VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Caring on the 'Inside': Tales of a Critical Educator in a (More) Punitive Space

As a secondary-level educator with experiences in formal educational including mainstream, alternative, and programs in male correctional facilities, my learners seem to thrive because they feel cared-for. Ironically, I was never quite sure about what it means to be a caring educator. Through this narrative inquiry, I explore my experience teaching within two maximum security jails, in a metropolitan area of Canada. I explore and reflect on my pedagogical strategies and interactions to argue that caring teaching cannot fully interrupt/counteract the violence imposed by carceral systems but are capable of impacting individuals positively. This study, grounded in the narrative of teaching inside, considers how the procedures/expectations of jails work for and against caring pedagogies. I consider how it feels to teach within, how these learners identify me as a caring educator, and whether the teacher can sustain a caring pedagogy in a criminal justice system that enacts enduring harm.

Keywords: carceral education
caring pedagogy
criminal justice system
formal education
prison education
warm demander
Advisor: McCready, Dr. Lance
Aortic Luminal Remodeling After Intravascular Stent Therapy for Coarctation: Intermediate Results

It is perceived that repaired aortic coarctation no longer requires surveillance. Furthermore, it is unknown what happens to the aorta post-stent therapy. To understand whether and how the aorta remodels, we analyzed paired serial imaging of patients post-stent therapy against baseline data. A total of 135 patients underwent coarctation stenting. Mean follow-up time was 3.98 years, where 5% of patients underwent re-intervention due to complications, 3% developed aneurysms and 3% had stent fractures. There was significant reduction in aortic diameter immediately proximal to the left carotid artery, left subclavian artery, and the aorta distal to the stenosis (p

Keywords: coarctation
coarctation of the aorta
congenital heart defect
imaging
remodelling
Advisor: Horlick, Eric
Dosimetrist Workload Management Framework for Radiation Therapy Pre-treatment Operations

Dosimetrists are responsible for treatment plan formulation in radiation therapy. Management of dosimetrist workload should balance utilization and encourage fulfillment of plan deadlines. In this work we develop a methodology to manage dosimetrist workload using a mixed-integer linear program which considers partial future patient demand, dosimetrist skillsets, and capacity constraints. Dosimetrists’ workload and schedule are represented by state variables which incorporate plan’s planning time, deadline, and dosimetrists’ autonomy. We show a greater utilization balance between dosimetrists and decreased overtime compared to historical policies using a simulation designed with data from Odette Cancer Center in Toronto, Ontario. Finally, we introduce and evaluate methods to increase assignment flexibility through selective dosimetrist training and relaxation of dosimetrist assignment constraints.

Keywords: Assignment Problem
Operations Research
Optimization
Process Flexibility
Radiation Therapy
Workload Management
Advisor: Chan, Timothy C.Y.
Embodied Emissions in Rail Infrastructure: A Critical Study

This study investigates the state of knowledge in quantifying the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in rail infrastructure and develops a novel underspecified model to evaluate the effect of external design factors on the embodied construction materials of an excavated rail station infrastructure. Starting with a critical literature review that identified 22-publications, containing 57 rail infrastructure case studies, the study examines the GHG impact per kilometre of infrastructure reported across the case studies and compares the boundaries, functional units, methods, and data used. This study presents the need for standardization in embodied emissions reporting and shows that different external factors (which are water table, soil type, floor height, number of train cars, station length and building codes) uniquely influence the embodied rail infrastructure construction materials. The study provides a flexible planning level method for engineers, urban planners, and policy makers to preliminarily analyze embodied emissions associated with rail station infrastructure.

Keywords: Embodied Emissions
Excavated Station
Green House Gas
Infrastructure
Rail
Advisor: Saxe, Shoshanna
Ghafghazi, Mason
Measuring the Extended Phenotype using a Dimensional Model of Personality in Bipolar and Gambling Disorder

The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) was used to determine whether pathological personality domains can discriminate between gambling disorder (GD) participants and community controls, and also bipolar disorder (BD) participants and community controls, and if so, which of the PID-5 domains best distinguish between the groups. Understanding personality traits associated with impulsivity may assist with diagnostic accuracy and contribute to the understanding of the etiology of the disorders. GD participants, BD participants and community controls completed the PID-5 questionnaire on an online platform. The findings revealed significant group differences on all PID-5 domains, except Antagonism. At the domain level, Disinhibition best discriminated between the diagnostic and control groups for both GD and BD. The facets Impulsivity and Distractibility contributed the most to the discrimination between groups, for GD and BD participants respectively. The results emphasize the potential clinical utility of the PID-5 in distinguishing between normative and maladaptive impulsive behaviours.

Keywords: Bipolar Disorder
Gambling Disorder
Impulsivity
Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5)
Advisor: Erb, Suzanne
The Effect of Empagliflozin on Kidney Injury Markers in Subjects with Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease: A Sub-analysis of the EMPA-HEART CardioLink-6 Trial

Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors confer profound cardiorenal protection in type 2 diabetes (T2D). To better define potential mechanisms that underlie the renal benefits of SGLT2 inhibition, we assessed changes in various urinary biomarkers, sodium and glucose excretion, in a prespecified sub-analysis of the EMPA-HEART CardioLink-6 trial. In a cohort of patients with T2D at relatively low risk for diabetic kidney disease progression, empagliflozin treatment for six months reduced urinary kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1) excretion by 34% (p=0.03). No significant differences were observed with the other renal biomarkers. The reduction in KIM-1, in the absence of changes in albuminuria, raises the possibility that SGLT2 inhibitors act primarily to protect the proximal tubule, thus delaying the progression of diabetic kidney disease. Importantly, empagliflozin treatment did not significantly increase sodium excretion, suggesting that SGLT2 inhibitor-induced plasma volume reduction is a consequence of osmotic (glucose) diuresis rather than natriuresis.

Keywords: Biomarkers
Diabetic kidney disease
Sodium glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors
Type 2 Diabetes
Advisor: Verma, Subodh
Spiralling Back To The Spark: A Spiritual Journey Towards Authentic Creativity

Grounded in the philosophical assumptions associated with holistic education and transformative teacher development, this narrative inquiry is a collaborative self-study that explores how spiritual practices contribute to the creative process through the primary research question; How do I connect with my soul through spiritual practices? Core themes emerging from this study include Intention, Identity, Intuition, Integration, Paradox, Voice, Embodied Teaching, Social Justice, and Death/Pain as Teacher. Its findings include the inextricably entangled nature of soul, authenticity, and creativity and demonstrates the imperative role spiritual practices play in spiralling back along the path through and beyond the layers we’ve built up, made up of false identities, fear, and perfectionism towards our own true essence—our souls in creating a more loving and unified way forward for all living things both inside and outside of the classroom.

Keywords: Authenticity
Creativity
Holistic Education
Personal Development
Spiritual Education
Teacher Development
Advisor: Miller, John P
Identifying the Effects of Different Juvenile Stress Protocols on Adult Fear and Anxiety-like Behaviours in C57BL/6J Mice

Both chronic1–3 and sub-chronic4,5 stress experienced in early life are associated with the development of psychopathologies such as anxiety and greater adulthood stress susceptibility, along with atypical medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)-amygdala circuitry maturation6–8. mPFC-amygdala circuitry, which mediates anxiety-like behaviours9,10, undergoes significant developmental changes in juvenility, specifically11,12. Therefore, it is thought that juvenility might constitute a period of neurodevelopmental sensitivity to the effects of stress for behaviours dependent on mPFC-amygdala circuitry. To test this theory, our study targeted the precise ages in juvenility that are associated with significant mPFC-amygdala circuit maturation in C57BL/6J mice with both chronic and sub-chronic stress. However, we failed to detect a clear effect of stress on anxiety-like behaviour, fear learning and extinction, and susceptibility to stress when the mice were tested in adulthood. These results do not support juvenility as a sensitive period to the effects of stress for behaviours mediated by mPFC-amygdala circuitry.

Keywords: Amygdala
Anxiety
Fear extinction
Medial prefrontal cortex
Sensitive period
Stress
Advisor: Arruda-Carvalho, Maithe
Leveraging Proposals and Shape Reconstruction for Monocular 3D Object Detection and Object-centric Stereo Matching for 3D Object Detection

Safe autonomous driving requires reliable 3D object detection-the task of estimating 3D bounding boxes for objects of interest in the scene. This thesis introduces a monocular 3D object detector that accurately estimates the 3D position of objects by first generating 3D proposals, using a novel 2D bounding box prior, then refining them in a second stage. Depth information is further learned by jointly optimizing these predicted object positions and the task of point cloud reconstruction. A stereo 3D object detector is also introduced. Compared to previous methods, it only estimates disparities for pixels belonging to objects of interest, which mitigates point cloud artifacts seen in full scene depth maps and improves runtime speed. Moreover, a novel point cloud loss is presented to combat the issue that typical disparity loss functions insufficiently penalize far depths. Both detectors achieve state-of-the-art results on the KITTI dataset when compared to other camera-based methods.

Keywords: 3D Object Detection
Autonomous Driving
Autonomous Vehicles
Scene Understanding
Advisor: Waslander, Steven
Predicting Mutual Fund Redemptions with Collaborative Filtering

In this thesis, various collaborative filtering (CF) approaches with latent variable models were investigated for predicting sparse, large mutual fund (MF) redemptions by advisors. CF with weighted matrix factorization (WMF) was shown to produce the highest precision and recall on the proprietary dataset provided by a financial institution (FI). Different advisor characteristics were tested for applicability in the CF framework. External data sources such as a stock market index and a short term interest rate were reviewed for potential extensions to the work presented. The work presented in this thesis provides a technique for the FI to predict large MF redemptions to potentially prepare more effective client sales interactions with advisors.

Keywords: collaborative filtering
deep learning
finance
machine learning
mutual funds
redemptions
Advisor: Plataniotis, Kostantinos
Lawryshyn, Yuri
Antipsychotic Treatment-resistance in Schizophrenia: Subtypes, Treatment Response, and Long-term Outcome

Background: Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia (TRS) is a sub-group of schizophrenia (20%-30%). Some patients present with no initial response to non-clozapine compounds (TRS from the outset), while others develop it over time. Methods: We explore short-term response trajectories and long-term outcome (symptom severity, functioning, cognition, subjective well-being) among 120 clozapine-treated patients with standardized algorithm. Differences between TRS sub-types are identified. Results: In total, 78/120 patients present with TRS from the outset while 42/120 develop TRS, achieving remission rates of 65.4% and 85.7%, respectively. Significant time-illness group interactions (p

Keywords: Clozapine
Schizophrenia
Treatment-Resistance
Advisor: Agid, Ofer
Remington, Gary
Feature Engineering and Machine Learning Methodologies using Customer Debit and Credit Transactions for Predicting Savings Account and Home Equity Line of Credit Acquisition

The objective of this thesis is to investigate feature engineering methodologies for customer credit and debit transaction data and evaluate their utility in developing machine learning models on the Apache Spark framework for two common marketing targets: savings account acquisition and home equity line of credit acquisition. The utility of the new features (predictor variables) is evaluated in comparison to the Bank’s previous marketing models, and in combination with an existing library of predictor variables aggregated from various databases. The results show that there is potential to both automate the process of creating features from transaction data using word embeddings, and to use them in combination with gradient boosted decision trees to increase model performance. However, the parameters, methods, and applications tested in this thesis are not exhaustive, and should serve as an example for further exploration.

Keywords: feature engineering
financial services
gradient boosting
machine learning
xgboost
Advisor: Paradi, Joseph C.
Exploring the Relationship between Performance on a Series of Squat based Movement Tasks and Passive Range of Motion Capacity – Is Successful Performance a Valid Method of Ruling out Range of Motion Restrictions?

The squatting task is commonly employed as an expedient tool to evaluate the passive range of motion capacity of ankle dorsiflexion (DF-PROM) and hip flexion (HF-PROM). However, it is unclear if performance on this active task can be used to make inferences regarding the passive range of motion available at these joints. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between DF-PROM and HF-PROM, and performance on screens consisting of low demand squat derivatives, scored using different grading criteria. Two hundred and sixty-six collegiate athletes participated in this investigation. Strong statistical evidence (p

Keywords: Active Range of Motion
Movement Screens
Passive Range of Motion
Rule out
Squat
Advisor: Frost, David M
Understanding the Role of LRBA in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Pathogenic mutations in LRBA is one of the genetic causes of very early-onset inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A pediatric patient presented with immunodeficiency with chronic diarrhea and intraepithelial lymphocytosis features, which are highly suggestive of Autoimmune Enteropathy. We performed whole exome sequencing on the patient and identified a rare and damaging heterozygous nonsense mutation in LRBA (Lipopolysaccharide Response Beige-like Anchor). We confirmed LRBA deficiency in the patient by observing a loss of LRBA at the mRNA and protein level. The function of LRBA is poorly characterized; however, it has been speculated to have a regulatory role in autophagy and apoptosis. Furthermore, a BioID screen on LC3, an essential protein in the autophagy pathway, identified LRBA as one of the top interactors. We hypothesized that LRBA regulates autophagy through interaction with LC3, such that a loss of LRBA results in defective autophagy and increases cell death.

Keywords: autophagy
ibd
inflammatory bowel disease
lc3
lrba
veoibd
Advisor: Muise, Aleixo M
Metabolic Availability of Lysine in Cooked Sorghum in Healthy Adult Males using the Combined Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation and Slope Ratio Method

Metabolic Availability of Lysine in Cooked Sorghum in Healthy Adult Males Using the Combined Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation and Slope Ratio Method Alyssa Paoletti Master of Science The Department of Nutritional Sciences University of Toronto 2019 Abstract The metabolic availability (MA) of lysine was studied using the indicator amino acid oxidation (IAAO) method in 5 healthy adult men. Each subject participated in 8 experiments. Principles of slope-ratio were applied to evaluate the MA of lysine in sorghum by comparing the IAAO response to varying intakes of lysine in cooked sorghum relative to the IAAO response to free crystalline lysine. The IAAO response to complementing lysine from sorghum and lentils in a mixed meal format was also assessed. The MA of lysine from cooked sorghum was found to be 94%. Complementation with lentils resulted in a decline in oxidation reflecting increased protein synthesis. The findings demonstrate that most of the lysine in cooked sorghum is available for protein synthesis. A combination of sorghum and lentil in a 1: 1 ratio is recommended for individuals consuming a plant-based sorghum and lentil diet.

Keywords: cereal grains
indicator amino acid oxidation
metabolic availability
protein quality
sorghum
Advisor: Courtney-Martin, Glenda
Pencharz, Paul
Moral Language Across the Political Spectrum

Across two studies, we analyzed ideological differences in moral language use based on the moral categories posited by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT): fairness, harm, authority, purity, and ingroup loyalty. In Study 1 we used word counting to assess the moral language used on U.S. political talk shows, finding some support for MFT: Democrats used more language related to fairness and Republicans used more language related to authority. Republicans also used more language related to morality in general. No other differences were significant. In Study 2, we analyzed the Tweets of members of the 115th U.S. Congress, and found that Democrats used more moral language across all MFT categories than Republicans. A time series analysis revealed that these differences are larger after the 2016 Presidential election. These findings suggest that there are differences in moral language use across the political spectrum, and that these differences may be affected by political events.

Keywords: moral foundations theory
morality
politics
Advisor: Inbar, Yoel
A Radiopharmaceutical Kit to Prepare Unilamellar Porphysome Nanovesicles with Positron-emitting Radionuclide Copper-64 for Dual-modal Positron Emission Tomography and Fluorescence Imaging

The Porphysome is a first-in-class, one-component nanomedicine self-assembled from porphyrin-phospholipid conjugates into nanoscale bilayered vesicles. Porphysomes have demonstrated unrivalled versatility and functionality for imaging advanced solid tumours with positron emission tomography (PET) and porphyrin fluorescence, motivating their further development in preparation for clinical phase 1 trials. To this end, a radiopharmaceutical kit to prepare positron-emitting Porphysomes with Copper-64 suitable for parenteral administration is manufactured in accordance with current good manufacturing practice regulations. Descriptions of the manufacturing process and process controls, active ingredient characteristics and specifications, analytical procedures and acceptance criteria are detailed in standard operating procedures. Positron-emitting Porphysomes are characterised in a preclinical model to ascertain their anatomical distribution and pharmacokinetic profile over a forty-eight hour period with two orthogonal modalities of quantification. Finally, modelling of the radiation dosimetry of positron-emitting Porphysomes in an adult male is performed with preclinical data to inform the design of early phase trials.

Keywords: CGMP
Clinical Trial Application
Fluorescence Imaging
Nanovesicle
Positron Emission Tomography
Radiopharmaceutical
Advisor: Zheng, Gang
Bernardini, Marcus Q
Identifying Causes of Delay in Interfacility Transports of Injured Patients Transported by Air Ambulance in Ontario

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this thesis was to examine patient, paramedic, and institutional-related risk factors for delay and identify specific causes of delays in interfacility transfers by air ambulance. METHODS: Quantile regression was used to identify patient, paramedic and institutional risk factors for delay. Manual chart review to identify specific causes of delay during interfacility transport. RESULTS: Characteristics associated with shorter time intervals included nursing station as sending facility, rotor-wing aircraft and critical care paramedic crew. Patients requiring mechanical ventilation or transported from academic centres were all associated with prolonged times. A total of 458 causes of delay were identified. The most frequent delays included refuelling, waiting for land EMS escort, documentation, and delays for intubation, chest tube insertion and diagnostic imaging. CONCLUSION: Ventilator dependence, paramedic level of care, classification of sending facility and helipad availability are associated with delays to interfacility transport of injured patients.

Keywords: Air ambulance
Delays
Injury
Interfacility transport
Prehospital care
Trauma
Advisor: Nathens, Avery
Vision Based Human Pose Estimation for Gait Assessment of Older Adults with Dementia

Falls are detrimental to older adults with dementia. While gait assessment is used as an indicator of falls risk, existing gait assessment methods are insufficient for use on the dementia population. Recent developments in computer vision have led to the availability of open source human pose estimation algorithms, which automatically estimate the joint locations of people in images. In this study, a pre-existing pose estimation model was experimentally evaluated on images of older adults with dementia walking. Gait features were extracted from recordings of gait bouts and significant associations of those gait features with clinical mobility assessment scores and future falls data were found. This showed that pose estimation models are able to accurately track joint locations in most collected videos and provided a preliminary validation of this approach for automated gait assessment based on gait and balance data which is collected frequently and unobtrusively.

Keywords: Computer Vision
Dementia
Gait Assessment
Human Pose Estimation
Advisor: Taati, Babak
Iaboni, Andrea
Force Sensing and Force Feedback in Minimally Invasive Surgery

Robotic surgery has begun to substitute both open surgery and laparoscopy. While there are many advantages to robotic devices such as the da Vinci Surgical System, there is a disconnection between hand and patient, resulting in a loss of haptics. There is an opportunity to re-establish the connection with the use of an external stimulus that can provide feedback, either through the visual, tactile, or auditory senses. The forces applied throughout the procedure can be measured and mapped to a change in colour, vibration, or sound, allowing the surgeon to have more awareness. Seven participants were given the task of completing a suturing task on a simulated phantom while either receiving no feedback, audio, visual, or combined feedback that represents the magnitude of their applied force. Trials involving feedback demonstrated reduced forces, suggesting more awareness and lower chances of post surgical complication for application to an actual operation.

Keywords: Feedback
Force
Haptics
Headphones
Robotics
Surgery
Advisor: Drake, James