VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Computer Vision and Machine Learning in Orthopaedic Shoulder Surgery

This thesis describes the design, implementation, and pre-clinical validation of two distinct biomedical technologies that address current challenges in orthopaedic shoulder surgery. The first is an intra-operative optical surface imaging system based on a hand-held structured light sensor for improving glenoid positioning in total shoulder arthroplasty. The second is a system for tracking adherence to shoulder physiotherapy using inertial sensors embedded in a smart watch and machine learning. Glenoid implant positioning is an important and challenging step in total shoulder arthroplasty. Accurate glenoid positioning is essential for prosthesis longevity and functional outcomes. This thesis presents Bullseye, a novel method to ensure accurate glenoid guide pin placement using intra-operative structured light imaging combined and computer vision. Pre-clinical validation on sawbone and cadaveric scapulae demonstrates this system accurately and efficiently measures the glenoid guide pin position within a verification workflow that integrates well into routine surgical practice. Clinical validation is required to determine if use of the Bullseye technology improves component positioning outcomes and patient clinical outcomes in the context of a clinical trial. Physical therapy is considered essential for the successful rehabilitation of common shoulder injuries and following shoulder surgery. Patients may receive some training and supervision for shoulder physiotherapy through private pay or private insurance, but they are typically responsible for performing most of their physiotherapy independently at home. It is unknown how often patients perform their home exercises and if these exercises are done correctly without supervision. There are no established tools for measuring this. It is therefore unclear if the full benefit of shoulder physiotherapy treatments are being realized. This thesis presents the Smart Physiotherapy Activity Recognition System (SPARS) for tracking home shoulder physiotherapy exercises using inertial sensors in a consumer smart watches and a machine learning approach. SPARS was successful in classifying shoulder exercises in healthy adults in the laboratory setting. Clinical validation to establish the performance of this technology with patients and investigate the potential individual and societal impacts of its use is ongoing.

Keywords: Computer Vision
Machine Learning
Orthopaedic Surgery
Physiotherapy
Rotator Cuff Pathology
Total Shoulder Arthroplasty
Advisor: Whyne, Cari M
The Afterlives of Soviet Secret Cities: Environment and Political Economy in Kazakhstan's Defense Industry Sites After 1991

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union built a number of military industries and secret defense sites in the vast Kazakh steppes. These included the world’s first space complex, large nuclear and biological weapons production and test sites, and massive ballistic missile research areas. These sites and their adjacent bedroom communities have experienced enormous stress resulting from large-scale political economic transformations due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Environmental destruction is a common and troubling legacy from the past for all of these sites. In this dissertation, I examine the political, economic, and environmental afterlives of Soviet governance and Cold War defense investments in Kazakhstan through a study of three formerly secret military installations: Baikonur, Priozersk/Sary Shagan, and Stepnogorsk. My research shows how the destabilizing political economic rupture of the early 1990s was driven by both new market-based opportunities, such as commercial space endeavors, mining, heavy industry, tourism, and renewed forms of closure and secrecy in order support them. In what follows, I explore how these military assets, their industrial landscapes and their dependent communities have been reorganized and drawn into new business ventures across national and global economic networks, how the Russian Federation has played a partial role in governance at the national and local scale, and how the politics of environmental degradation has shaped the course of development.

Keywords: Baikonur
Cold War
Environmental Justice
Kazakhstan
Sary Shagan
Stepnogorsk
Advisor: Lewis, Robert
Farish, Matt
Renewable Energy Co-operatives and the Struggle for “Critical” Energy Democracy: The Case of Ontario

The introduction of the Feed-in tariff (FIT) program in Ontario in 2010, with specific considerations for community-owned renewable energy (CE) initiatives, was a turning point for renewable energy co-operatives (RE co-ops) in the province as their numbers jumped from only two to 111 by 2016. RE co-ops, along with other CE initiatives, are considered to be important actors in the democratization of electricity systems by a growing body of activist and, recently, a field of scholarship called “energy democracy”. In the light of this recent surge of RE co-op activity in Ontario, I ask: In what ways did RE co-ops democratize Ontario’s electricity system and what are their limitations and future potential in doing so? In order to answer this question, I develop a theoretical framework called “critical energy democracy”, rooted in critical theories of capitalist political economy, technology, and democracy. Through this lens, I assess RE co-op activity in Ontario by deploying a novel combination of three research methods: (1) A political economy analysis of the history of electricity governance and infrastructure in Ontario, based on a combination of literature review and documentary research. (2) Semi-structured interviews with what I call “leading RE co-op members”, or those closely involved in the governance of their co-op, to reveal the experiences of RE co-ops in Ontario. And (3) semi-structured interviews with what I call “investor-members”, based on a social learning theory and method, to reveal instances of nonformal, informal, and tacit member learning. Overall, this study reveals that market-based policies under capitalist social relations severely constrain the application of community energy models to affluent communities. Given their inaccessibility to marginalized community members and lack of an explicit anti-capitalist social justice agenda, RE co-ops’ impact and potential in advancing a critical form of energy democracy in Ontario has been limited at best. Further, Ontario’s experiment serves as a lesson to policy-makers, academics, and social movements alike that public policies and programs should by design prioritize the immediate energy-related needs of marginalized communities.

Keywords: Co-operative studies
Community energy
Critical technology studies
Critical theory
Energy democracy
Social learning
Advisor: Vieta, Marcelo A
Insulating Musical Motor Skills Against Music Performance Anxiety

Musicians as performers are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of Music Performance Anxiety (MPA). The effects of MPA on attention and motor skills can be profound yet are under-researched. This thesis explores musical performance from a motor-learning perspective, examines the effects of MPA on motor control and attention, and analyzes coping strategies of elite professional classical brass players. A learning framework based in theories of embodied cognition is subsequently proposed for insulating musical performance against the deleterious effects of MPA.

Keywords: Anxiety
Attention
Motor Skill
Music Performance Anxiety
Musical Motor Skill
Advisor: Thaut, Micahel
Multifunctional Polyimide Aerogels with Tailored Nanostructure Assembly and Enhanced Properties

Aerogels are highly porous solid materials with more than 80% porosity and the cell size in mesoporous, 2-50 nm, range. The nanostructure assembly and high porosity provided the aerogels with unique electrical, thermal, physical, and mechanical properties. With respect the fast development of the modern technology and the need for the metamaterials with improved performance, recently the aerogels are received significant attention from the scientist. Based on the previous studies among the aerogel types, the polyimide aerogels presented the capability to achieve high mechanical flexibility in thin film geometries as well as moisture resistance. These along with the higher service temperature over the other organics, presented the potential of polyimide aerogels to be used in wide range of industrial applications. However, with respect to the very sensitive relations between the aerogel nanostructure configuration and its properties, the lack of control on aerogel nanostructure formation significantly reduced the possibility of tailoring polyimide aerogel properties to fit with in the industrial requirements. Given this background, the focus of this research is to design and develop robust methods to tailor the aerogels nanostructure configuration to achieve the aerogels with optimum performance. From the results four different successful strategies in tailoring the aerogel nanostructure assembly and controlling its properties are implemented in this work, and the properties of the fabricated aerogel prototypes are characterized through fully parametric studies. The capability of tailoring and improving the properties of polyimide aerogels may warrant their penetration in wide range of industrial applications.

Keywords: Bimodal Aerogels
Mesoporous Solids
Organic Aerogels
Polyimide
Super Thermal Insulation
Tailored Nanostructure
Advisor: Naguib, Hani
Park, Chul B
Experiences, Challenges and Preparation of Instructional Coaches

This study explored the professional experiences and challenges of instructional coaches in one Canadian educational jurisdiction. While school districts throughout North America build the instructional capacity of teachers through summer institutes, professional learning communities (PLCs), and additional qualification courses (AQs), instructional coaching is a recent addition to this repertoire. There is abundant instructional coach (IC) research that is situated in the USA. Instructional coach studies conducted in Ontario, Canada are salient but are limited. This study investigates the perspectives of ten instructional coaches employed by a large, urban Ontario school district. The data collected from these participants led to five major findings: (1) Instructional Coaches were not fully aware of their roles and responsibilities; (2) Instructional Coaches supported educators on many levels: facilitated professional learning, provided resources, collaborated on school improvement planning and trained other IC colleagues; (3) Instructional Coaches were not fully prepared for the role and duties of instructional coaching; (4) Instructional Coaches identified a lack of clear communication among various stakeholder groups; and (5) Instructional Coaches suggested preparation planning for aspiring ICs. These included enrolling in additional qualification courses, developing sound instructional skills, being flexible, being able to handle resistance and being able to build professional rapport with other educators. Instructional coaches carried out a multitude of responsibilities while providing pedagogical support to educators and navigating complex environments. This study will inform decisions on implementation of IC support in school districts and provide further insights into the training, preparation and support for ICs. 摘要本研究旨在探討加拿大某教育管轄區教學指導員的專業經驗、面臨挑戰及準備狀況。在加拿大安大略省進行的教學指導的相關研究是突出，但依然有限的。摘要本研究以安省市區某大型學區為研究對象，對十名教學指導員的觀點進行調查。從這些參與者收集的數據導致了五個主要的發現:(1)教學指導員沒有充分意識到自己的角色和責任;(2)教學指導員在多個層面支持教育工作者:促進專業培訓、提供資源、 協作學校改進計劃和培訓其他教學指導組同事;(3)教學指導員對其角色和職責沒有做好充分準備;(4) 教學指導員發現各教育參與方群體之間缺乏清晰的溝通;和(5)教學指導員建議為有抱負的準教學指導員提供準備計劃，包括參加額外的資格認證課程，發展良好的教學技能，靈活，能夠處理阻力，能夠與其他教育工作者建立專業的融洽關係。 教學指導員承擔了大量的責任，同時為教育者提供教學支持，並在復雜的環境中為教學領航。本研究將為學區實施教學指導支持的決策提供依據，並對教學指導員的培訓、準備和支持提供進一步的見解。

Keywords: Educational Leadership
Instructional Coach
Preparation
Professional Learning
Teacher Leaders
Advisor: Flessa, Joseph
Identification of Major Factors Influencing Aerosol pH and the Quantitative Relationship between pH and Ammonia Gas/Particle Partitioning

Aerosol pH is a crucial parameter controlling the gas-particle phase partitioning of semi-volatile species, the formation rate of secondary organic matter, and the health effects of inhalable particulate matter. In order to understand the dominant factors influencing aerosol pH and its quantitative relationship with the phase partitioning of total ammonium (NHx), I studied the 10-year record of aerosol pH at six Canadian urban and rural sites which revealed that meteorological conditions, especially temperature, strongly influenced the variability of aerosol pH. The pH sensitivities to changes in chemical composition were also distinctly different in different seasons. A simple calculation framework shows the quantitative relationship between NHx phase partitioning and aerosol pH, which can more quantitatively express the influence of different factors on pH sensitivities, values and variations. The seasonal variation of aerosol pH also led to a seasonal oscillation of PM2.5 oxalate and water-soluble Fe concentrations, which suggested complex interactions among aerosol pH, organic acids phase partitioning and particulate metal dissolution. The potential contribution of other organic acids to NHx phase partitioning was also studied. By using a custom designed sampling apparatus, I found a significant amount of organic acids balancing particulate ammonium but both of them evaporated during collection as sampling artefacts. Chemical reactions of low-volatility organic acids producing formic and acetic acid were very likely involved. I derived a double phase partitioning method that can calculate pH based on the observed ammonium and nitrate phase partitioning behavior to evaluate the impact of particulate organic ammonium. This approach can also be used to evaluate the extent to which non-volatile cations are participating in the phase partitioning of nitrate.

Advisor: Murphy, Jennifer G
Thought Experiments Literary Learning

In this work, I develop a novel approach to thought experiments and literary learning. It's novel primarily because, unlike many prominent approaches, it has us refrain from advancing theories, from giving logical analyses, and from explicating. We are, instead, to proceed in a way inspired by Wittgenstein's writings. We are, that is, to clarify words that give rise to problems and to clear those problems away. To clarify, we may compare language games in which figure terms like ``thought experiment.'' Thereby, we might see that the concept these terms express has a family resemblance character. To clear away problems, we may describe how such a concept, if not illuminated, yields philosophical problems about thought experiments and literary learning. After I develop this approach, I bring it to bear on two problems, and I achieve two main results. One problem concerns the nature of thought experiments. It is Why do we have trouble explaining what we know them to be? I find that, despite appearances, we have no such trouble. Central to this result are two claims about thought experiments. One is that imaginings aren't common to them. The other is that our unreflective concept of them has a family resemblance character. The other problem concerns stories in works of literary fiction. It is How could we possibly learn about the world from them? To solve it, you might claim that we learn by performing thought experiments. And then you might appeal to a theory of them. I find that you'd risk explaining the wrong thing. That is, you may explain how we learn but not how we do so from literature itself. Central to this result are three claims, which concern how these stories and thought experiments differ. In short, they differ (i) in how we count imaginings as experiences of them, (ii) in how free we are to interpret them, and (iii) in how complex they may be. This last result achieved, I have twice taken my novel Wittgenstein-inspired approach, and there my dissertation ends.

Keywords: Epistemology
Fiction
Literature
Narrative
Thought Experiments
Wittgenstein
Advisor: Brown, James R
A Study of the Benefits of Cell Correlations in Occupancy Grid Mapping

A mobile robot equipped with a range sensor can create a map of its environment given the range measurements and corresponding robot pose(s). These maps, although not perfect, are useful for path planning, exploration, search, and often the objective is to create an accurate map of the environment. Occupancy grid mapping (OGM) is a popular mapping technique that discretizes the environment into cells (or voxels) and seeks to estimate the occupancy probability of each cell. Computing the probability of all possible maps is computationally intractable and thus it is typically estimated using Bayesian inference to compute the probability of each cell and assuming that the cells are independent. This thesis revisits the assumptions made in traditional OGM and reintroduces cell correlations in the prior, the measurements, and the posterior. While the full Bayesian posterior is intractable, we develop improved approximations and show how two popular techniques, variational inference (to optimize parameters of a chosen model type) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), can be used to relax traditional assumptions. We show that mutual information between cells in the full Bayesian posterior is concentrated locally and approaches zero for cells that are distant. Therefore, we have developed OGM algorithms that maintain local cell correlations to a varying degree and this degree can be user-defined. We also introduce a data-driven prior that correlates cells locally, which is shown to be particularly effective when occupancy measurements are sparse. The result is an OGM algorithm that is able to interpolate between measurement rays, reduce the effect of sensor noise, better estimate the occupancy of each cell and also the joint marginal of a group of cells. The algorithms are shown to work on simulated and hardware datasets, where computing the full Bayesian posterior would be computationally intractable. Depending on the mapping application, the methods offer some different points on the tradeoff curve between speed of operation and map quality in their ability to capture the full Bayesian posterior.

Keywords: Autonomous Robot
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)
Markov Random Field (MRF)
Occupancy Grid
Robot Mapping
Variational Inference
Advisor: Barfoot, Timothy D
Feeding France’s Outcasts: Rationing in Vichy’s Internment Camps, 1940-1944

During the Second World War, Vichy interned thousands of individuals in internment camps. Although mortality remained relatively low, morbidity rates soared, and hunger raged throughout. How should we assess Vichy’s role and complicity in the hunger crisis that occurred? Were caloric deficiencies the outcome of a calculated strategy, willful neglect, or an unexpected consequence of administrative detention and wartime penury? In this dissertation, I argue that the hunger endured by the thousands of internees inside Vichy’s camps was not the result of an intentional policy, but rather a reflection of Vichy’s fragility as a newly formed state and government. Unlike the Nazis, French policy-makers never created separate ration categories for their inmates. Ultimately, food shortage resulted from the general paucity of goods arising from wartime occupation, dislocation, and the disruption of traditional food routes. Although these problems affected all of France, the situation was magnified in the camps for two primary reasons. First, the camps were located in small, isolated towns typically not associated with large-scale agricultural production. Second, although policy-makers attempted to implement solutions, the government proved unwilling to grapple with the magnitude of the problem it faced and challenge the logic of confinement, which deprived people of their autonomy, including the right to procure their own food. Although Vichy bears full responsibility for the hunger it thrust upon thousands of inmates, the absence of a clear hunger policy created room for the development of schemes, programs, and plans that allowed camp administrators, internees, and aid organizations to implement solutions to stave off the threat of starvation. Administrators developed agricultural projects which yielded grains and vegetables, while internees relied on friends and family for money and provisions. At the same time, Vichy officials urged camp administrators to work closely with aid organizations able to donate foodstuffs. Despite these efforts, nothing could fully alleviate the myriad problems that plagued the camps, and internees remained hungry. Still, these programs, projects, and partnerships helped stave off death in many cases—at least for those who escaped eventual deportation.

Keywords: Food History
International Aid
Internment Camps
Vichy France
Advisor: Jennings, Eric T
Centre-of-mass Motion and Precession of the Orbital Plane in Black Hole Simulations

This work focuses on the inherent gauge ambiguity in general relativity (GR), related gauge effects in numerical relativity (NR), and the extraction of gauge-invariant, observable measures from NR. Gauge ambiguity is an inescapable feature of GR, analogous to not knowing which reference frame a system is in. This can create unphysical effects in data from strong gravity regime simulations, which ultimately become a source of error if not accounted for. NR involves solving Einstein's equations on a computer. Here, NR is used to obtain accurate solutions for compact binary systems, namely binary black holes (BBH). BBH are observed through the emission of gravitational radiation as the binary undergoes inspiral, merger, and ringdown of the remnant black hole. Gravitational wave (GW) information from NR is represented as waveforms, typically decomposed into spin-weighted spherical harmonics, as is the case for the Simulating Extreme Spacetimes (SXS) collaboration. The first project is an analysis of the centre-of-mass (c.m.) in simulations of BBH. The c.m. is considered the origin for the decomposed waveforms, and unphysical movement in the c.m. erroneously affects the reported GWs. We establish that there is an initial displacement from the origin and a velocity kick that causes an overall linear drift in the c.m. We develop techniques to characterize, analyze, and ``remove'' effects of c.m. motion on the GWs by transforming the frame of reference, otherwise known as a gauge-transformation. The resulting GWs are proven to be more accurate and reliable. The removal of the linear c.m. drift is now a permanent post-processing step for all simulations in the SXS catalog. The second project is an investigation into the precession of the orbital plane of BBH, which is resilient against a larger set of gauge transformations than completely gauge-dependent quantities and therefore more reliable for comparisons between simulations, codes, and theories. We compare information extracted from simulations of BBH to Self-force perturbation theory (SF). The rate of precession of the orbital plane is extracted from NR and compared with Kerr geodesics, which allowed for the first and second order SF coefficients to be extracted.

Keywords: Binary Black Holes
Gauge Ambiguity
General Relativity
Gravitational Waves
Numerical Relativity
Advisor: Murray, Norman W