VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Evaluating Burden of Care for Caregivers of Children with Intestinal Failure on Long-term Parenteral Nutrition

The objective of this thesis was to evaluate burden of care for caregivers of children with intestinal failure (IF) on long-term parenteral nutrition (PN). This was completed with two comprehensive reviews of IF and caregiver burden and three projects that add knowledge to the current literature. Pediatric IF is a complicated chronic medical condition. There have been considerable advancements over the past two decades resulting in improved survival rates. The majority of care after their primary hospitalization takes place in the home setting provided by family caregivers. There are significant gaps in the understanding of the impact of this care on caregivers in order to identify opportunities for interventions and supports. The first project qualitatively described the experiences of caregivers of children with IF describing common themes identified related to caregiving being a 24/7 commitment, facing the constant risk of death, chronic illness creating difficult feelings and emotions and adapting to chronic illness as a family. Caregivers also quantified the volume of care being provided to their children within the home setting. The second project evaluated stress, anxiety, depression, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in caregivers of children with IF compared to caregivers of healthy children. The results demonstrated that IF caregivers had increased levels of stress, anxiety, and depression and lower HRQoL. The final project evaluated sleep in caregivers of children with IF compared to caregivers of healthy children. This study demonstrated caregivers of children with IF achieve significantly less sleep than their peers. In summary, there are multifaceted impacts of providing a significant volume of care for caregivers of children with IF. Caregivers provide a tremendous amount of care to ensure their children’s health remains optimized and highlights the need for ongoing advocacy to ensure adequate supports for respite and mental health supports are put into place.

Keywords: informal caregiver
Intestinal failure
Pediatric
Advisor: Wales, Paul W
The Early Muslim Brotherhood: Tarbiyah as the Foundation of Hasan al-Banna’s Project of Islamic Revival and Reform

In Egypt in the early 20th century, an era of great political and social change defined by the growth of nationalisms, modernization, and colonialism, the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn) emerged as an Islamic movement that sought to challenge secularizing trends and promote Islamic practices, ethics, and values in society, with the ambition of eventually establishing an Islamic state. This dissertation is an analysis of the thought of the movement’s founder, Hasan al-Banna, from the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 to his death in 1949. As the movement’s principal thinker, his ideas remain central to the organization’s ideology and structure until today. While his political goals are often the focus of academic analysis, I bring attention to a central aspect of his thought which is tarbiyah (education and training) as the foundational element of his ideas on Islamic revival and societal reform. In al-Banna’s articles, religious tracts, manuals, and pamphlets, he promoted an Islamic theory of progressive change based on tarbiyah - defined by forms of ethical self-cultivation, spiritual refinement, and physical discipline - as an important step to Islamizing Egyptian society. My research demonstrates that Al-Banna married traditional Islamic ideas of the refinement of the soul to modern colonial and Arab theories of reform which linked the success and strength of the nation-state to the customs, habits, and ethics of its citizenry. The basis of his theory of social regeneration was the notion that cultivating modern, pious, Muslim subjects would be the means through which the Muslim Brotherhood could transform the social body in Egypt and Islamize the nation. He translated these ideas into elaborate training programs aimed at the membership of the Brotherhood, and forms of preaching and outreach directed at the wider community. My project draws on historical, textual, and ethnographic research with the conceptual tools of the self-cultivation paradigm, alongside emic Islamic concepts from the premodern Islamic philosopher al-Ghazali, to examine al-Banna’s conceptualization tarbiyah and social change, the various technologies of the self developed by the early Muslim Brotherhood, and the aims of the organization’s training programs within their long-term Islamist project.

Keywords: Egypt
Hasan al-Banna
Islam
Islamism
Muslim Brotherhood
Reformism
Advisor: Mittermaier, Amira
Investigation of Thermo-conformational Atributes of Flexible Nanocellulose Films for Electronic Devices

We live in a world where electronics play a pivotal role in our daily life. Nanoscale functional materials can be used to create electronic devices that are highly energy-efficient in their use, such as OLED lights, flexible monitors screens and solar panels. The huge demand for electronic products will lead to negative consequences such as e-waste and exhaustion of natural resources. It is therefore necessary to developed environmentally-friendly organic electronic devices that combine the functionality, thermal stability, durability and life span of functional materials. In this dissertation, I introduce my three studies aimed at coping with the thermal stability gap of cellulose nanofiber (CNF) films, and the behavior of films under long-term heat exposure, which is necessary for the manufacturing of sustainable flexible electronic substrates and ensuring their long life-span. For this purpose, first, I investigated the influence of thermal exposure on CNF films and their reactivity at different temperatures. These results determine the boundary temperature of films and the life-span of the substrate during long-term use. Second, I demonstrate the stability of the CNF film properties during thermal exposure and explore the flexibility of the nanocellulose chains, since there is no degradation effect during heat exposure at 190°C. Third, the mobility of the CNF chains during the investigation shows the changes of the glucopyranose units which were followed by a dynamical change trajectory during the conformation of the chain. Following that, I confirm the possibility of using CNF substrates in conventional manufacturing processes under the required temperature conditions. Fourth, different methods (superposition principle, isoconversional) are adapted to predict the behavior of the substrates as an electronic device during long-term use, which can improve the adaptability of the devices and their commercialization in the future. Finally, I demonstrate a flexible electronic device based on a CNF substrate that has been successfully manufactured (to which I contributed) and that has operated for more than 5 years. In summary, this dissertation provides solutions for CNF film substrates as the basis of the large-scale production of electronic devices made from sustainably derived biological materials and their durability during long-term use.

Advisor: Sain, Mohini
Transforming Sparse Matrix Computations

Sparse matrix computations are at the heart of many scientific applications and data analytics codes. The performance and memory usage of these codes depend heavily on their use of specialized sparse matrix data structures that only store the nonzero entries. However, such compaction is done using index arrays that result in indirect array accesses such as A[B[i]] where A and B are both arrays. Numerical libraries can provide high-performance code for an individual sparse kernel however they must be manually tuned and optimized for different inputs and architectures. Alternatively, compilers are used to optimize codes that provide architecture portability. Due to these indirect array accesses, memory access information is unknown at compile-time, and thus it is challenging to vectorize a sparse matrix method or run it in parallel cores.To automate the generation of code for efficient execution of sparse code, several compile-time and runtime techniques are required. Existing techniques are either not efficient or need manual effort to extend to different sparse matrix computations. Consequently, in this dissertation, I address the problem of automating the optimization of sparse matrix code on parallel processors with a specific focus on sparse linear solvers and numerical optimizations. This dissertation presents a set of code transformations and algorithms, all implemented in a novel code generator called Sympiler, that automates the optimization of sparse matrix codes on parallel processors. Sympiler takes a sparse method, arising from a sparse linear system or sparse numerical optimization, and decouples information related to the computation pattern of the method, i.e., symbolic information, and uses this information to transform the code to vectorizable and parallel code. Sympiler also enables the reuse of symbolic information when the computation pattern remains static for a period of time in the simulations or for when it changes modestly. Evaluation results show the automatically generated code by Sympiler provides between 1.2–3.1× speedup compared to highly optimized sparse linear solver libraries. It also improves the performance of sparse numerical optimization such as Quadratic Programming between 1.7–24.8× compared to highly efficient solvers.

Keywords: Compilers
Linear Algebra
Linear System Solvers
Numerical Optimization
Parallel Programming
Sparse Matrix
Advisor: Mehri Dehnavi, Maryam
Cyber-Psychopathy Revisited: Theorizing Contextual Gaps in Offending between Online and Offline Spaces

Cybercrime scholarship has historically relied on traditional criminological theories to explain online offending and victimization. However, the Internet represents a social context with unique structural conditions including anonymity, asynchronicity, fewer non-verbal cues, and less salient norms that may afford different criminal opportunities than face-to-face environments. From this perspective, I propose new theorizing frameworks that explicitly consider how the structural differences between online and offline spaces may underlie different offending outcomes between these contexts. In particular, I offer an application of “context-congruent” theorizing by revisiting my original cyber-psychopathy theory, which hypothesizes that some people respond to different opportunities and constraints on the Internet by dissociating into a deviant persona that favours online offending. I argue that this process can involve a shift in one’s online personality expression toward higher levels of primary and secondary psychopathic traits, such as a lack of empathy and greater impulsivity. I also show that this theory can improve our understanding of “contextual gaps” in which online misbehaviours are deemed more acceptable and/or are more likely to be performed than similar offline transgressions. Ultimately, this dissertation outlines my efforts to improve and validate the measurement of cyber-psychopathy and then to empirically test whether this theory can explain outcomes related to both online offending and contextual gaps in offending. My data come from two web-based surveys collected via Amazon Mechanical Turk (N=314) and a Qualtrics online panel (N=960). Quantitative analyses address the following: 1) the possibility of between-context differences in one’s psychopathic trait expression, 2) the predictors of online increases in these traits, 3) the effects of cyber-psychopathy on the acceptability and likelihood of online offending, 4) the role of cyber-psychopathy as mediating the relationship between structural-level predictors and online offending outcomes, and 5) whether online increases in psychopathic traits predict wider contextual gaps. While many results provide evidence in favour of the cyber-psychopathy theory, others introduce complexities that need to be unpacked in future research. Alongside these findings, I demonstrate the value of developing new theories that consider the criminological affordances of cyberspace and I highlight some practical implications arising from thinking “structurally” about online offending.

Keywords: Cyber Criminology
Cybercrime
Cyberspace
Internet
Online Offending
Technology
Advisor: Kruttschnitt, Candace
Development of Vertical Post-tensioned Connection for Modular Steel Buildings

The modular construction technique addressed in this thesis refers to the off-site fabrication of fully finished modules that are assembled on-site to form a larger, permanent building. The vertical connectivity between these modules is typically provided by either bolted or on-site welded connection. While the former interferes with the module’s finishing, the latter is time-consuming and cumbersome. Alternatively, the innovative vertical post-tensioned (PT) connection is composed of a threaded rod inserted in the hollow steel columns of the modules and anchored at the column’s ends and a steel box placed between consecutive columns. This research investigates the performance of the vertical PT connection – which does not interfere with finishing and eliminates on-site welding – as well as the typical vertical welded connection for modular steel buildings (MSBs) through experimental and numerical analyses. Ten quasi-static cyclic displacement tests were performed in full-scale subassemblies, and the main parameters of interest were lateral stiffness, relative rotation between columns, and failure mode. A finite element (FE) model was calibrated against experimental results and used to supplement the database. Both experimental and FE results indicated that the PT connection provides stiffness and strength similar to that of a typical welded connection up to 2% drift. Based on experimental and FE findings, a simplified connection model is developed and implemented in commercial design software, which enables system-level analyses of multi-story MSBs. The seismic performance of 6-story MSBs with the PT connection and with the typical welded connection was compared by means of pushover and nonlinear time-history analyses. Results from the pushover analysis indicated that the connection model suggested by the literature for the welded connection provides unrealistic results. Alternatively, the connection model for welded connections proposed herein provided a more realistic representation of the connection's behavior. Results from nonlinear time-history analyses revealed that the building with the PT connection exhibited reduced structural damage, roof acceleration, and story drifts while developing base shear comparable to that of the building with the welded connection. The findings of this research will hopefully support alternatives to typical vertical connections and shed light upon the dynamic performance of MSBs.

Keywords: Cyclic displacement experiments
Finite element model
Modular steel building
Numerical seismic analysis
Post-tensioned connection
SAP2000
Advisor: Mercan, Oya
The Fin de siècle Cultural Watershed in Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Novels

In my dissertation, I analysed Gabriele d’Annunzio’s answer to the fin de siècle crisis from Terra vergine to the end of Romanzi della rosa (Il Piacere, L’Innocente, Trionfo della morte), including Giovanni Episcopo, which along with L’Innocente is an expression of the so-called Slavic phase. Analysing this diegetic trajectory, I enhanced the emerging narrative of modernist thematic threads, which in my opinion have always been neglected by Italian literary criticism. Following d’Annunzio’s prose from 1882 (Terra vergine) to 1894 (Trionfo della morte), I highlighted how the writer thematized the concept of modern subjectivity, ingrained in all his characters, included some in Terra vergine, unanimously considered the most Verghian style of his works. In my analysis, I shed a new light on the interpretation of d’Annunzio’s first novels, showing how they mark the beginning of the new literary era, as they anticipate Modernism. All his characters, in fact, are alienated and fragmented subjects, who become a specimen of the modernist type, the so-called inept at living, who embodies the epistemological crisis of the fin de siècle. Starting with Il Piacere, d’Annunzio’s novels hinge on the protagonists’ interiority, undermining the role of the traditional plot and featuring the subjectification of time, which is the main modernist feature in d’Annunzio’s work. Although on the surface some of these novels still abide by the deterministic logic inherent in events, time is conceived as an existential enviroment, based on the protagonists’ recollection of events rather than on the chronological sequence of facts. Another element of novelty is the theme of the doubles, most evident in L’Innocente, which creates an allocentric system for all the characters. Trionfo della Morte reaches a new level of time abstraction and psychological analysis. As ominously hinted in the title, the novel’s tragic ending deploys the triumph of Thànatos over the protagonist’s quest for a vital force to cling on. The end of the novel thus symbolizes the closure of a narrative cycle, started in Terra vergine with the death of Dalfino, the first Dannunzian character to rip the sky of the positivistic certainties and see a hint of a Pirandellian oltre.

Keywords: d'Annunzio
fin de siecle
il piacere
l'innocente
Modernism
trionfo della morte
Advisor: Guardiani, Francesco
Somigli, Luca
Machine Learning Methods for Acceleration of Rare Genetic Disease Diagnosis

There exist more than 10,000 rare genetic diseases, which although individually have a relatively low prevalence, collectively impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The diagnosis process is usually difficult and slow, but an accurate and early diagnosis can be crucial for disease treatment and management. This thesis focuses on some of the important problems in this area and investigates whether using novel and more advanced machine learning methods can bring meaningful performance improvement that can eventually lead to better clinical outcomes. The first part of the thesis focuses on predicting undiscovered associations between disease phenotypes and proteins (as proxies for genes). The proposed approach utilizes the protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks and uses several novel machine learning techniques to improve the label propagation algorithm. These include a novel edge weight calibration component and a module for learning node importance weights, to regulate their network influence. Our experiments and ablation study show the effectiveness of these components. The second part addresses some of the important challenges on detection of phenotype mentions in clinical text, such as the scarcity of manually annotated training data, a resource that conventional general domain machine learning methods heavily depend on. The proposed method uses a neural network encoder, trained only on the names and synonyms from an ontology, while utilizing the concepts’ taxonomy when learning their embeddings. This was the first work to utilize the taxonomy for concept recognition in text, and our experiments show that it can significantly improve the performance. The last part focuses on some of the challenges in non-invasive prenatal detection of genomic variants, using the cell-free DNA circulating in the maternal plasma. In particular, this work focuses on detecting copy number variations (CNVs), which is more difficult than the clinically well-established task of detecting chromosomal aneuploidy. The proposed approach uses a maximum-likelihood estimation method to detect fetal CNVs, based on the difference between the size distribution of fetal and maternal DNA fragments. This was the first work to utilize this information for CNV prediction and our method could achieve promising experimental results.

Keywords: biomedical ontologies
entitly linking
named entity recognition
non-invasive prenatal testing
PPI networks
protein function prediction
Advisor: Brudno, Michael
The Nature of Science: Teachers’ Views and Pedagogies

The purpose of this study is to explore how science teachers understand and teach the Nature of Science (NOS), which is an aspect of scientific literacy that can help address science denial in society. Qualitative data were collected from single interviews with twelve participants and single classroom observations with three of those participants. Participants spanning all grades were chosen from science teachers in the same school board who demonstrated their science understanding through a screening survey. Data showed that science teachers have a range of understanding of NOS, although they shared some general beliefs around concepts such as logic, evidence, and testability. Participant understanding diverged into science focused solely on understanding and explaining causes of scientific phenomena, perception of interrelations between science knowledge and society, and activism around socioscientific problems. Science teacher understanding of NOS had consequences on what they taught as science and pedagogies they employed to teach it. Findings of this research have long term implications for fighting science denial with education, a fight which has become critical for humanity’s surviving threats such as pandemics and climate change. Findings have immediate implications for curriculum and teacher education, recognizing that NOS needs to be made explicit in resources and expectations. Supports to overcome challenges teaching NOS are also described in this study.

Keywords: Nature of Science
science curriculum
science denial
science education
science pedagogy
scientific literacy
Advisor: Ryan, James
Multidentate Phosphorus and Nitrogen Donor Chelating Ligands: Facile Synthesis and Base-metal Coordination Chemistry

Phosphorus and nitrogen chelating ligands have seen widespread use in transition metal coordination chemistry for decades. The utility of these donor ligands with a multitude of denticities has been proven on countless occasions from Nobel prize-winning chemistry to large scale industrial application, to novel transition metal complex synthesis. Herein are presented contributions to the facile synthesis of various multidentate phosphorus-nitrogen donor chelating ligands and their coordination chemistry and reactivity with base-metals. The ligands are synthesized via a one-pot reductive amination of primary amines with in situ generated α-phosphinoacetaldehydes. The coordination chemistry of synthesized tridentate ligands is explored with iron(II), cobalt(II), zinc(II), and rhodium(I). The coordination chemistry of tetradentate ligands is explored exclusively with iron(II). Finally, novel polydentate ligands are used to synthesize multimetallic complexes of iron(II), cobalt(II), and nickel(II).

Keywords: Ligands
Multidentate
Organometallic
Transition metal
Advisor: Morris, Robert H