VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Student Engagement: Chinese International Student Experiences in Canadian Graduate Schools

This study investigates the learning and practical experience of Chinese international students in Canadian graduate schools to increase their engagement and enhance their experience. Specifically, this research explores the challenges and needs faced by Chinese international graduate students engaging in Canada. Qualitative data were collected in the form of student and staff member interviews and educational policies from an urban university in Canada. Generally, the participants have varied understanding of student engagement from their experiences and cultural backgrounds. The determining factors that influence Chinese international graduate students’ engagement in Canadian institutions include cultural differences, language barriers and identities, student motivation, sense of belonging and community inclusivity, the expectations of parents, instructors, and peers, personality, interests, financial burdens and employment barriers, and gender-based differences. To better engage in and out of the classroom, Chinese international graduate students need the support of their academic and social engagement and the supporting resources. They need the support from the following areas: academic and professional development, language and cultural awareness, critical awareness and engagement, the environment based on equity, diversity, and inclusivity, sense of belonging, student voice and leadership, financial resources, health life including mental health, safety and wellness, and time management. Implications from this study suggest deconstructing the Western dominant ways of the understanding of student engagement. These findings provide some practical suggestions for Chinese international graduate students to better engage in Canadian graduate institutions and for staff to better support Chinese graduate international students. They also suggest some directions for future research.

Keywords: Cultural Identity
Internationalization
Social Justice
Student Engagement
Student Motivation
Student Voice
Advisor: McDougall, Douglas
Exploring Urinary Epigenetic Biomarkers for Identification of Aggressive Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common non-cutaneous malignancy in men. However, the majority of PCa diagnoses are localized, low-grade, clinically insignificant (CI-PCa) tumours that are unlikely to progress. The current clinical challenges for PCa patient management are to reduce the over-treatment of patients with CI-PCa and the early identification of patients with clinically significant cancer (CS-PCa). To address these challenges, most patients diagnosed with low-grade tumours are recommended enrollment into Active Surveillance (AS) protocols where they are frequently monitored with MRI if available, repeated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests and digital rectal exams (DREs), and periodic prostate biopsies. Around 20-30% of AS patients will show signs of progression within 5 years. They are then “reclassified” with higher-risk disease and offered definitive treatment. While AS reduces over-treatment of CI-PCa patients, monitoring via prostate biopsies is invasive and causes morbidity. Additionally, patients who will reclassify may benefit from earlier identification and treatment instead of monitoring until symptoms of progression are exhibited. In this regard, non-invasive biomarkers that can distinguish CI-PCa and CS-PCa patients upfront, are warranted. Epigenetic dysregulations, including DNA methylation and miRNAs, are hallmarks of PCa. They are beneficial to serve as potential biomarkers for PCa diagnosis and prognosis as they require small amounts of starting material, is very stable, and can be assessed in a variety of different sources including non-invasively collected liquid biopsies such as serum or urine. Previously, my lab has discovered and/or characterized several DNA methylation and miRNA biomarkers that are associated with CS-PCa. In this thesis, I assess these biomarkers in the urine samples of patients at varying stages of PCa. I developed and validated two DNA methylation biomarker panels that can differentiate between CI-PCa from CS-PCa (AUC=0.795) and predict AS patient reclassification (OR=2.695). Additionally, I developed a panel consisting of both urinary DNA methylation and miRNAs that could predict AS patient reclassification (OR=2.166). The findings presented in this thesis, with further validation, will hopefully lead to non-invasive urine-based tests that will drive clinical decision making to improve PCa patient management and reduce invasive biopsies and their associated morbidity.

Keywords: Active Surveillance
Biomarkers
DNA methylation
miRNA
Prostate Cancer
Urine-based biomarker
Advisor: Bapat, Bharati
Individual and Environmental Determinants of Traffic Emissions and Near-road Air Quality

On-road motor vehicles are responsible for a considerable proportion of near-road air pollution. While background levels of air pollutants are continuously tracked by regional monitoring networks, assessing near-road air quality remains a challenge in urban areas with complex built environments, traffic composition, and meteorological variation, leading to significant spatiotemporal variability in air pollution. This research addresses current gaps in the literature on local traffic emissions and near-road air quality. This thesis first investigates the effect of traffic volume and speed data on the simulation of vehicle emissions and hotspot analysis. Traffic emissions are estimated using radar data as well as simulated traffic based on various speed aggregation methods. It provides recommendations for project-level analysis and particulate matter (PM) hotspot analysis. We further compare fleet averaged emission factors (EFs) derived from a traffic emission model, the Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator (MOVES), with EFs using plume-based measurements. This second module stresses the need to collect local traffic information for a better understanding of on-road traffic emissions. Besides, we validate default drive cycles in MOVES against representative drive cycles derived based on real-world GPS data. The validation results are helpful for transportation planners to quantify uncertainties in emission estimation and employ appropriate methods to improve the estimation of on-road emission inventories. The third module develops eco-score models and evaluates the effect of various factors such as driver and trip characteristics on emission intensities. The results shed light on the impact of driving style on emissions and identify the most important factors affecting the amount of emissions generated by every individual driver. The fourth module focuses on the impact of traffic emissions on near-road air quality and presents the results of two different experiments. First, it explores the effect of various factors on near-road ultrafine particle (UFP) concentrations based on short-term fixed monitoring, which stresses the significance of using local traffic characteristics to improve near-road air quality prediction. In addition, it captures the distribution of truck movements in urban environments and investigates the impacts of land-use variables and detailed traffic information on near-road Black Carbon (BC) concentrations.

Keywords: Air quality modelling
Drive cycles
Emission factors
Local traffic characterization
Machine learning approach
Traffic emisssions
Advisor: Hatzopoulou, Marianne
Three Essays in Industrial Organization

This thesis includes three chapters studying topics related to industrial organization. In the first two chapters, I study auctions with discrete bidding increments and bidding costs (henceforth pay-per-bid auctions). In chapter one, I develop a general theoretical framework for pay-per-bid auctions. In this model, bidders have private valuations and arrive exogenously throughout the duration of the auction. Participants are uncertain about the number of other bidders in the auction and I allow the bidders to have non-equilibrium beliefs about this state variable. I then propose a simulated method of moments estimator which I use to recover the underlying structural parameters even when bidders have biased beliefs. Using data from an online auction website called Swoopo, I show that the revenues we observe cannot be generated by a model where bidders have rational expectations but is consistent with a model where bidders have biased beliefs. In chapter two of the thesis, I show that while pay-per-bid auctions generate excess revenues, there is also significant variation in these revenues and markups across different products and categories. Using the theoretical framework and methodology developed in the first chapter, I separately estimate the structural parameters for different products. Finally, given these estimates, I use counterfactual analysis to decompose the sources of markup heterogeneity in these auctions In chapter three of the paper, I study the identification and estimation of dynamic models of market entry when firms can choose to buy or lease fixed inputs. I am particularly interested in the identification of counterfactuals which change the stochastic process of the state variables. I first show that without any additional restrictions, the structural parameters of the model are not point identified. Second, I propose plausible exclusion restrictions that provide point identification of the counterfactuals of interest. Finally, I propose a simple simulation based method to construct confidence regions for counterfactual choice probabilities when they are not point identified. I show the validity of the method using Monte Carlo experiments.

Keywords: Auctions
Dynamic Models
Advisor: Aguirregabiria, Victor
Citizenship, Authorship, and Disability in Cervantes and Scarron

Noting the all-too-recent interest of disability scholars in early modern literature, this dissertation seeks to establish a way forward for the study of disability in a period-appropriate way. Through its juxtaposition of disabled authors’ Paul Scarron and Miguel de Cervantes’ paratexts and their treatment of disability in literary texts, it seeks to elucidate a possible relationship between disability and representation. It uses popular lexicographies to trace the diverse and changing vocabulary the two authors employed for different impairments. At the same time, it considers different genres, such as epic and drama, and modes like the burlesque, which were particularly accessible to disabled men of the period. This dissertation provides an account of the differing disabilities of both authors, and how their respective disabilities called into question their national identities. The stakes were high for both. Cervantes had to demonstrate that though the hand was a symbol of Hispanitas, or Spanishness, in losing his he had only become more Spanish. For Scarron, his inflammatory disease, which had left him with a dramatic spinal curvature, meant that he needed to employ the burlesque to demonstrate both his wit (a courtly and French quality) and his natural humour. The authors' disabilities are considered in relation to the organ or functioning which was impacted, as well as its associated symbolism and history. Since early modern people did not collapse all impairments into one category the way we do today with the term "disabled," their understanding of each impairment and its particular context and history indicates a way forward for contemporary scholars who grapple with today’s all-inclusive identity category of "disability."

Keywords: Cervantes
early modern
Milton
Moliere
Renaissance
Scarron
Advisor: Nyquist, Mary E
Development of Chemoselective Transformations for Organic Synthesis: From Amphoteric Boronates to Benzynes

A significant challenge in organic chemistry is the development of methodologies capable of synthesizing new molecular motifs or previously inaccessible scaffolds. Previous research in the Yudin laboratory has utilized amphoteric molecules to address this challenge. These compounds contain orthogonally reactive nucleophilic and electrophilic sites, and they offer a versatile platform for the development of chemo- and regioselective chemical transformations. Chapters 1 – 3 of this thesis focuses on the development of amphoteric MIDA (N-methyliminodiacetic acid) boronates and their application in the synthesis of novel borylated compounds. In chapter 1, amphoteric ⍺-boryl aldehydes are utilized in the Ugi 4-component reaction for the modular synthesis of β-amino boronates. A mild deprotection method provided the free boronic acid forms of the target molecules, which display notable stability toward protodeborylation. Utilizing this methodology, a low-micromolar inhibitor of DPP-IX was developed. Chapter 2 describes the application of ⍺-boryl aldehydes in the synthesis of electron-deficient allylboronates, which are then used as a foundation for borylated thiophene synthesis. This is the first example of borylated heterocycle synthesis from allylboronates. Chapter 3 details the development of a copper-catalyzed synthesis of amphoteric borylketenimines, and their utility as linchpin reagents. A variety of previously inaccessible borylated compounds were synthesized utilizing this methodology. Chapter 4 deviates from the previous 3 in that amphoteric reactivity is not explored. In this chapter, we explore the effect of MIDA hemilability on allylic C-H oxidation. During the reaction, the MIDA amine reacts as a nucleophile – intercepting the palladium-catalyzed allylic acetoxylation and re-routes the reaction to furnish stable, allylammonium ⍺-amino boronates. Finally in Chapter 5, the reactivity of vinylaziridines with benzynes is explored. Depending on the reaction conditions and the choice of the aryne precursor, the aziridinium intermediate can be trapped through two distinct mechanistic pathways, furnishing either benzazepines or allyl fluorides with complete stereospecificity.

Keywords: benzyne
boron
catalysis
cross-coupling
heterocycle synthesis
MIDA
Advisor: Yudin, Andrei K
Essays on Contract Design in Marketing

This thesis examines how firms design their contracts in different marketing contexts. The first essay theoretically investigates the impact of external advances in consumption tracking technologies on the design of pricing contracts. Using the context of mobile banking applications that help consumers track their spending and avoid penalty fees for overdrawing their accounts, I find that in response to the availability of consumption tracking, a firm would lower its penalty fee (just enough to disincentivize consumers from using it). As a result, consumer welfare improves even if consumers do not use consumption tracking technology. When consumers vary in their forgetfulness, the availability of consumption tracking technology can hurt some consumers, while helping others. The second essay examines contracts in the context of new product development. I develop a theoretical model to explain the prevalence of standardized incentive plans, which provide a reward without considering the differential amount of resources invested in the projects. I model the phenomena where a representative project manager has private information about the quality of her own project and can manipulate the signal of project quality that the organization receives during the identification/resource-allocation stage. I show that when the manager manipulates the signal, a standardized incentive plan encourages the manager of a high-quality project to manipulate more and stand out. I argue that under some conditions a standardized incentive plan can be preferred because such a plan leads to more accurate resource allocation, even though a customized incentive plan is more efficient in inducing implementation effort.

Keywords: Behavioral Econimics
Contract Design
Frogetting
New Product Development
Technology
Advisor: Shi, Mengze
A Phenomenological Account of Women Graduate Students: Lived Experience of Challenges in Global Public Health Practice

During the last two decades academic global public health grew dramatically, including higher student demand to participate in internationally-based fieldwork. As a foundational space for graduate level training, practice, and research activities, the university plays a primary and significant role in the formation and future practice of students. While academic research and practice opportunities within international settings may provide unique experiences for U.S. and Canadian graduate students, it remains an overlooked area of inquiry. At times, these experiences can be intensely challenging or distressing, with additional burdens experienced by women. This study aims to gain insight into the lived experience of Canadian and U.S. women graduate students participating in global public health practice, and how they experience this phenomenon. This study is situated within Max van Manen’s qualitative methodology, phenomenology of practice. This hermeneutic approach is aimed at meaning-making through emotional, embodied, existential, and pathic ways of knowing. Seven women participated in 18 in-depth phenomenological interviews, while 18 women completed a guided writing exercise. Data creation methods were designed to capture lived experience descriptions of global public health practice. Key themes discussed in this dissertation include sexual and gender-based violence and harassment, discomfort with privilege, mental health challenges (specifically depression), and not being heard. Further findings focused on the burden of hidden labor performed by women to keep themselves safe from sexual and gender-based violence, including discussion on travel safety and transportation, witnessing or experiencing violence, lack of preparedness or follow-up, financial burdens and stress, and support networks and peer relationships as protective. The experience of participating in global public health practice is of particular consequence to the training, education, and future practice of graduate students. This study holds the potential to positively affect an individual’s experience, and thus practice, through offering new meaning structures, language for an unfamiliar experience, or ways to describe, conceive of, and respond to global public health fieldwork. Furthermore, by dedicating space to this phenomenon and giving voice to women graduate students’ lived experience, public health institutions may be better able to recognize, validate, respond to, and support students participating in global public health practice.

Keywords: distress
global public health
graduate students
hidden labor
mental health
sexual and gender based violence
Advisor: Di Ruggiero, Erica
Sellen, Daniel
Altered 3D Vascular Architecture and Cerebral Blood Flow in a Mouse Model of TBI

It is established in traumatic brain injury (TBI) animal models that the vasculature undergoes loss and recovery. Although past studies have correlated vascular structural alterations with cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes or functional outcome, analysis has largely focused on histological measures of vessel density and diameter. However, it is the 3D organization of cerebral blood vessels that determines the overall capacity of the cerebral circulation to meet the metabolic requirements of the brain. To examine function and 3D organization in the same mouse brain, a methodology was developed combining in vivo Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) MRI to quantify blood flow under rest and hypercapnia followed by ex vivo 2-photon fluorescence microscopy (2PFM) to quantify 3D vascular structure. Application of this methodology to a controlled cortical impact mouse model of TBI enabled analysis of the evolution of vascular architecture and its relation to blood flow. Despite early (1-day) loss of vasculature, vessel density and vascular volume recovered 1-month post-TBI. However, the reorganized vasculature possessed a radial pattern that corresponded to low blood flow. Since these microvascular alterations are difficult to directly detect with in vivo technologies, ultrasound wave reflection analysis was applied to the carotid arteries of these mice. It was demonstrated that quantification of cerebral vascular resistance with ultrasound has the potential to detect whether a mouse received a TBI. Ultrasound therefore may present an efficient, non-invasive method for detecting TBI via changes in vascular architecture.

Keywords: 2-photon fluorescence microscopy
Arterial Spin Labeling MRI
Blood flow
Traumatic brain injury
Ultrasound wave reflection
Vascular remodeling
Advisor: Sled, John G.
Teachers’ Preference for Mathematics Instructional Practice and Professional Learning after Participating in an RCT Study: A Mixed Methods Study

My dissertation examines the process of knowledge transfer (KT) from an effectiveness randomized controlled trial (RCT) into daily practice, specifically whether professional development, new program content, and teacher’s characteristics influence teachers’ uptake decisions. Teacher learning as experienced in the RCT and implementation as described through teacher interviews are used to explore practice choices. My research was situated within the context of an externally funded and registered randomized control trial (#NCT02456181) involving 212 elementary school teachers that examined the effectiveness of two contrasting math programs. Research data was derived from three sources: a baseline questionnaire and mathematics measure (n=198) probing teaching-efficacy and knowledge for mathematics, a one-year post RCT survey (n=98) of teachers’ use of the mathematics programs from the RCT and semi-structured interviews (n=14) in which teachers reflected on participating in the study and mathematics instruction. During the RCT, the host school board was midway through implementing collaborative inquiry (CI) as part of a teacher professional iii learning initiative. This permitted for a comparison of contrasting teacher professional learning models. A phased mixed-method design was used for this thesis. Teachers’ learning experiences from their RCT participation were compared with interview responses to identify similarities and differences related to their training and their daily practice. These findings were then used to explain the survey uptake results. Survey results revealed a noteworthy uptake of the novel mathematics program one year after the study: 31% of teachers reported using the program as a full replacement and 26% reported using it as a resource. Measures for teacher’s mathematics knowledge (standardized math test) and teaching-efficacy for the program (self-reported questionnaire) suggested teacher competence and confidence for teaching new programs, irrespective of characteristics (e.g., education, experience, sex) or situational factors (e.g., grade level, pedagogical program). Interviewed teachers preferred experiential learning, accessing new math knowledge from peers, and autonomy in establishing pedagogical practices. The study results present teachers as capable learners of a new mathematics program, yet preferring to choose the content and approach to professional learning. These results support including teachers as equal partners in the development of any new math implementation strategies.

Keywords: knowledge transfer
mathematics education
practice change
professional education
Advisor: Tannock, Rosemary