VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A Multi-Methods Study of the Role of Middle Managers in Brokering Knowledge in Hospitals

Hospitals are complex environments that are accountable for the quality of the services they provide. The quality of care in hospitals, however, is often less than ideal – patients may not receive treatments with proven effectiveness or may receive unnecessary or even potentially harmful care (Grimshaw et al., 2012; McGlynn et al., 2003). Hospital managers play a pivotal role in facilitating high quality care and may play a brokerage role in the sharing and use of knowledge in healthcare organizations (Birkin et al., 2018; Urquhart et al., 2019). The body of research on knowledge brokers (KBs) suggests that they may have multiple roles, but prior research has focused primarily on KBs in formal roles external to the practice community they seek to influence (CHSRF, 2003). Little is known about internal KB roles, and it remains unclear how the KB role is enacted in health care. There is a dearth of research on what impact KBs within organizations have in brokering knowledge in hospitals (Burgess Currie, 2014; Glegg Hoens, 2016). Although middle managers (MMs) may potentially play a key role as KBs, how MMs act as KBs in health care has not been adequately studied in Canada or elsewhere (Birkin et al., 2018; Currie et al., 2014). This multi-methods study examined the role that MMs play in brokering knowledge in hospitals, the determinants of their KB efforts, and the impact of those efforts. The findings of a qualitative descriptive study, using semi-structured interviews with MMs in hospitals across Ontario, Canada, conducted concurrently with a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of the literature, found that MMs enact many of the roles and activities of knowledge brokers in hospitals to create, share or implement an innovative or evidence-based practice. In addition to roles and activities, this study contributes to the extant literature by revealing determinants that may influence MM KBs efforts and their impact in hospitals and by providing actionable insights into how to optimize the role. This study also makes recommendations that administrators and policy makers can use to strengthen KB roles to better equip MM KBs to ultimately improve quality of care.

Keywords: evidence- based care
Knowledge broker
Knowledge Translation
Middle manager
Advisor: Gagliardi, Anna
Subsistence-Based Economy and the Regional Interaction Processes of the Indus Civilization Borderland in Kachchh, Gujarat: A Bio-Molecular Perspective

This dissertation investigates the role of food producers in the Indus Civilization borderland in Kachchh, Gujarat, particularly during the Urban/Mature phase (2600-1900 BCE). During the Urban phase, this region was occupied by two distinct categories of settlements. The settlements from the first category were strategically situated, contained Classical Harappan type materials, and were specialized in craft production, craft-related trade and administration; these are popularly known as Classical Harappan-type settlements. The settlements from the second category, popularly known as Sorath-type settlements, were located inland, contained regional pottery and practiced agro-pastoralism. The analysis of the subsistence economy of Kotada Bhadli, a Sorath-type settlement, provides an evaluation of the nature of economic production at this settlement and the possible day-to-day interactions between this settlement and neighboring non-food craft-producing settlements. To date, our understanding of rural food production and regional everyday interaction between different specialized groups in the Indus borderland is limited, and therefore, through providing a detailed account of the subsistence-related economy at a rural settlement, this thesis aims to evaluate the nature of specialized staple production, and provide more data for the understanding the nature of staple exchange between these settlements specialized in diverse economic activities. To incorporate this everyday regional interaction in our current understanding of regional interactions during the Indus age, I summarized and arranged different arguments from various scholars into distinct models. The analysis of molecular, isotopic and micro-botanical remains suggest the involvement of Kotada Bhadli with specialized sedentary to semi-sedentary pastoralism and some form of household-level cultivation of plants, along with some importing of agricultural grains and Harappan-style craft goods from neighboring settlements. Based on these results, I propose a likely cooperative regional interaction between diverse groups and specialists such as craft producers, traders, raw material distributers and staple producers, in the presence or absence of a centralized or regional authority during the Urban phase. Such reciprocal relationship between diverse specialized groups not only supported the production of wealth but also helped to maintain status and identity, as well as dealing with critical environmental, economic and probably political conditions that may have ultimately helped sustain this civilization over many centuries.

Keywords: Gujarat
Indus Civilization
Molecular analysis
Regional Cooperative interaction
Rural food-producing economy
Sorath Harappan
Advisor: Miller, Heather M.-L
An Investigation of the Experiences of Graduate Students with a Mental Health Condition

Discussion of postsecondary students’ mental health often overlooks the graduate student population, focusing on the undergraduate student population instead. The overall purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of graduate students with mental health conditions and to examine the challenges they face and the supports they use. The study followed a sequential-explanatory approach. In Phase 1, the 2016 Canadian Reference Group data from the National College Health Assessment was used to obtain an overall understanding of Canadian graduate students’ mental health. Findings from the quantitative analyses showed significant differences between a sample of 1,461 graduate/professional students with mental health conditions and 3,291 graduate/professional students without mental health conditions. Specifically, participants with mental health conditions reported experiencing higher levels of stress and more impediments to academic performance. Additionally, participants with mental health conditions were significantly more likely to report accessing providers for mental health support and to report that they would seek mental health support in the future if they had a problem that was bothering them. For Phase 2, 38 semi-structured interviews were conducted with doctoral students in Ontario who identified as having a mental health challenge or disability. Analyses found that some participants felt their mental health condition(s) delayed their academic progress. Participants who were not considered on-track to completing their degree on-time typically reported that the comprehensive exam stage was problematic. For support, participants often disclosed mental health-related concerns to peers and supervisors in addition to seeking formal support from on- or off-campus services. Overall, the findings suggest that the experiences of graduate students with mental health challenges may differ from their peers without mental health challenges. For faculty, academic programs, departments, and student services offices, understanding such differences is important for the delivery of effective and tailored support that meets the needs of this specific population of students.

Keywords: Graduate education
Graduate students
Higher education
Mental health
Student services
Advisor: Childs, Ruth A
Group 13 Radical and Lewis Acid Chemistry

Since the discovery of frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs), a pair of sterically encumbered Lewis acids and bases that rapidly activate numerous small molecules, such advances have led to synthetic applications in organic, polymer and radical chemistry. The objective for this thesis is to explore the radical and Lewis acid chemistry of Group 13 compounds at a fundamental level, and their applications in FLP chemistry. Reduction of an N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) stabilized planar borenium compound led to the generation of a unique diborane compound which rapidly undergoes homolytic cleavage reactions with various substrates. Furthermore, protection with steric bulk on the NHC of the borenium with the combination of the FLP, B(C6F5)3 and tBu3P leads to generation of a boron based dianion radical upon reduction. Combination of tBu3P and E(C6F5)3 (E = B, Al) led to a typical two electron pathway upon treatment with chloranil (p-C6Cl4O2) and Ph3SnH. However, replacing the phosphine with Mes3P resulted in the reaction proceeding through single electron transfer (SET) to the Lewis acids, with homolytic cleavage of the Sn-H bond. Further studies on the SET chemistry between Lewis acids (E(C6F5)3, E = B, Al, Zn(C6F5)2), the reductant Cp*2Fe and conventional weak Lewis bases (chalcogenide species) led to the synthesis of various unique anions and radicals. The results of the stabilization of the weak Lewis acid-base adducts from SET led to the attempts of one electron reduction of the reported unstable (Ph2CN2)B(C¬6F5)3 adducts, resulting in the stabilization of the N2 fragment and activation of C-H bonds. Reactions of hydride abstraction from (IBn)AlH3 resulted in unanticipated redistribution reactions, which gave a rare dicationic aluminum-hydride stabilized by two NHCs (IBn). On the other hand, attempts to prepare the analogous cyclic (alkyl)(amino) carbene (cAAC) alane adducts gave rise to a monomeric neutral aluminum-hydride that rapidly undergoes a 1,2-hydride shift between the Al and carbene carbon centers in solution. Finally, attempts to prepare an ethylene-bridged intramolecular P/Al compounds have been carried out. HAl(C6F5)2 and phosphinoalanes Mes2PAl(C6F5)2 have been successfully generated. While HAl(C6F5)2 enabled the hydroalumination and dehydrocoupling reactions with terminal alkynes, Mes2PAl(C6F5)2 demonstrated the addition across CO2 gas, and reacting with other functional groups.

Keywords: Frustrated Lewis Pair
Group 13
Lewis Acid
Radical
Single electron transfer
Advisor: Stephan, Douglas W.
Macroscopic Electrostatics at Positive Temperature from the Density Functional Theory

The purpose of this thesis is to study local perturbations of equilibrium crystalline states of the density functional theory (DFT) at positive temperature through the Kohn-Sham equations under local-density approximation (LDA). Under suitable scaling and at low temperature, we prove an existence result for the Kohn-Sham equations and show that local macroscopic perturbations from periodic equilibrium states give rise to the Poisson equation as an effective equation.

Keywords: density functional theory
derivation
dielectric effect
effective equation
Kohn-Sham
Poisson equation
Advisor: Sigal, Israel M
Passive Physiological Monitoring via Ambient Sensors Embedded in a Home Environment

In Canada, heart failure (HF) costs $2.8 billion per year. Self-care or self-management of HF includes activities such as daily weight measurement, medication taking, dietary and fluid restriction, and exercise. Despite its benefits however, the efficacy of self-care is limited due to the high rate of non-adherence caused by age-related symptoms, cognitive factors, and social issues. As such, there is a need for an intelligent solution that shifts the physical and cognitive burden from the patients to the technology. This dissertation presents passive ambient solutions for vital sign monitoring of HF patients that require zero-effort from the user. The first study examined the feasibility of detecting the heart rate of healthy adults using an instrumented floor tile while standing and sitting. The instrumented floor tile was successful in collecting electrocardiogram (ECG) from the feet of healthy seated subjects with 89% agreement with the gold-standard measurement. The heart rate obtained by ballistocardiogram (BCG) while the subject was standing had 1.8 ± 4.3% error. The second study was about an unobtrusive algorithm that determines if the body experienced greater than 20mmHg of change of the systolic blood pressure (SBP) using a feature called RJ-interval, which is the time difference between the peaks of ECG and BCG. The algorithm detected increased SBP with 89.3% true positive rate (TPR) and decreased SBP with 92.3% TPR. The third study expanded the concept of the instrumented tile to a chair and used it to measure BCG of older adults with HF and younger healthy adults. The study showed potential in using the chair to address some of the limitations of using standing form factor by successfully collecting clean BCG of a HF clinical population. As an early stage investigation, the technology presented showed a significant potential to unobtrusively monitor older adults with HF to assist them self-manage their condition better.

Keywords: ambient monitoring
ballistocardiogram
heart failure
zero-effort technology
Advisor: Mihailidis, Alex
Beyond Compare: Investigating the Effects of Compositional Characteristics and Method Selection on the Results of Skeletal Analyses

Populations are routinely characterized and compared through their prevalence of skeletal lesions. To investigate the effects of both age structure and differential bone preservation on intergroup prevalence comparisons, counts of healed trauma were compared using a variety of statistical approaches, between individuals from two populations with different cultural contexts, age compositions and element preservations: the J.C.B. Grant collection (n=172) and the Luis Lopes collection (n=161). While the bone-years metric addressed the issue of preservation-confounding that skews the person-years metric, it erroneously assumes the stability of fracture risk over the life course. Comparison of age-stratified groups by way of the common odds ratio was found to be the most reliable method for the comparison of fracture data. Workarounds to small sample sizes (extrapolating to larger sample sizes or inserting dummy values into null fields) were both found to cause more problems than they solved. Comparing element aggregates (e.g. total long bones, total cranial bones) is another potential means to detect significant intergroup or intragroup differences, however due to the common cooccurrence of certain fractures and the difficulty in reliably assessing fracture timing, the use of these aggregates also risks introducing bias. Comparing the number of individuals with at least one fracture of interest was found to be the most resilient way of mitigating bias while having the necessary scope to detect different skeletal manifestations of an event of interest. The odds of an individual in the Grant collection having at least one nasal fracture were found to be 3 times higher than in the Lisbon collection, and this overall difference was driven by differences in those 55 years of age or older. The trauma results are consistent with the boxing-etiology hypothesis which posits that the increased visibility and ritualization of specific behaviour through sport (i.e. fighting with one’s fists in boxing and prizefighting, popular activities in British populations) validates that behaviour as socially acceptable, and increases its prevalence in non-sport venues such as physical assaults. To ensure the most robust and defensible interpretations possible, researchers comparing skeletal phenomena within or between groups must ensure that they consider both the preservation and the demographic makeup of their samples, and choose their comparative approach mindfully.

Keywords: Bioarchaeology
Data Comparison
Osteology
Paleoepidemiology
Paleopathology
Skeletal trauma
Advisor: Rogers, Tracy L
Wall Forces, Bulk Flow and Impact Speeds in a Vibratory Finisher: Modeling and Force Measurements

Vibratory finishing (VF) is a mass finishing process that employs loose abrasives inside a vibrating container and, although widely used, its design is still mostly based on experience due to the complex behavior of vibrating granular media. In this work, experimental and numerical methods were employed to investigate the relationship between the container motion and the granular media behavior inside a commercial VF tub. The objectives were to understand the influence of different process parameters on the media motion, to reveal the mechanisms behind these influences, and to assess the accuracy of discrete element methods (DEM) predictions of the wall-media interactions. A parametric study was performed using DEM to understand how parameters such as amplitude and frequency of vibration influence the particle behavior in terms of media bulk flow (responsible for moving workpieces during VF processes) and local impact velocities between particles (which do work on the workpiece surface). This study revealed that local impact speeds varied more with changes in amplitude than in frequency, and that they were determined by the work done by the walls on the media per vibration cycle. In contrast, the bulk flow rate depended mostly on the vibration frequency rather than on amplitudes and it was determined by the direction of the wall-media shear in regions of greater particle density. Given the importance of wall forces in explaining the media behavior, a method for measuring wall-media contact forces was developed where a force sensor was embedded in the vibrating walls. Measurements revealed that wall forces were determined by the granular bed viscous resistance to deformation rate and that it increased with both media pressure and wall velocities. With this method, the impulse and work done by the walls on the media were also measured. The results were compared to DEM simulations and it was found that although DEM could predict the overall trends of wall forces and impulse with varying amounts of media and tub frequency, some differences from experiments, such as consistently shorter and more random collisions in DEM, persisted throughout all simulations.

Keywords: Discrete Element Methods
Granular Flows
Polishing
Vibratory Finishing
Advisor: Spelt, Jan K
Classifications of Asynchronous Shared Memory Objects

Since the early days of the shared memory model for distributed computing, researchers have sought a simple and precise characterization of an object’s ability to implement other objects in a wait-free manner. The first candidate for such a characterization was the consensus number of an object [24]. But a characterization based on consensus numbers is not precise: there are pairs of objects with the same consensus number that are not equivalent (i.e., one object cannot be wait-free implemented by instances of the other and registers) [2, 42]. A more recent candidate for such a characterization is the set agreement power of an object [15]. In this thesis, we show that this characterization is not precise even for the case of deterministic objects: there are pairs of deterministic objects with the same set agreement power that are not equivalent. Next, we show that there are uncountably many objects with distinct set agreement power. Consequently, a precise characterization of an object’s ability to implement other objects in a wait-free manner must classify objects into uncountably many cells. This suggests that there is no simple and precise characterization of objects, since the cells of an uncountable classification cannot be labeled using simple integers (as in Herlihy’s hierarchy) or even finite sequences of integers. Finally, we introduce a generalization of consensus called bounded disagreement, which differs from set agreement in that it restricts the number of disagreeing processes rather than the number of disagreeing values. More precisely, the l-bounded disagreement task for n processes has the following requirement: there is a value v such that at most l processes (the disagreers) decide values that are not v. We then show that for every integer n ≥ 2, there is a bounded disagreement object that has consensus number n, but is not equivalent to the n-consensus object. Prior to this work, the only objects known to have this unusual characteristic for n ≥ 2 (which shows that the characterization of objects via consensus numbers is not precise) were artificial objects crafted solely for the purpose of exhibiting this behaviour [2, 42].

Keywords: asynchronous shared memory
bounded disagreement
precise classification
set agreement
wait-freedom
Advisor: Hadzilacos, Vassos
Toueg, Sam
Exceptional Faithfulness and Exceptional Alternation: A Case Study of Polish Vowel-zero Alternations as Deletion and Epenthesis

The present thesis explores the issue of lexical exceptionality by examining vowel-zero alternations (also known as yers/jers and e-ruchome) in Polish nouns. The phenomenon refers to stem alternations such as sweter~swetry ‘sweater, sg.~pl’, whereby a vowel is present between the final two consonants of a stem when the inflectional suffix is null, whereas all other inflectional suffixes occur with a stem form that is missing this vowel. The difficulty of analyzing vowel-zero lies in the fact that it is not found categorically across all lexemes: it is possible to find counterexamples to an epenthesis analysis in paradigms that maintain the consonant cluster (e.g. metr~metry ‘meter, sg.~pl.’); and counterexamples to a deletion analysis in paradigms that maintain the vowel (e.g. seter~setery ‘setter dog, sg.~pl.’). Traditional analyses contended that the presence of counterexamples means that vowel-zero is unpredictable and thus every instance must be lexically encoded. However, this thesis shows that phonological and morphological patterns in the distribution of vowel-zero exist. Via three major contributions to the body of knowledge on vowel-zero—a statistical analysis of the lexicon, a wug test, and a grammaticality judgment study—it becomes clear that the number of exceptions to vowel-zero is quite small, and that vowel-zero is a productive process among Polish speakers but one that is not tolerated in all environments. Results thus indicate that regular rules governing vowel-zero exist in the grammar and, unlike other analyses of Polish vowel-zero, this thesis argues that a conspiracy of both epenthesis and deletion rules can best explain the vowel-zero patterns. Additionally, three main models proposed by linguists to encode exceptions are evaluated in order to account for remaining exceptions. The thesis argues that exceptionality is best explained through a combination of two models: morpheme-indexing to faithfulness best explains exceptional faithfulness (i.e. faithfulness where alternation is expected), while multiple listed allomorphs best explain exceptional alternation (i.e. alternation where faithfulness is expected). A sketch grammar of vowel-zero is presented to show that these two models can work together to explain the patterns and highlights the need to distinguish the two types of exceptions.

Advisor: Rice, Keren