches more consistently, and to synthesize different concepts drawn from the diverse sources evaluated.

Keywords: flesch
galamian
pedagogy
physics
string
violin
Advisor: Cameron, Walter
A Fermi Gas Microscope Apparatus

This thesis reports on the design, construction, and performance of a new ultracold atoms apparatus with the capability of resolving individual fermionic potassium atoms trapped in an optical lattice for the purpose of investigating locally ordered quantum states. Our apparatus incorporates a high numerical aperture imaging objective to imge the fluorescence from the 405nm excited state transition while atoms are simultaneously cooled on the 770nm transition.

Keywords: Cold atoms
Condensed matter
Quantum mechanics
Advisor: Joseph, H Thywissen
Early Fault Detection and Optimal Maintenance Control for Partially Observable Systems Subject to Vibration Monitoring

Due to the advancements in data measurement and computer technology, automated data collection from multiple sensors has become common in recent years. However, very few published papers have dealt with the cost-optimal early fault detection of gearboxes, condition based maintenance policy, and remaining useful life prediction when multiple sensors are used for data collection under both fixed load and varying load.This research has focused on several new developments. An early fault detection scheme has been firstly developed using real multivariate vibration data under varying load. A multivariate Hotelling's T-squared control chart has been applied to detect the early fault occurrence of a gearbox. Furthermore, to investigate maintenance policies triggered by the early fault detection, we have considered the combination of continuous time hidden Markov modeling (HMM) and the optimal Bayesian control technique using vector time series model residuals. Model parameters have been obtained using the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. An optimal Bayesian maintenance policy represented by a Bayesian control chart has been developed by minimizing the long-run expected average cost per unit time. Prediction of mean residual life using a posterior probability has also been developed in this research. For vibration systems without historical failure data, a hidden semi-Markov model (HSMM), has also been developed for maintenance planning. The evolution of the unknown state process has been described by a hidden, two-state semi-Markov process with a generally distributed sojourn time in the healthy state. The model parameter estimation procedure based on the EM algorithm has been developed. The optimal maintenance scheme in a two-state HSMM framework has also been constructed. We have developed this model considering three different state sojourn time distributions using the same set of real helical gearboxes multivariate data: exponential distribution, phase-type Erlang distribution, and Weibull distribution. The numerical results of parameter estimates and optimal control limits have been compared for these three distributions. Lastly, we present the proposed HSMM models to monitor the health condition of a planetary gearbox degradation system using vibration data from multiple sensors.

Keywords: condition-based maintenance
EM algorithm
hidden semi-Markov model
multivariate Bayesian control
Partially observable system
Vibration Monitoring
Advisor: David, C. Bailey
Erlang-based Methods in Modeling Losses in Insurance and Applications

This thesis studies several insurance/loss models and development tools for modeling, quantifying and predicting aggregate losses and/or evaluating ruin probabilities and related risk measures.The thesis can be structurally viewed as tackling problems in two different inter-connected areas. The first area deals with the aggregate loss modeling problems that occur in non-life insurance or operational risk areas. We first propose a modified expectation-maximization algorithm to fit incomplete (truncated and/or censored) loss data. Furthermore we propose a multivariate frequency model with a direct application to the estimation of the operational riskencountered by a financial institution. Further modified expectation-maximization algorithms are derived for fitting such a multivariate frequency distribution.In the second part of the thesis we deal with multidimensional risk modeling from a ruin theoretical viewpoint. More specifically, we are interested in determining certain risk measures and optimal capital allocations for insurance companies that manage multiple dependent lines of business.

Keywords: EM algorithm
Erlang-based methods
Multidimensional risk process
Operational risk modeling
Optimal capital allocation
Recursive method
Advisor: Andrei, L. Badescu
Substrates and Inhibitors of Enzymes Involved in Exopolysaccharide Dependent Biofilms

Many biofilm-forming bacteria produce a similar partially de-N-acetylated β-1,6-N-acetyl glucosamine homopolymer (dPNAG) to facilitate bacterial adhesion. In many medically important biofilm forming bacterial strains, including Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus, de-N-acetylation of the β-1,6-N-acetyl glucosamine homopolymer (PNAG) is catalyzed by a metal dependent de-N-acetylase. Sixty-five percent of all human persistent bacterial infections are considered to be biofilm related. In vivo studies have implicated the production and subsequent de-N-acetylation of PNAG is essential to bacterial virulence. In this work, methods of monitoring and targeting PNAG-dependent biofilm processes are explored. A novel chromogenic glycosidase substrate based on a glycosyl carbamate was developed and used to effectively monitor the activity of Dispersin B (DspB), an enzyme capable of degrading PNAG/dPNAG. Additionally, an array of potential deacetylase inhibitors were synthesized with the goal of targeting the essential de-N-acetylase enzymes PgaB and IcaB, from E. coli and S. epidermidis respectively, for biofilm formation. These inhibitors were based on a carbohydrate scaffold containing either a metal chelating moiety or a transition state mimic. Finally, a novel coumarin based substrate was developed to monitor in vitro de-N-acetylase activity of PgaB and IcaB. Using this substrate, the potency of the synthesized inhibitors was evaluated through a competitive fluorogenic assay. The most effective inhibitor, a chemoenzymatically-synthesized pentasaccharide derivative showed a Ki value of 280 µM.

Keywords: Biofilms
Carbohydrate
Chemoenzymatic
PNAG
Advisor: Mark, Nitz
The Biological Identity of Nanoparticles

Understanding and controlling the biological response to nanoparticles is essential to designing safe and effective formulations to diagnose and treat disease and for mitigating toxicological risks resulting from incidental or accidental exposure. Because cells are the basic functional units of the body, nanoparticle-cell interactions are a critical determinant of the overall biological response to nanoparticles. In the past, it was assumed that the form of a nanoparticle that comes into contact with cells is the same as the form it had following synthesis. However, when a nanoparticle enters a biological environment, it immediately comes into contact with a complex and highly concentrated mixture of proteins. A subset of these proteins will interact with the surface of a nanoparticle and adsorb to it. The adsorbed proteins form a protein `corona' that defines, in part or in whole, the bioactive interface of a nanoparticle within a biological system. Protein-nanoparticle interactions can also lead to nanoparticle aggregation. The formation of the protein corona and aggregation within a biological environment give the nanoparticle a `biological identity' that is distinct from its `synthetic identity'. It is ultimately the biological identity of a nanoparticle that is `seen' by cells and other components of a biological system and determines the biological response. Yet, it is not clear how the physical and chemical properties of a nanoparticle determine the composition and structure of the protein corona and, in turn, downstream cellular interactions and responses. In this thesis, I elucidate fundamental relationships between nanoparticle design, the composition of the protein corona, and downstream cell interactions within static and dynamic biological environments. These relationships will enable nanoparticle-cell interactions within a biological system to be predicted and controlled and will act as a guide for the design of safer, more effective nanoparticle formulations for nanotechnology applications.

Keywords: Drug Delivery
Nanomedicine
Nanoparticles
Nanotechnology
Pharmaceuticals
Proteomics
Advisor: Warren, CW Chan
The Crossover Effects of Morphological Awareness on Literacy Outcomes among Children in French Immersion

This dissertation comprised three studies examining the cross-language effects of morphological awareness on literacy outcomes among early elementary school children in a French immersion program. Two aspects of morphological awareness were investigated: inflectional awareness and derivational awareness. Study 1 explored the bidirectional cross-language effects between morphological awareness and vocabulary development in English and French over one year. Participants included 156 students in Grades 1 and 2. Regression analyses revealed that English inflectional awareness predicted unique variance in French vocabulary among Grade 1 students. Among Grade 2 students, cross-lagged analyses showed that both English inflectional and English derivational awareness predicted gains in French vocabulary between Grades 2 and 3. Moreover, French derivational awareness measured at Grade 2 was associated with Grade 3 English vocabulary.Study 2 examined the role of cognates in mediating the relations between English morphological awareness and French vocabulary. Participants included 108 first and second grade students. Results indicated that English morphological awareness was a unique predictor of French cognate but not non-cognate vocabulary. This suggests that the transfer of morphological awareness across languages is facilitated when the words to be learned in the children's additional language bear similarities to words in their primary language. Finally, Study 3 evaluated the longitudinal contributions of English morphological awareness to French reading comprehension skills among the sample from Study 1. The effects of children's knowledge of the systematic relations between English and French derivational suffix pairs on their French reading comprehension skills were additionally explored. Results showed that English inflectional awareness significantly predicted French reading comprehension among the Grade 1 students, whereas English derivational awareness predicted variance in French reading comprehension among the Grade 2 students. Children's awareness of the systematic relations between English and French derivational suffix pairs predicted changes in French reading comprehension from Grades 2 to 3.Taken together, these results add to the extant corpus of research to substantiate that children can leverage morphological awareness from their primary language to facilitate their vocabulary learning as well as reading comprehension in their additional language. These results are discussed in light of current reading and transfer models.

Keywords: cross-language transfer
French immersion
morphological awareness
reading comprehension
second-language learners
vocabulary
Advisor: Xi, Chen
Applied Stochastic Control in High Frequency and Algorithmic Trading

In this thesis, problems in the realm of high frequency trading and optimal market making are established and solved in both single asset and multiple asset economies. For an agent that is averse to holding large inventories for long periods of time, optimal high frequency trading strategies are derived via stochastic control theory and solving the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations. These strategies are analyzed and it is shown that both inventory control and accounting for adverse selection play critical roles in the success of an algorithmic trading strategy. In the single asset problem, a market maker actively modifies her limit quotes in an economy with asymmetric information. She attempts to keep her inventory small and posts her limit orders in the limit order book at a depth that mitigates her adverse selection risk, while not posting too deep in the book as to generate no trade flow. In addition to this behaviour, a profit maximizing investor trading in multiple assets also seeks out statistical arbitrage opportunities and acts aggressively via the submission of market orders when it is deemed optimal to do so.Throughout this thesis, numerical and practical considerations are made a priority. Full scale calibration and estimation methods are given in detail, as well as dimensional reductions for large scale numerical procedures, where appropriate. The bridge from abstract mathematical theory to practical real-time implementation is made complete as an entire chapter is dedicated to applications on real data.

Keywords: Algorithmic Trading
Hawkes Process
High Frequency Trading
Market Making
Stochastic Control
Advisor: Sebastian, Jaimungal
Evaluation of Oil Sands Projects and their Expansion Rate using Real Options

The rapidly expanding oil sands of western Canada, the third largest reserves in the world, are creating serious challenges, such as ecological harm, labour shortages, and extensive natural gas consumption. This thesis develops three practical real options models to evaluate the feasibility of oil sands projects and to stimate the optimal rate of oil sands expansion, while accounting for the stated concerns. The first model estimates the value of an oil sands plant, while accounting for oil price uncertainty, in a single-agent setting. The model shows that, in the current bullish oil market and with the long life of oil sands projects, once constructed, oil sands plants are highly unlikely to close unless the price of oil drops substantially. Unsanctioned projects with little capital spentare susceptible to delay/cancellation. The second model estimates the value of a plant, while accounting for oil and natural gas price uncertainties, in a single-agent setting. The results show that oil price is the key driver of oil sands growth in Alberta. Becauseof the current low natural gas price, the importance of natural gas price uncertainty in the valuation is low. The third model evaluates the rate of oil sands expansion under different environmental tax/cost policies, while accounting for the oil price uncertainty,in a multi-agent setting . This model also accounts for labour shortages in Alberta. The results show that a stricter environmental tax policy delays investment but leads to a higher rate of expansion once investment begins. The first two models provide a framework for oil companies to value new oil sands plants and to gauge the optimum time to construct, given the current state of uncertainty in the industry. The third model allows oil companies and government policy makers to gauge the impact of policy strategies on oil sands expansion rates.

Keywords: Dynamic programming
Financial modeling
Oil sands
Real options analysis
Uncertainty
Valuation
Advisor: Yuri, Lawryshyn
High-pressure Soot Formation and Diffusion Flame Extinction Characteristics of Gaseous and Liquid Fuels

High-pressure soot formation and flame stability characteristics were studied experimentally in laminar diffusion flames. For the former, radially resolved soot volume fraction and temperature profiles were measured in axisymmetric co-flow laminar diffusion flames of pre-vaporized n-heptane-air, undiluted ethylene-air, and nitrogen and carbon dioxide diluted ethylene-air at elevated pressures. Abel inversion was used to re-construct radially resolved data from the line-of-sight spectral soot emission measurements. For the latter, flame extinction strain rate was measured in counterflow laminar diffusion flames of C1-4 alcohols and hydrocarbon fuels of n-heptane, n-octane, iso-octane, toluene, Jet-A, and biodiesel.The luminous flame height, as marked by visible soot radiation, of the nitrogen- and helium-diluted n-heptane and nitrogen- and carbon dioxide-diluted ethylene flames stayed constant at all pressures. In pure ethylene flames, flame heights initially increased with pressure, but changed little above 5 atm. The maximum soot yield as a function of pressure in nitrogen-diluted n-heptane diffusion flames indicate that n-heptane flames are slightly more sensitive to pressure than gaseous alkane hydrocarbon flames at least up to 7 atm. Ethylene's maximum soot volume fractions were much higher than those of ethane and n-heptane diluted with nitrogen (fuel to nitrogen mass flow ratio is about 0.5). Pressure dependence of the peak carbon conversion to soot, defined as the percentage of fuel's carbon content converted to soot, was assessed and compared to previous measurements with other gaseous fuels. Maximum soot volume fractions were consistently lower in carbon dioxide-diluted flames between 5 and 15 atm but approached similar values to those in nitrogen-diluted flames at 20 atm. This observation implies that the chemical soot suppression effect of carbon dioxide, previously demonstrated at atmospheric pressure, is also present at elevated pressures up to 15 atm, but fades off beyond 15 atm.In flame stability experiments, the extinction strain rates increased with decreasing dilution. In general, the fuels with higher carbon number and fuels with more compact structures were found to be more prone to extinction. Counterflow laminar diffusion flames established at the impingement of reactants with a top-hat (axially uniform) velocity profile were found to be more resistant to extinction than those with a parabolic exit velocity profile. Multiple solutions to the flame stability were observed for certain hydrocarbons.

Keywords: diffusion flame
flame extinction
liquid fuels
soot formation
Advisor: Omer, L. Gulder
Practicality of Quantum Information Processing

Quantum Information Processing (QIP) is expected to bring revolutionary enhancement to various technological areas. However, today's QIP applications are far from being practical. The problem involves both hardware issues, i.e., quantum devices are imperfect, and software issues, i.e., the functionality of some QIP applications is not fully understood.Aiming to improve the practicality of QIP, in my PhD research I have studied various topics in quantum cryptography and ion trap quantum computation. In quantum cryptography, I first studied the security of position-based quantum cryptography (PBQC). I discovered a wrong assumption in the previous literature that the cheaters are not allowed to share entangled resources. I proposed entanglement attacks that could cheat all known PBQC protocols.I also studied the practicality of continuous-variable (CV) quantum secret sharing (QSS). While the security of CV QSS was considered by the literature only in the limit of infinite squeezing, I found that finitely squeezed CV resources could also provide finite secret sharing rate. Our work relaxes the stringent resources requirement of implementing QSS.In ion trap quantum computation, I studied the phase error of quantum information induced by dc Stark effect during ion transportation. I found an optimized ion trajectory for which the phase error is the minimum. I also defined a threshold speed, above which ion transportation would induce significant error.In addition, I proposed a new application for ion trap systems as universal bosonic simulators (UBS). I introduced two architectures, and discussed their respective strength and weakness. I illustrated the implementations of bosonic state initialization, transformation, and measurement by applying radiation fields or by varying the trap potential. When comparing with conducting optical experiments, the ion trap UBS is advantageous in higher state initialization efficiency and higher measurement accuracy.Finally, I proposed a new method to re-cool ion qubits during quantum computation. The idea is to transfer the motional excitation of a qubit to another ion that is prepared in the motional ground state. I showed that my method could be ten times faster than current laser cooling techniques, and thus could improve the speed of ion trap quantum computation.

Keywords: Ion trap
Quantum computer
Quantum cryptography
Quantum information
Advisor: Hoi-Kwong, Lo