VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Personal Projects in Emerging Adulthood: Pathways to Alcohol Use and Alcohol Problems

Emerging adulthood (ages 18-25) is an important developmental stage marked by identity exploration, transitions, and instability. In particular, the first year of university is an important life transition for many emerging adults and is often associated with the development of new personal goals in addition to increased alcohol use and alcohol problems. Recent research has highlighted the value of using personal projects analysis (PPA) to examine links between personal goals and alcohol use and related-problems. However, few studies have examined a comprehensive model of alcohol use and alcohol problems using a PPA framework in conjunction with other well-established correlates of alcohol use (i.e., alcohol expectancies and drinking motives). Alcohol expectancies pertain to beliefs individuals have about how alcohol use will impact them and drinking motives are the reasons individuals choose to use alcohol. This dissertation is comprised of two studies. Study one utilizes a cross-sectional design to examine the relationship between project content (e.g., whether a project is academic, health/body, or interpersonal in nature) in conjunction with project appraisals (e.g., how important or difficult the project is) and alcohol use and alcohol problems. In addition, this study included alcohol expectancies as possible moderators of these relationships. Study two examines changes in appraisals of projects over a period of three months and the relationship between these changes and alcohol problems. In addition, drinking motives are examined as mediators of this relationship. Results indicate that both alcohol expectancies and drinking motives are important variables in considering how personal projects are related to subsequent alcohol use and alcohol problems. In addition, personal projects and their related appraisals, alcohol expectancies, and drinking motives are important targets in considering future prevention and intervention efforts to reduce alcohol use and related-problems among emerging adults in their first year of university.

Keywords: Alcohol
Emerging Adulthood
Expectancies
Motives
Personal Projects
University Students
Advisor: Goldstein, Abby L
Improving the Social Skills of Children with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Intervention Study

Previous research has found that although most children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD) desire friendship, they have fewer and less stable friendships and report more loneliness than their peers. They also tend to be socially naïve, vulnerable to deception and more often bullied. A significant contributor to their challenges is an impaired Theory of Mind (ToM), which is the ability to reason about mental states (e.g. knowledge, emotions, desires, beliefs, intentions). While social difficulties define ASD, research suggests that visual processing may be a relative strength. This bias favoring visual information over verbal mental representations appears to have enabled some children to gain mental state understanding via the use of visual supports. Since peer acceptance is a powerful predictor of mental health and the risks of peer rejection—and benefits of friendship— extend into adulthood, it is important to teach friendship-making skills. This was the broad objective of the study, which drew upon research demonstrating that despite deficits in ToM, children with HFASD have strengths in visual processing which can be utilized to enhance learning. A visually scaffolded, social skills and Theory of Mind intervention (S.S.ToM) for children with HFASD was designed and evaluated and compared to Children’s Friendship Training (CFT), a well-respected social skills intervention and a delayed treatment control group (DTC). Between-group comparisons revealed significant differences between the S.S.ToM and DTC groups on two measures of social responsiveness. Within-group differences for the S.S.ToM group were significant for all social responsiveness and ToM measures. Between- and within-group results were not as strong for the CFT group, however, there were fewer participants in this group and the lack of significance could be attributed to a lack of power. As a preliminary examination this study suggests that the S.S. ToM is an effective intervention but further research is needed.

Keywords: Community intervention
Friendship training
High-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder
Social skills
Theory of Mind
Visual supports
Advisor: Peskin, Joan
A Neurofeedback-based Near-infrared Spectroscopy Brain-computer Interface

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) enable individuals to interact with their environment using only cognitive activities. This thesis investigates the development of a more user-friendly, intuitive, and easy to use NIRS-BCI through six research objectives: exploring prescribed and personalized mental task frameworks offline, using researcher-selected tasks to move beyond the binary paradigm, exploring correlations of user characteristics with accuracy, comparing user-selected personalized tasks to prescribed tasks online, weaning off mental tasks to achieve voluntary self-regulation, and applying personalized frameworks to a client case study. Firstly, personalized tasks outperformed prescribed tasks in a five-session offline study conducted on ten able-bodied participants. Specifically, user-selected tasks resulted in significantly higher ease-of-use, while researcher-selected tasks resulted in significantly higher accuracies. The same data were used to show that researcher-selected personalized mental tasks enabled classification in some users beyond a binary BCI paradigm. Accuracy was strongly positively correlated with perceived ease of session, ease of concentration, and enjoyment, but strongly negatively correlated with verbal IQ. In a second study, when comparing two able-bodied groups online (N = 9 and N = 10), the usability of user-selected personalized mental tasks exceeded prescribed mental tasks without a decrease in accuracy. Expanding on this study, the nine able-bodied subjects who used user-selected tasks took part in an additional ten sessions and were weaned off mental tasks to achieve online voluntary self-regulatory control of a BCI using a neurofeedback-based paradigm. Participants indicated that they found self-regulation to be more intuitive and easier to use than mental tasks. Finally, user- and researcher-selected frameworks were applied to a client with undiagnosed motor impairments, unveiling a host of neuropsychological challenges to BCI control. Overall, this thesis advances the field of knowledge of NIRS-BCIs, specifically with respect to usability.

Keywords: Brain-computer Interface
Near-infrared Spectroscopy
Personalized Mental Tasks
Self-regulation
User-centered
Advisor: Chau, Tom
Takehara-Nishiuchi, Kaori
Sociology and the Problems of Problem Gambling Research: Connectin Private Troubles to Public Issues

This study addresses the lack of sociological perspectives in theoretical frameworks commonly used in problem gambling research, and demonstrates the connection of often overlooked aspects of the social environment to variables commonly used to predict and explain problem gambling. Using the often studied correlates of problem gambling, namely,, anxiety disorders; mood disorders; and gender, each paper shows how the relationships between those correlates and problem gambling are significantly modified by features of the social environment. Contributions of sociological research to theoretical frameworks for explaining problem gambling are posited as modifications to the Pathways Model to Problem Gambling. Advanced generalized linear modeling is used to explore the interconnections of these relationships in all three studies. The research findings are discussed in relation to the dangers of reducing complex social issues such as the prevalence of problem gambling to a series of individual characteristics found in problem gamblers. Implications of governmental responsibility in gambling provision, the medicalization of abnormal behaviours, and the role of sociological research in identifying patterns of inequality are also explored.

Keywords: Medicalization
Problem gambling
Advisor: Tepperman, Lorne
Safety Communication for Vehicular Networks: Context-aware Congestion Control and Cooperative Multi-hop Forwarding

Vehicular safety applications have the potential to make travel on our roads and highways much more safe. These applications require both reliable and up-to-date knowledge of the local neighbourhood, as well as reliable multi-hop propagation of safety alert messages. Under the IEEE Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) standard, the envisioned platform for vehicular communication, the former is attained through an exchange of single-hop broadcast safety beacons in the control channel. However, congestion of these periodic broadcast safety packets remains an obstacle to the large-scale deployment of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Excessive offered load on the shared control channel results in a deterioration of network performance and a subsequent reduction in the safety level at the application layer. Existing methods focus on providing fairness in the resources allocated, but fail to account for the different network performance requirements of vehicles in different driving situations. First, we address the problem of beaconing rate adaptation in response to network congestion and the driving context. We define a delay constraint profile for each communication link based on the driving context of the vehicles. We formulate the problem as a load minimization problem subject to a probabilistic constraint on the probability of violation of the delay requirements for each link in the network. We also develop an alternate formulation of the problem as a weighted network utility maximization (NUM) problem. We propose distributed algorithms to solve this problem in a decentralized manner and validate their performance through simulations. Some analytical results on their convergence are also provided. Next, we turn to the problem of providing reliable multi-hop forwarding in vehicular networks. Cooperative vehicular multi-hop schemes achieve reliability using broadcast transmissions and multiple forwarding relays at each hop. However, packet duplication must be controlled to circumvent the broadcast storm problem. Existing multi-hop dissemination schemes do not account for the presence of periodic safety beacons on the shared safety channel. We propose a cooperative forwarding protocol for highway vehicular networks, which extends a reliable vehicular broadcast medium access control (MAC) protocol based on positive orthogonal codes (POC). Multiple cooperating relays act as a virtual relay and schedule their transmissions to correspond to a single POC codeword. The proposed method exploits spatial diversity while mitigating the effect of hidden terminals. By allocating separate POC-based schedules for multi-hop packets and the periodic broadcast of safety heartbeat packets, the proposed protocol reduces the interference between the two types of safety transmissions. The performance of the protocol is studied through analysis using a Markov model and validated via simulations.

Keywords: congestion control
multi-hop forwarding
safety aware
VANET
vehicular networks
Advisor: Valaee, Shahrokh
Soil Nutrient and Greenhouse Gas Cycles in Managed Mixed Deciduous Ontario Forests: The Role of Elevated Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition and Nutrient and Biochar Amendments

Canada’s temperate forests are experiencing an environmental disturbance in the form of atmospheric nitrogen deposition arising from fossil fuel burning and agricultural practices. Nitrogen, a major nutrient required for plants and soil microorganisms, is normally in short supply in temperate forest ecosystems. However, when soil nitrogen is in excess, various negative impacts can result such as nutrient leaching, increased nitrous oxide emissions and disturbances to carbon cycling, including reduced soil methane uptake. Research has revealed a shift from nitrogen to phosphorus limitation in forests in central Ontario where chronic nitrogen deposition rates are high, and introducing soil amendments might have the potential to mitigate these negative effects. Before management strategies can be devised, it is important to characterize the degree of nitrogen excess, and how soil nutrient cycling and fluxes of greenhouse gases are being influenced, which may offset carbon gains from increased primary productivity. In an assessment of ambient soil characteristics representing natural topographic heterogeneity at Haliburton Forest, high inorganic nitrogen pools did not result in elevated nitrous oxide effluxes in upland soils, though hot spots and hot moments of nitrous oxide efflux occurred in wet depression areas where ammonium concentrations and moisture were high. Rapid methane efflux was also observed including what appear to be the highest rates in forest systems reported to date. A reduction in longer- (>5 year) and shorter-term (0-3 year) inorganic nitrogen pools in upland phosphorous-amended sites does support that the forest is phosphorous limited, however, there was no evidence of increased nitrous oxide emissions, even in nitrogen-amended sites that would be expected under nitrogen saturated conditions. Phosphorous limitation may be ameliorated by amending soils with biochar, which resulted in increased soil phosphorus, pH, and cation retention. The results of this research reveal that soils in temperate forests in Ontario are at a stage of nitrogen excess relative to ecosystem demands, but do not appear to have reached nitrogen saturation. However, with elevated exchangeable nitrogen pools and increasing nitrogen deposition, denitrification and methanogenic potentials, particularly under predicted increasing moisture regimes, may substantially impact and offset the overall carbon sink at this forest.

Keywords: biochar
carbon dioxide
denitrification
methane
nitrous oxide
topography
Advisor: Basiliko, Nathan
Romance as an Experimental Form in Polish and Russian Early Modernism

In my dissertation I examine a group of modernist novels that attempt to braid together two seemingly divergent literary modes: modernism and popular fiction. I argue that in the field of the novel popular culture was able to educate modernist writers on how to narrate their key ideological positions. The introductory chapter describes the situation of the novel in Polish and Russian early modernism and poses the question of the modernist authors’ need to experiment with popular literature. In this chapter I also develop an argument for the applicability and usefulness of the concept of romance in theorizing the relationship between the two modes. In the first chapter I present Fedor Sologub's novel-trilogy The Created Legend as an example of a “modernist romance” by using Northrop Frye’s structural approach. I also argue that the trilogy can be read as a narrativized justification of the author's sudden rise to prominence in the Russian literary field. The second chapter examines Jerzy Żuławski’s science-fictional epic The Lunar Trilogy. I look at spatial architecture, the protagonists, and temporality in this work as three loci in which the modernist ideology and romance engage in a dialogue. In order to ground my discussion in particular historical developments, I situate each of these narrative components in the larger cultural context of late-nineteenth-century modernity. Chapter 3 considers Evgeniĭ Zamiatin’s essayistic work and his novel We against the background of “the crisis of the novel” in post-revolutionary Russia. Incorporating its author’s reflections on the uses of engaging plots and the fantastic in contemporary literature, We enters the dialogue with various forms of romance, most notably gothic and spy fiction, yet without severing its ties to literary modernism. Significantly, the novel presents the figure of the author as the modern incarnation of the romance hero. Thus, I conclude my study by suggesting that the modernist experimentation with popular literature gradually moves towards what Harold Bloom termed “the internalization of romance,” a process whereby modernist authors adapt the imagery and narrative structures of romance to build elaborate allegories of the precarious position of the writer in the modern world.

Keywords: Novel
Polish modernism
Popular fiction
Romance
Russian modernism
Advisor: Livak, Leonid
The Role of Probiotic Lactobacillus in Immune Regulation and Modulation of the Vaginal Microbiota During Pregnancy

Preterm birth (PTB) occurs in 10% of all pregnancies globally. Premature babies have a mortality rate 40 times higher than term infants. Approximately 25-30% of PTB can be attributed to intrauterine infection/inflammation. A disturbance of the vaginal microbiota as observed in bacterial vaginosis (BV) is associated with an increased risk of PTB. Treatment of preterm labor with antibiotics is largely ineffective, and probiotic lactobacilli have been proposed as a potential preventive therapy for BV and PTB. The objectives of this thesis were to assess 1) the effect of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 (GR-1) and its supernatant (GR-1 SN) on the prevention of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced PTB and systemic and intra-uterine cytokine and chemokine profiles in pregnant CD-1 mice, 2) the effect of GR-1 on the mouse vaginal microbiota, and 3) the effect of GR-1 and L. reuteri RC-14 on the cervico-vaginal cytokine profile and vaginal microbiota in pregnant women with an abnormal Nugent score. Pregnant mice were pre-treated with intra-peritoneal injections of GR-1 SN or oral GR-1 live bacteria prior to intrauterine injection of LPS in two separate studies. The expression of cytokines and chemokines in the maternal plasma, amniotic fluid and intrauterine tissues were then measured. The vaginal microbiota was also determined in animals treated with oral GR-1 live bacteria. Pre-treatment with GR-1 SN, but not with GR-1 live bacteria, reduced LPS-induced PTB and inflammation in pregnant mice. The vaginal microbiota of pregnant mice was altered with oral GR-1 live bacteria. A randomized, double blind placebo-controlled trial was conducted, in which pregnant women with an abnormal Nugent score in their first trimester of pregnancy received orally either placebo or GR-1 and RC-14 for 12 weeks. Their cervico-vaginal cytokine profile and vaginal microbiota was then determined. Oral GR-1 and RC-14, at the dose and duration used, did not change the cytokine profile and vaginal microbiota of pregnant women with an abnormal Nugent score. We conclude that L. rhamnosus GR-1 supernatant, but not the live bacteria, may have the potential to serve as a prophylactic therapy for inflammation-associated conditions during pregnancy, including PTB.

Advisor: Bocking, Alan D
Challis, John RG
Proximity Effect and Tunneling Spectroscopy of High-temperature Superconductor-semiconductor Hybrid Structures

This thesis presents Andreev scattering studies of a variety of high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x-normal material (SN) junctions. The SN devices were fabricated with our newly-developed technique, called the mechanical-bonding method. High-temperature superconductivity was observed in topological insulators Bi2Se3 and Bi2Te3 (as well as graphite) by proximity to the high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x. This proximity effect was further confirmed by the application of a magnetic field and observation of a shifting in the energy of the Andreev-reflected quasiparticles as a result of diamagnetic screening supercurrents. However, the ability to probe the topological surface states in Bi2Se3 and Bi2Te3 was limited, due to the Fermi energy being deep in the bulk conduction band. Thus we turned to Bi2Te2Se, which is quite insulating in the bulk. The differential conductance measurements on Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x/Bi2Te2Se devices demonstrated a zero-bias conductance peak, suggesting evidences of a new excitation emerging at the interface between the two materials. Furthermore, the mechanical bonding method was employed as a technique to probe the density of states of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x at various doping levels, observing the superconducting gap and the pseudogap of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x at various temperatures.

Keywords: high-temperature superconductivity
topological insulators
Advisor: Burch, Kenneth S
Climate Change and Reproductive Phenology: Context-dependent Responses to Increases in Temperature and Implications for Assisted Colonization

Contemporary changes in climate have rapidly increased temperatures worldwide, extending the length of the growing season and eliciting large shifts in reproductive and growth traits across a diversity of plant taxa. The role of phenotypic plasticity in alleviating immediate changes in selection pressures must be thoroughly explored in order to identify the circumstances under which the survival of particular species may require active management. The major goals of my thesis were to characterize the contexts in which responses to warming occur and are adaptive, and to provide insight on the feasibility of assisted colonization (the movement of species beyond their current range boundary to climatically favorable habitat) and assisted gene flow (the relocation of multiple, genetically distinct populations to facilitate local adaptation). Focusing on the annual legume, Chamaecrista fasciculata, I applied artificial warming to simple plant communities to mimic the thermal regimes expected by the mid-21st century. Among experiments, I manipulated aspects of the abiotic and biotic environment likely to contribute to variation in plastic responses to warming, including plant genotype, community diversity, population density, internal patterns of resource allocation, and the frequency of rainfall. Reproductive phenological traits varied in their degree of response to warming, and photoperiodic constraints prevented optimal responses in populations of C. fasciculata from lower latitudes. In all cases, temperature-induced phenotypic plasticity was adaptive or neutral, but only sufficiently alleviated selection pressures in particular situations. Variation in competitive dynamics, pollinator access, and rainfall frequency did not modify responses to changes in temperature. This work identified barriers to assisted colonization across latitudes that arise when reproductive phenology is dependent on photoperiodic cues. Phenotypic plasticity may ameliorate some of the negative effects of increases in temperature, but persistent, directional selection pressures will require the evolution of life history traits for adaptation to climate change.

Keywords: assisted colonization
climate change
natural selection
phenology
plasticity
Advisor: Weis, Arthur E