VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Measuring the Short-Term Effect of Ambient Air Pollution on Acute Health Service Use in Ontarians Living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Short-term air pollution exposure has been associated with increased morbidity, especially amongst vulnerable populations like those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) is an aggregate measure of overall ambient air pollution. It was designed to communicate to the public in an understandable way air quality levels, associated health risks, and strategies to reduce exposure. Its formulation was based on relative mortality and little is known about the association between the AQHI and morbidity amongst individuals with COPD. The objective of my dissertation is to determine the association between ambient air pollution and acute health service use (HSU - hospitalization and emergency department [ED] visits) amongst individuals with COPD. My first original research study determined the perception and knowledge of individuals with COPD, regarding air pollution health risks, assessment, and exposure reduction strategies. The second quantified the association between the AQHI and acute HSU, and the final study examined whether temperature modifies this association. While Canadians with COPD believed that air pollution affects health, their level of knowledge regarding air quality assessment, health risks, and strategies to reduce exposure was lacking. The AQHI was associated with increased risk of acute HSU for non-accidental, COPD and cardiovascular (CVD) causes. A statistically significant association between the AQHI and CVD hospitalization was observed at all temperatures, whereas the association with COPD hospitalization was only significant at higher temperatures. Results also suggested individuals with prior history of hospitalization for COPD, lower respiratory tract infection, or acute myocardial infarction may be more vulnerable. These findings provide important insights for policy and public health strategy. Reducing the negative health effects of air pollution amongst individuals with COPD requires patient and health care provider education, real-time dissemination of air quality levels regardless of temperature, and specific recommendations on how to reduce exposure.

Keywords: Air Pollution
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Epidemiology
Health Effects
Public Health
Respiratory Health
Advisor: To, Teresa
Adoptive Witness - The Transmission of Collective Memory and Identity in the Israeli History Curriculum

Discussions on formal education in Israel focus more on debating whether violent undertones, negation, othering and incitement exist in resources, and less on how curriculum fosters democracy and tolerance. This thesis study investigates how the adoptive witnessing of history embedded within mandated secular Jewish-Israeli history curriculum may be used as a tool of political indoctrination, through its reinforcement of psycho-cultural narratives and dispositions that perpetuate an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ siege mentality. This study analyzes one part of the Israeli Ministry of Education mandated history curriculum intended for use within Israeli state schools. Central topics within the examined Unit 5: Modern Israel’s teaching focus emphasize the birth of the “new-Jew” and a dominant narrative of Jews seeking to no longer be victims at the hands of oppressive Others. All data was coded according to four guiding themes, examining how the intended content may (or may not) legitimize and humanize the Other and their national aspirations, how it may be used to overcome suspicion of the Other, and whether the curriculum provides a balanced presentation of the Arab (Palestinian) – Jewish Israeli conflict. Findings reveal that the curriculum appears explicitly intended to promote the acknowledgement, legitimization, and humanization of a Palestinian Other, an understanding of causes and effects of decisions made at the time, and an awareness of the Palestinian perspectives during the events of 1948. Although findings show a shared responsibility perspective, the use of Jewish-Israeli force is presented as defensive security measures and aligned to similar perspectives on experiences Jews endured within Islamic countries in the same time period. This thesis reveals that the creation and reinforcement of a dominant collective Jewish-Israeli identity through formal education depends on the selective nature of the Other’s narrative that is presented within the discussion of key episodic events. As of the time of writing this thesis, it is concluded that while the secular Jewish-Israeli official history curriculum has made efforts to acknowledge, legitimize and humanize the Palestinian Other, this can only happen so long as the curriculum explicitly exposes students to the interconnectivity between their accounts of history and those of the Other.

Keywords: Anti-Racism
Curriculum
Education
Narrative
Psychocultural Conflict Theory
Subjugated Knowledge
Advisor: Dei, George J. Sefa
Protein-ligand Interaction Exploration Based on Proteome-wide Tertiary Structure Prediction and Further in vitro Validation

Knowledge of protein structures provides us valuable information for protein function elucidation, but currently it is still unrealistic to determine proteome-wide protein structures using experimental methods. Computational modeling provides us a fast and convenient method in protein structure characterization, and but to date, there hasnâ t been any systematic application of proteome-wide models in Arabidopsis due to the lack of such data sets. Our lab has determined the theoretical protein structures for the entire Arabidopsis proteome. In this work, I presented two versions of Arabidopsis predicted structure-omes (APS-V1 and APS-V2) generated by the Phyre fold recognition engine and showed that a large portion of the predicted models in our APS have enough resolution for use in protein functional studies. In our case, the predicted models were specifically used in protein-carbohydrate and protein-protein interaction studies followed by in vitro verification using carbohydrate arrays and yeast two-hybrid assays. The enrichment of real interactions in the prediction results confirmed that our Arabidopsis predicted structure-ome is a reliable tool in protein structural and functional studies. This work also provides another perspective in large-scale protein-ligand interaction exploration and biological network reconstruction using protein structural information.

Keywords: Predicted protein structures
Protein-carbohydrate interaction
Protein-protein interaction
Advisor: Provart, Nicholas J
Emotion regulation strategies in borderline personality disorder

Difficulties in emotion regulation (ER) are considered a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). It remains unclear, however, why individuals with BPD employ less effective cognitive ER strategies at the decrement of long-term emotional stability. Three studies were carried out to address the selection and implementation of cognitive ER strategies in females with BPD (n=30), a mixed group of individuals with anxiety and depressive disorders (MAD; n=30), and non-psychiatric controls (HC; n=32). Results of Chapter 2 indicated that BPD reported more frequent use of maladaptive cognitive ER strategies (suppression, rumination, avoidance) and less frequent use of adaptive strategies (acceptance, cognitive reappraisal, problem-solving) relative to HC. Compared to MAD, BPD endorsed using acceptance less often, even after statistically accounting for group differences in clinical severity and depression symptoms, and they reported engaging in harmful behaviours (e.g., self-injury) more often to regulate emotions. In Chapter 3, participants rated the extent to which they employed uninstructed cognitive ER strategies following a negative mood induction procedure. Similar to Chapter 2, BPD more frequently endorsed using maladaptive strategies compared to HC and reported higher subjective difficulty managing their mood states. Despite endorsing having used a higher number of different cognitive ER strategies than HC, BPD still reported a higher negative mood following the induction procedure. Chapter 4 discusses presenting participants with negative images varying in emotional intensity and asking them to describe the specific tactics they used while cognitively reappraising the contents of the images. BPD used fewer words to describe and reappraise the images and perceived themselves as less effective at generating reappraisals compared to HC. Contrary to expectations, BPD did not report using a different set of tactics in their reappraisals of high or low intensity images compared to HC and MAD. Collectively, the results of these studies advance understanding of the factors that may influence the selection and implementation of cognitive ER strategies in BPD and other mental disorders characterized by difficulties in ER. The results broaden conventional theories of emotion dysregulation in BPD and place the findings in the context of a modern affective science model of ER.

Keywords: anxiety disorders
borderline personality disorder
emotion dysregulation
emotion regulation
major depressive disorder
mood induction
Advisor: Ruocco, Anthony C
Logarithmic Algebroids and Meromorphic Line Bundles and Gerbes

In this thesis, we first introduce logarithmic Picard algebroids, a natural class of Lie algebroids adapted to a simple normal crossings divisor on a smooth projective variety. We show that such algebroids are classified by a subspace of the de Rham cohomology of the divisor complement determined by its mixed Hodge structure. We then solve the prequantization problem, showing that under an integrality condition, a log Picard algebroid is the Lie algebroid of symmetries of what is called a meromorphic line bundle, a generalization of the usual notion of line bundle in which the fibres degenerate in a certain way along the divisor. We give a geometric description of such bundles and establish a classification theorem for them, showing that they correspond to a subgroup of the holomorphic line bundles on the divisor complement which need not be algebraic. We provide concrete methods for explicitly constructing examples of meromorphic line bundles, such as for a smooth cubic divisor in the projective plane. We then proceed to introduce and develop the theory of logarithmic Courant algebroids and meromorphic gerbes. We show that under an integrality condition, a log Courant algebroid may be prequantized to a meromorphic gerbe with logarithmic connection. Lastly, we examine the geometry of Deligne and Deligne-Beilinson cohomology groups and demonstrate how this geometry may be exploited to give quantization results for closed holomorphic and logarithmic differential forms.

Advisor: Gualtieri, Marco
Jeffrey, Lisa
Improving the Design Analysis of Prognosis Studies in Rare Diseases

Prognosis studies examine outcomes and identify factors associated with or predictive of observed outcomes. In rare diseases, prognosis studies play an especially important role in informing patients and guiding treatment. Yet the current prognosis literature is plagued by design issues limiting clarity of information. Objectives: This thesis aims to improve on the design and analysis of prognosis studies in rare diseases. The objectives are: 1) to evaluate the quality of current Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) prognosis literature and identify areas of deficits; 2) to apply the longitudinal study design to a childhood-onset SLE (cSLE) cohort to study longitudinal evolution of organ damage and disease activity; and 3) to explore the application of modern longitudinal analytic methods in analyzing an observational cohort. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed. A cSLE cohort was studied longitudinally. Longitudinal modelling of an irregular-visit-schedule observational cohort was performed using marginal and random effect models, along with Bayesian latent class growth mixture modelling. Results: I have identified study design elements at high risk of bias within the SLE literature. Using the longitudinal design, I demonstrated that cSLE patients accrued damage throughout their disease courses and determined prognostic factors with clear temporal predictive relationships with damage evolution. I applied latent class technique to group patientsâ disease activity trajectories into more homogeneous classes and identified early factors that predicted patterns of disease activity evolution. Conclusions: I have demonstrated that the design and analysis of prognosis studies can be improved in rare diseases. I identified areas of deficits in prognosis study design. I have successfully applied the longitudinal study design and modern longitudinal analytic techniques to provide more precise prognostication in cSLE. Given this body of work, we now have the tools to design robust prognosis studies to achieve maximal gain in clarity of information.

Keywords: Childhood-onset lupus
Longitudinal Analytic Methods
Longitudinal design
Prognosis
Rare diseases
Advisor: Feldman, Brian M
The Structure of Diagonally Constructed ASH Algebras

We introduce a class of recursive subhomogeneous algebras which are constructed using a type of diagonal map similar to those previously defined for homogeneous algebras. We call these diagonal subhomogeneous (DSH) algebras. Using homomorphisms that also exhibit a kind of diagonal structure, we study certain limits of DSH algebras. Our first result is that a simple limit of DSH algebras with diagonal maps has stable rank one. As an application we show that whenever X is a compact Hausdorff space and σ is a minimal homeomorphism thereof, the crossed product algebra C*(Z, X,σ) has stable rank one. We also define mean dimension in the context of these limits. Our second result is that mean dimension zero implies Z-stability for simple separable limits of DSH algebras with diagonal maps. We also show that the tensor product of any two simple separable limit algebras of this kind is Z-stable.

Keywords: Operator Algebras
Advisor: Elliott, George A
Response of periodic systems to electromagnetic fields: multipole expansion, microscopic charge-current density, polarization and magnetization

Polarization and magnetization fields are central concepts in the theory of light-matter interaction, because they describe the distribution of charges and currents induced in the material medium due to an application of electromagnetic fields. Here I develop strategies to treat polarization and magnetization fields in periodic structures and I analyze the radiation spectrum emitted by them. The methods are based on the multipole expansion of charge-current distributions and on its extensions to account for the motion of charges between lattice sites. In the first part of this thesis I treat the optical response of 2d nanoparticle arrays, with the focus on collective effects that arise due to higher order multipolar response. First, I evaluate the interaction constants that describe the collective radiative interactions between nanoparticles in magneto-electric quadrupolar arrays, in an approach that gives the radiative damping in an exact analytic form. Then I find the radiation spectrum from an array of gold spheres with large electric quadrupolar response. The spectrum is dominated by surface-lattice resonances (SLRs) which are of a mixed multipolar character, with significant contributions from multipoles that would be negligible if the sphere was isolated. I link the SLRs to an excitation of the normal modes of the array, and propose a simplified model of the normal mode dispersion relations to explain the SLR properties. In the second part of this thesis I develop strategies to describe charges and currents and polarization and magnetization fields in regular solids. The formalism is based on gauge-invariant dynamical equations of electron Green functions. I derive and categorize the descriptions of dynamics introduced via Peierls transformation of the Green function. Then I apply the formalism to treat the linear response of an insulator to electromagnetic fields. I find the microscopic charge and current densitites in a form such that their expansion around lattice sites follows in a natural way. Restricting myself to static and uniform fields I introduce microscopic polarization and magnetization fields, and derive all the response coefficients within one formalism that makes no reference to energy or thermodynamic potentials.

Keywords: metamaterials
multipole expansion
optical properties of materials
periodic systems
polarization and magnetization
Advisor: Sipe, John E
Economics of Parking: Short, Medium, and Long-Term Planning

Worldwide surveys have shown that cruising for parking substantially increases the travel time of individuals and leads to higher traffic congestion as well. Motivated by the need to mitigate adverse effects of parking, this thesis investigates the impact of emerging short, medium, and long-term parking policies. Hourly parking pricing is a short-term policy whereby vehicles pay based on their dwell time. We show that hourly parking pricing can actually increase congestion if imposed imprudently, but if devised optimally, it can lead to better traffic management. Parking enforcement is a medium-term policy comprised of a citation fine and a level-of- enforcement (e.g., number of inspection cameras in streets). We quantify the effect of enforcement policies and we investigate the impact of enforcement technology (i.e., on-foot inspection or camera-based inspection) on illegal parking behaviour. For long-term planning, we model the impact of autonomous vehicles (AV) on parking. With the anticipated growth in AVs, passengers no longer need to park near their final destination. Instead, passengers are dropped off by AVs at their final destination and the AVs travel to the nearest and most affordable available parking lot. We investigate the parking patterns of AVs and show that they substantially decrease parking search time.

Keywords: Autonomous vehicles
Enforcement
Parking
Transportation
Advisor: Roorda, Matthew
Yours, Mine Ours: What Ancient Egyptian Possessives Can Tell Us About Language Change and Stable Variation

Natural language variation can be thought of as two or more variants competing for use (Kroch 2001,1989). Under this model, two outcomes are possible: language change or specialization. Specialization can be then broken down into specialization for different functions, and partial specialization – stable variation (Wallenberg 2013; Fruehwald and Wallenberg 2013). In this historical sociolinguistic investigation, I analyze differences between stable variation and language change in Ancient Egyptian. Observing two Egyptian possessive variables – clitic possession and nominal possession – I compare factors affecting variant choice in each, using a dataset with a total of 4,656 possessive tokens and 495 demonstrative tokens. I use a theoretical syntactic account to make testable predictions about language change and to inform my choice of continuous factor, which provides the mechanism for stable variation (Wallenberg 2013; Fruehwald and Wallenberg 2013) – in this case, phrase complexity. Using distributional results, logistic regression, and logistic curves, I find that clitic possession is an instance of language change. I then combine results for demonstrative tokens with a theoretical syntactic account to explain the emergence of the innovative variant in clitic possession, and use logistic regression and conditional inferences trees to illustrate the spread of this variant across Egypt over time. I also find that possessum and text type have an effect on clitic possessive variation, supporting Egyptology-based predictions of stigmatization of the innovative variant, but providing evidence against Egyptological claims of an alienability split for this variable. Phrase complexity has an effect on clitic possession as well, perhaps the reason for the slowness of this particular language change. Conversely, I find that nominal possession is an instance of stable variation. Possessum and possessor interact in their effect on nominal possessive variation, an effect which provides an understanding of the social meaning attached to the nominal possessive variants: one for high-status nouns, one for other types of nouns. Effects of text type and location are also present in nominal possession, but minimal. Phrase complexity is a significant factor as well, constraining variation along a continuum and supporting the claim that a continuous factor is the reason for stable variation.

Keywords: Ancient Egyptian
Egyptology
historical linguistics
language variation and change
morphology
sociolinguistics
Advisor: Nagy, Naomi
FATIGUE DAMAGE ANALYSIS OF REINFORCED CONCRETE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS

ABSTRACT The design of fatigue-prone structural elements such as wind turbine foundations requires adequate verification of the constituent materials to ascertain their resistance capacity under fatigue loading. Hence, the number of loading cycles that can be sustained in service using stress-life models, or the level of structural damage relative to a given limit, are required from the fatigue analysis of the structural components. The presence of cracks in these structural components often renders them vulnerable to damage propagation because increased stresses in the steel reinforcing bars traversing cracked concrete planes may result in reinforcement crack initiation, and possibly propagation. As such, mediums involving the use of steel-fibre reinforced concrete have been adopted in designs to prevent or inhibit concrete crack evolution and reinforcement crack propagation under fatigue loading. Investigations reported in the literature have shown that current fatigue resistance analysis approaches for concrete composites are insufficient, lack significant levels of reliance, and do not appropriately account for fatigue-governing mechanisms within a cracked concrete plane with intersecting reinforcement that exhibits progressive crack propagation. The effects of irreversible damage accumulation of concrete composites are often neglected, and damage models ignore important influencing factors; hence, they are limited to the analysis of structures with similar loading conditions as the test specimens used for developing such models. An experimental campaign was conducted to develop robust damage models which account for relevant fatigue loading parameters. Various assumptions incorporated into fatigue analysis constitutive models were further verified to ascertain their conservative level and reliance. Based on the obtained results, a new analysis and design approach which accounts for irreversible damage accumulation of concrete composites (including steel fibres) is proposed. In addition, the complex behaviour at a concrete crack plane is considered by incorporating fracture mechanics and residual capacity models into the corresponding equilibrium equation, hence accounting for steel reinforcement crack propagation. The proposed models were further incorporated into algorithms for strut and tie analysis and into the Disturbed Stress Field Model (finite element framework) for fatigue life and damage evolution predictions. Corroborated results of the experimental investigation conducted with the modified analysis approaches exhibited good correlation. From the verified improved analysis concepts and the unambiguity of the results interpretation, the proposed approach can be used for the fatigue resistance design and analysis of fatigue-prone structures in order to ascertain the required fatigue resistance capacity during service life.

Advisor: Vecchio, Frank