VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Modeling of the Stator of Piezoelectric Traveling Wave Rotary Ultrasonic Motors

This thesis is concerned with the modeling of the stator of a piezoelectric traveling wave rotary ultrasonic motor. Existing models for piezoelectric traveling wave rotary ultrasonic motors are either too complicated to be used in motor control or do not reflect the real behavior of the motor and are of limited use in developing a controller for the motor. Finite Element methods have been used in the past to examine the properties of piezoelectric structures however, the Finite Volume Method has always been ruled out without justification. The main goal of this thesis is to provide a Finite Volume modeling approach for the stator of the piezoelectric traveling wave rotary ultrasonic motor taking into account the basic theoretical principles from piezoelectricity and structural mechanics. This model can in future be extended to develop a complete model of the motor in addition to other piezoelectric structures. The Finite Volume Method is shown to have the following specific advantages over the Finite Element Method especially for structures with simple geometries: 1. the Finite Volume Method respects the PDEs conservation law structure due to the fact that the fluxes are conserved between cells/domains/subregions, 2. the Finite Volume Method involves only surface integrals thus making it easier to implement a rotor-stator contact model as the contact mechanism occurs at the boundary of the stator, and 3. the Finite Volume Method yields a system of ODEs that more intuitively map onto circuit simulation software. The Finite Volume Method is initially used to model a simple piezoelectric plate. A corresponding circuit of the piezoelectric plate model, based on the Finite Volume Method, is generated. Two additional but more complex models are considered: one for a unimorph plate and one for the stator of an ultrasonic motor. The modeling results obtained with the Finite Volume Method are validated by comparing them with the results obtained with Finite Element simulations performed with COMSOL. Two test platforms designed to test and validate the Finite Volume and COMSOL results for the simple piezoelectric plates and piezoelectric traveling wave rotary ultrasonic motors are also presented in this thesis.

Keywords: motor
stator
piezoelectric
ultrasonic
wave
finite volume method
Advisor: Dawson, Francis P.
Pugh, Mary C.
Children's Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV): Challenging Assumptions about Child Protection Practices

Objective: While child welfare policy and legislation in Canada and other regions has increasingly defined children who are exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) as maltreated, little is known about the response of the child welfare system to children exposed to IPV. This dissertation seeks to determine the response of child protection services to reports about IPV; the outcomes of child protection investigations referred for children exposed to IPV; and what factors predict decisions made by child protection workers (e.g., court involvement, child welfare placement, closing the case, substantiation, and making a referral to other supportive services) for investigations involving children exposed to IPV. Methods: This study is based on a secondary analysis of data collected in the 2003 Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS-2003). Bivariate analyses and multiple multinomial regression were conducted to study the substantiation of maltreatment, and logistic regression was conducted to predict child protection workers’ decisions to keep the case open, make a child welfare placement, take the family to court, and make a referral for investigations involving children’s exposure to IPV. Results: Seventy-eight percent of the investigations involving only IPV were substantiated. The multinomial regression could not accurately classify the suspected and unfounded cases. Substantiated investigations involving co-occurring IPV were three times more likely to stay open for ongoing child protection services compared to IPV only cases (adjusted odds ratio = 2.93, p < .001). Child protection service outcomes for substantiated investigations involving co-occurring IPV were ten times more likely (adjusted odds ratio = 10.61, p < .001) to involve a child welfare placement compared to IPV only cases. The factors driving child protection worker decisions were primarily the co-occurrence of maltreatment, younger children, and emotional harm. Conclusions: Due to the expansion in what constitutes a child in need of protection, there has been an overwhelming increase in the number of referrals about children being exposed to IPV in Canada. Future analyses should explore whether policies that direct IPV cases to child welfare services is both an effective way of protecting children and a reasonable use of limited child welfare resources.

Keywords: child welfare
intimate partner violence
Advisor: Regehr, Cheryl
Being Your Self: Identity, Metaphysics, and the Search for Authenticity

It has been widely held in our culture for centuries that one ought to “be oneself,” an imperative often referred to as authenticity. The meaning of authenticity, however, remains contested among philosophers and largely shapeless in most people’s minds. In order to make sense of this compelling idea, one must reconcile authenticity with the metaphysics of selfhood and identity. In all of its applications, ‘authenticity’ refers to a convergence between how something presents itself and what it actually is. Yet the marriage of authenticity, with its essentialist structure, and personal identity, with its built-in temporal openness, is prima facie dubious. Authenticity appeals to something true and unchanging, but a person’s identity evolves throughout her life. Furthermore, the ideal of “being oneself” requires that it also be possible to be “not oneself,” but it is difficult to explain how any individual could be other than who she is. I argue that previous theories of authenticity have not adequately negotiated these structural requirements. Heidegger provides an account of authenticity as a formal existential possibility for Dasein. Because of its restriction to ontological phenomena, his analysis fails to show what authenticity actually means for Dasein and how its authentic existence is connected to its identity. Sartre likewise describes authenticity as an ideal ontological state, but his belief in radical freedom translates into a denial of the metaphysics of identity that could explain the content of authenticity. Despite being the locus of the most influential twentieth century accounts, existentialism cannot capture authenticity because of its inability to investigate who one is and how certain choices are more or less essential to our selves. I pursue such an investigation by distinguishing between authenticity and related notions such as originality, sincerity, wholeheartedness, and narrative unity. I argue that authenticity must account for change in personal identity as well as the social and interpretive dimensions of selfhood without forfeiting the criterion that there is something true about who we are. In my view of authenticity as reflective consistency I argue that we can be ourselves by acting in accordance with our necessary dispositions in a certain situation.

Advisor: Kingwell, Mark
Railroad Crossings: The Transnational World of North America, 1850-1910

The last quarter of the nineteenth century is often referred to as the “Golden Age” of railroad building. More track was laid in this period in North America than in any other period. The building of railroads was considered synonymous with nation building and economic progress. Railway workers were the single largest occupational group in the period and among the first workers to be employed by large-scale, corporately owned and bureaucratically managed organizations. While there is a rich historiography regarding the institutional and everyday lives of railway workers and the corporations that employed them, the unit of analysis has been primarily bounded by the nation. These national narratives leave out the north-south connections created by railroads that cut across geo-political boundaries and thus dramatically increasing the flows of people, goods and services between nations on the North American continent. Does the story change if viewed from a continental rather than national perspective? Railroad Crossings tells the story of the people and places along the route of the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada between Montreal, Quebec and Portland, Maine and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (and later of the Southern Pacific) between Benson, Arizona and Guaymas, Sonora. The study first takes a comparative view of the cross-border railroad development followed by a consideration of emerging patterns and practices that suggest a broader continental continuity. The evidence demonstrates that this broader continental continuity flows from the application of a certain “railroad logic” or the impact of the essence of railroad operations that for reasons of safety and efficiency required the broad standardization of operating procedures that in many ways rendered place irrelevant.

Keywords: labour
North America
transnational
Advisor: Halpern, Rick
"Sicut Scintilla Ignis in Medio Maris": Theological Despair in the Works of Isidore of Seville, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim and Dante Alighieri

Sicut scintilla ignis in medio maris: Theological Despair in the Works of Isidore of Seville, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim and Dante Alighieri. Doctor of Philosophy, 2009. Kristen Leigh Allen, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. When discussing the concept of despair in the Middle Ages, scholars often note how strongly medieval people linked despair with suicide. Indeed, one finds the most recent and comprehensive treatment of the topic in Alexander Murray’s Suicide in the Middle Ages. Murray concludes that most medieval suicides had suffered from “this-worldly” despair, brought on by fatal illness, emotional or material stress, or some other unbearable circumstance. However, Murray also observes that medieval theologians and the people they influenced came to attribute suicide to theological despair, i.e. a failure to hope for God’s mercy. This dissertation investigates the work of three well-known medieval authors who wrote about and very likely experienced such theological despair. In keeping with Murray’s findings, none of these three ultimately committed suicide, thus allowing me to explore how medieval people overcame their theological despair. I have chosen these three authors because they not only wrote about theological despair, but drew from their own experiences when doing so. Their personal testimony was intended to equip their readers with the spiritual tools necessary to overcome their own despair. The first of my three authors, Isidore of Seville, will be treated in Chapter Two. Isidore’s works provide an excellent synthesis of patristic thought on despair and also hint at his willingness to share his own spiritual struggles in order to help his flock defeat this vice. Chapter Three discusses Hrotsvit of Gandersheim and her understanding of despair and presumption as closely interrelated mindsets that can afflict the repentant sinner. Hrotsvit’s own frequent admissions of presumption in her prefaces strongly suggest that she was also plagued with despair due to her unorthodox appropriation of the role of poeta. My fourth chapter considers Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, a poetic meditation on the ultimate fate of the desperate sinner and how such a fate might be avoided. Dante the Wayfarer will come to realize the necessity of God’s grace for those wishing to overcome sin. Indeed, all three of the writers studied consider this knowledge an important antidote to despair, proven by their own experiences.

Keywords: Theological despair
Advisor: Goering, Joseph
Effects of Early Isolation on the Experiential, Hormonal and Neural Regulation of Sexual Behavior in Male Long-Evans Rats

Reproductive success in the male rat depends on the ability to recognize appropriate sexual cues, motivation to respond to those cues, and coordination of the necessary motor sequences required to optimize sexual performance and an ejaculatory response. Early maternal environment is important in the normal development of copulatory behavior. Manipulation of this early social stimulation results in alterations in male sexual behavior and in the functioning of mediating endocrine and neurotransmitter systems. The present series of studies were designed to explore the effects of early life maternal deprivation and replacement maternal licking-like stimulation on the development of male rat sexual behavior and the neurophysiological mechanisms which mediate sexual performance with specific attention to the dopamine (DA) and androgen systems. Long-Evans male rats were reared with or without their mothers through the use of the artificial rearing (AR) paradigm. Half of the AR rats were provided with licking-like stimulation, consisting of periodic stroking with a paintbrush. In study 1, AR and maternally-reared (MR) rats were tested in adulthood for sexual behavior. Neuronal activation in response to copulation was assessed using an antibody against the protein product of the immediate early gene c-fos in brain regions that sub-serve sexual behavior. Study 2 explored whether sexual behavioral deficits observed in AR males can be reversed by later sexual experience. In this study, animals were sacrificed following a ninth copulatory trial and Fos immunoreactivity, androgen and estrogen-α receptors were assessed. In study 3, the effects of early maternal deprivation on partner preference in both males that are differentially reared, and, female preference towards these males were investigated. This explored if any behavioral deficits observed in AR males could be attributed to differences in their attractivity to females. Study 4 investigated the effects of early maternal deprivation on androgen sensitivity in adult males. Copulatory response to a receptive female was examined post-castration in AR and MR males and again following testosterone replacement. In study 5, levels of extracellular DA were investigated in the nucleus accumbens, an area critical in motivation, prior to and during copulation in sexually experienced AR and MR males using Microdialysis.

Keywords: Sexual Behavior
Dopamine
Advisor: Fleming, Alison S.
Measuring Change in Jurisdiction Achievement over Time: Equating Issues in Current International Assessment Programs

Policymakers expect international educational assessments to report credible national and international changes in student achievement over time. However, international assessment projects face great methodological challenges to creating comparable scores across jurisdictions and time points, fundamentally because jurisdictions vary in many aspects of curriculum and curriculum change as well as in the patterns of students’ test-taking behaviour. Using data from the Second IEA Mathematics Study (SIMS), the study reported in this dissertation addresses the potential impact of the different equating methodologies used in current international assessments on the accurate estimates of change in jurisdiction achievement over time. The results of the study demonstrate that the different equating methodologies implemented through the Item Response Theory (IRT) models currently used in international assessments may be of limited use in estimating change in jurisdiction achievement over time. This is because the international assessment data violate the IRT model assumptions, in particular the unidimensionality assumption. In addition, the estimation of jurisdiction results based on a common international scale may potentially distort the results of those jurisdictions that have levels of student achievement that are much lower or higher than most other participating jurisdictions. The findings of this study have important implications for researchers as well as policy makers.

Keywords: 0632
0515
Advisor: Wolfe, Richard
The Social Organization of Best Practice for Acute Stroke: An Institutional Ethnography

Since 1995, a thrombolytic therapy, rt-PA, has been approved for use with acute stroke that significantly reduces, and sometimes reverses, neurological damage. Treatment has to be given within a few hours of the start of symptoms and can only commence once a CT-scan has confirmed a particular type of stroke. In the evidence-based medicine and knowledge translation literature, variations in practice are constituted as a problem to be solved. It is assumed that a physician decides whether or not to use this therapy based on his/her evaluation of the scientific evidence. In this thesis, I demonstrate that what are less evident in many of these claims are issues related to the social production of knowledge. Little attention is paid to who conducts research, who promotes its findings, and who is expected to implement them. The positivist discourse of evidence-based medicine assumes that research produces knowledge that is neutral and can be translated into treatment that is in the patient’s best interest. Yet these assumptions remain empirically unexamined, despite social science critiques of these processes. Institutional Ethnography is an approach in sociology developed by Dorothy Smith. Based on Smith’s understanding of the social organization of knowledge, it allows for an examination of the complex social relations organizing people’s experiences of their everyday working lives. Beginning in the experiences of physicians who provide acute stroke services, this dissertation explores an example of how best practice medicine is developed, translated, and taken up in practice across various sites in the province of Ontario. For Smith, texts mediate and organize people’s experiences. In my study, the discourses of both evidence-based medicine and knowledge translation, designed to improve patient care, come into view as managerial tools designed to control the delivery of care. I render visible how in fact things work as they do in real life settings in a way that links back actual people to the texts, or discourse, organizing their experiences. In so doing, I am able to uncover some of the assumptions and hidden priorities underlying the current emphasis on translating scientific knowledge in medicine into practice.

Keywords: institutional ethnography
knowledge translation
acute care best practice
implementation science
Advisor: Smith, Dorothy E.
Critical Ethnography of a Multilingual and Multicultural Korean Language Classroom: Discourses on Identity, Investment and Korean-ness

Following critical/post-structural perspectives in conducting ethnographic research on the political dimension of language learning, this study examines language learners’ identity and investment in a post-secondary Korean language classroom in Canada. First, this study explores the ways in which Korean-ness is produced through the curriculum, how an instructor’s linguistic and teaching practices in the Korean language classroom function to include some students and exclude others, and how the students on the periphery cope with their marginalization. I argue that peripheral students’ coping strategies are strongly tied to their investment into certain aspects of Korean language and culture, as well as their desire to gain symbolic resources in the Korean language. Second, my study examines the ways in which Korean heritage language learners (re)negotiate their hyphenated Korean Canadian identities by looking at three different discourse sites - Korean home, Korean church, and Canadian schools - and how their hyphenated identities are connected with their investment in maintaining their heritage language. The data for this study includes classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, bi-weekly written journals and focus group interviews. By adopting critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a means of analyzing the data, this study shows that language learners’ race, ethnicity and gender are salient parts of their identities, and thus impact their learning experiences to varying degrees and levels. My research findings also suggest that the ethnic identity capital that the heritage language learners embrace in relation to their perceptions of their native speech community as well as its status, is intertwined with the maintenance of their heritage language. Pedagogical implications from this study enable educators to equally empower students from diverse backgrounds, and help them to be sensitive to the relations between ideologies and power in the language classroom. Central to these pedagogical implications is that it is the role of the teacher to adequately capitalize on the multilingual and multicultural practices that each student brings to the language classroom, and to identify the social and cultural voices present in the class.

Keywords: Identity
Investment
Korean-ness
Korean as a foreign/heritage language
Critical ethnography
Critical discourse analysis
Advisor: Labrie, Normand
Learning as Socially Organized Practices: Chinese Immigrants Fitting into the Engineering Market in Canada

My research studies immigrants’ learning experiences as socially organized practices. Informed by the sociocultural approach of learning and institutional ethnography, I treat learning as a material and relational phenomenon. I start by examining how fourteen Chinese immigrants learn to fit into the engineering market in Canada. I then trace the social discourses and relations that shape immigrants’ learning experiences, particularly their changing perceptions and practices and personal and professional investments. I contend that immigrants’ learning is produced through social processes of differentiation that naturalize immigrants as a secondary labour pool, which is dismissible and desirable at the same time. My investigation unfolds around four areas of learning. The first is related to immigrants’ self-marketing practices. I show that core to immigrants’ marketing strategies is to speak to the skill discourse or employers’ skill expectations at the “right” time and place. The skill discourse, I argue, is culturally-charged and class-based. It cloaks a complex of hiring relations where “skill” is discursively constructed and differentially invoked to preserve the privilege and power of the dominant group. The second area is immigrants’ work-related learning. I find that workplace training is part of the corporate agenda to organize work and manage workers. Amid this picture, workers’ opportunity to access corporate sponsorship for professional development is contingent on their membership within the engineering community. To expand their professional space, the immigrants resorted to learning and consolidating their knowledge in codes and standards, which serve as a textual organizer of engineering work. The third area is related to workplace communication. My participants reported an individualistic communication ‘culture’, which celebrates individual excellence and discourages close interpersonal relations. Such a perception, I argue, obscures the gender, race and class relations that privilege white and male power. It also leaves out the organizational relations, such as the project-based deployment of the engineering workforce that perpetuate individualistic communicative practices. My last area of investigation focuses on immigrants’ efforts to acquire Canadian credentials and professional licence. Their heavy learning loads direct my attention to the ideological and administrative licensure practices that valorize Canadian credentials and certificates to the exclusion of others.

Keywords: immigration studies
adult learning
social construction of skill
social production of culture
communication
licensure
institutional ethnography
Chinese immigrants
organization of engineering work
organization of engineering workforce
engineering in Canada
racialization
sociocultural learning
Advisor: Ng, Roxana