VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Normative Approaches to Understanding Stereotyping and Group-based Inferences

People often make inferences about others based on beliefs or stereotypes about the social groups a person belongs to. These types of inferences can often be problematic (e.g. overgeneralizing based on a stereotype can lead to less accurate inferences, and exacerbate moral and social problems like discrimination). Yet group-based types of inferences can also be a necessary and even beneficial part of life (e.g. using accurate beliefs about groups can make inferences more accurate, and recognizing real group differences can serve as a basis addressing problematic social inequalities). The current research clarified the epistemic and moral standards that can be used to distinguish the problematic from non-problematic cases, and then used this to empirically examine several reasons people might fail to live up to these standards. Part 1 re-examined the idea that certain types of social categories (e.g. demographics, occupations) might often be overused compared to “individuating information” (e.g. traits, behaviours) as a heuristic to simplify inferences. Results did not support this idea, instead suggesting that these two types of information are largely used similarly. Part 2 re-examined whether certain biases in people’s information (due to lacking first-hand knowledge or having biased second-hand knowledge about a group) might lead people to think that groups are overly homogeneous, and thus be overconfident in their group-based inferences. Results suggested that, while both sources of bias can lead groups to appear more homogeneous, only second-hand knowledge leads to greater confidence when making inferences. Part 3 examined the moral norms used to judge group-based generalizations, and showed how differences or errors in people’s beliefs might lead people to freely use generalizations that are widely seen as violating these moral norms. Overall, this work helps bring clarity to the epistemic and moral standards that can be applied to evaluate group-based inferences, and helps better understand when people will or will not live up to these standards.

Keywords: Bayesian models
impression formation
morality
social categories
stereotyping
Advisor: Cunningham, William A.
Application of Unmanned Aerial Systems to Blast Monitoring in Open Pit Mines

Current techniques used for monitoring the blasting process in open pit mines are manual, intermittent, and inefficient and can expose technicians to hazardous conditions. This thesis presents the application of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for monitoring and improving blasting processes in open pit mines.A laboratory setup was developed to fast-track development of UAS applications for blast monitoring. The first application investigated was the measurement of post-blast rock fragmentation because it affects the productivity and efficiency of all downstream operations. The results of lab development showed that automated UAS fragmentation measurement produced similar accuracy and required significantly less time when compared to manual photograph analysis. The progress and results in the lab motivated field studies in open pit mines. These field studies investigated the accuracy of the 3D model generated, estimated image scale, and fragmentation in comparison with sieving analysis. Again, UAS techniques were found to produce results with similar accuracy to sieving; however, significant manual editing was required during photograph analysis. To increase the accuracy and efficiency of UAS fragmentation measurement, deep learning models were developed and trained to measure fragmentation from muck pile images. Model validation on muck pile orthophotos found that the deep learning methods achieved good accuracy compared to manual image labelling. Validation on screened piles showed that the deep learning measurement performed similar to manual photograph analysis accuracy when compared with sieving. Based on benefits found for UAS fragmentation measurement, other applications in blast monitoring and blasting process improvement in open pit mines were investigated. The UAS-based monitoring was done in three different stages during field experiments in different open pit mines. In the pre-blasting stage, production blasthole patterns were mapped to investigate drillhole alignment. To monitor the blasting process, a high-speed camera was mounted on the UAS to investigate blast initiation, sequencing, misfired holes and stemming ejection. In the post-blast stage, the muck pile was monitored to estimate fragmentation, assess muck pile configuration, and bench floor condition. The collected aerial data provided detailed information and high spatial and temporal resolution on the quality of the blasting process and highlighted significant opportunities for process improvement.

Advisor: Esmaeili, Kamran
Modality and Validity in the Logic of John Buridan

What makes a valid argument valid? Generally speaking, in a valid argument, if the premisses are true, then the conclusion must necessarily also be true. But on its own, this doesn’t tell us all that much. What is truth? And what is necessity? In what follows, I consider answers to these questions proposed by the fourteenth century logician John Buridan († ca. 1358). My main claim is that Buridan’s logic is downstream from his metaphysics. Accordingly, I treat his metaphysical discussions as the key to his logic. As has been often noted, Buridan’s metaphysics are radically anti-realist about universals, though I think the depth and scope of his anti-realism has often been papered over by his recent commentators. Buridan constructs his logic on an amazingly spartan ontology, and this accomplishment is overdue for reconsideration. To the foregoing questions: truth is a feature of propositions, and of propositions only—not of proposition-like states of affairs, or anything like that. It is a function of the reference or supposition (suppositio) of their terms, which depends on predication in a propositional context. And necessary truth is grounded in causation: a predication is necessary if it cannot be falsified by any power, natural or supernatural, without annihilating what its terms stand for. “Socrates is a human”, for instance, can only be falsified by annihilating Socrates, and so it is a necessary truth. These considerations provide an ample theoretical basis for a thorough examination of Buridan’s modal logic. This is what the thesis culminates with. In the final chapter, I set forth some novel and surprising findings, chief of which is this: Buridan’s modal syntax and semantics are nothing like Kripke’s—and indeed are incompatible with them. This has significant implications not only for modal logic and metaphysics, but for how we think about medieval logic and philosophy more generally. Throughout the thesis, I advocate a methodology of emphasising the differences, rather than the similarities, between past and present thought. Buridan is wildly unlike what we’re used to, and we should let him speak for himself.

Keywords: John Buridan
Logical consequence
medieval logic
modal logic
modality
Advisor: King, Peter
A Study of the Interactions among Zoroastrian, Jewish and Roman Legal Systems during the 7th and 8th Centuries CE Based on a Critical Edition of Īšō‛-boḵt’s Corpus Juris with Commentary and an English Translation

This project is a comprehensive study of a Syriac legal text of the late seventh century CE of the literary heritage of the Church of the East. The text is known as Īšō‘-boḵt Corpus Juris (ICJ) after its author. In this regard, this dissertation consists of two main parts: 1) a study of legal tradition in the Church of the East, 2) an edition and a translation of ICJ followed by a commentary. The first part is composed of two sections. It begins with a study of the legal tradition in the Church of the East from its advent in the late fifth century with figures such as Barṣauma, Mār Acacius and Mār Abā down to the end of the seventh century and Ḥenān-Išo‘ I, the last influential individual in the tradition prior to Īšō‘-boḵt. The main purpose of this study is to understand ICJ against the backdrop of the rich tradition to which it belongs. The second section of the first part is an analysis of ICJ itself. The study tries to locate the text at the intersection of the aforementioned legal traditions of Sasanian and post-Sasanian Zoroastrian, Jewish and Roman legal cultures. However, these legal cultures did not evenly distribute their traces on every section of ICJ. The Jewish and Roman influences are more recognizable in the first four chapters before they gradually fade out while parallels to the Zoroastrian legal system become numerous in the last two chapters. For the second part of this thesis, this study provides a critical edition of ICJ based on the Vatican manuscript and Abdišō‘ collection of laws with an English translation facing the edition. This edition and translation are accompanied by commentary discussing details of almost every passage of the text. The final part of the thesis is the appendices including translations of three Syriac texts and one Middle Persian text which are of crucial importance for understanding ICJ.

Keywords: Church of the East
Comparative History of Law
Īšō‘-boḵt
Middle Persian
Sasanian legal system
Syriac
Advisor: Meacham, Tirzah TM
Harrak, Amir AH
A Qualitative Examination of the Impacts of Police Practices on Racialized and Marginalized Young People in Toronto

Canada enjoys an international reputation for tolerance, diversity, and inclusivity. However, a closer examination reveals Canada’s long-standing history of systemic racism, including in its public-sectors organizations and, most notably, the criminal justice system. In particular, Black people are among the primary recipients of disparate treatments at the hands of the police. However, while these issues are well-studied in the United States and United Kingdom, there remains a lack of Canadian scholarship examining the intersections of race and the criminal justice system. My dissertation seeks to better inform the discourse around these issues through an examination of the lived experiences of young people in Toronto, Ontario with policing, violence, and community safety. Drawing on 42 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with young people, ages 16-29, my study explores how aggressive, order-maintenance policing, economic marginalization, and geographic segregation have impacted young people’s perceptions of the police, the criminal justice system, and Canadian society. In doing so, I engage with dominant theoretical perspectives related to urban policing, including procedural justice and legitimacy, subcultural violence, legal cynicism, and social disorganization. My findings explore several important themes, including the contours of long-standing rivalries between non-gang youth who reside lower-income communities or ‘opp blocks’ (Chapter 2); the salience of anti-snitching discourses among young people and the relationship between perceptions of police legitimacy and efficacy and willingness to comply with police investigations (Chapter 3); and the collective impacts of police practices through a comparison between Black and white youths, including the role of direct and vicarious contacts in shaping perceptions of the police (Chapter 4). Taken together, my findings demonstrate the pervasive and wide-spread impacts of proactive policing practices that have disproportionately targeted Black youths and Black communities, including diminished perceptions of the police, reduced social and spatial mobility, and involvement various self-help behaviours, including private violence. I conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of my findings, which are particularly salient as Toronto continues to face mounting levels of youth violence, racialized poverty, and spatial segregation.

Keywords: Legitimacy
Policing
Urban Inequality
Youth Justice
Advisor: Wortley, Scot
Computational Approaches to D. rerio Retinal Organogenesis

Increasing integration of statistical and computational techniques into the analysis of cell and molecular biological data has created opportunities for explaining organogenic phenomena by numerical analysis. This thesis first examines the suitability of the most developed of these explanations for the development of the \textit{D. rerio} eye, the stochastic mitotic mode explanation (SMME) for retinal progenitor cell (RPC) function, and demonstrates that it is neither the best available explanation, nor theoretically sound. It is shown that a deterministic alternative model is an improved explanation for the data, and that the SMME cannot explain postembryonic RPC function. These studies support earlier hypotheses of a linear progression of competency phases over the hypothesized ``stochastic'' nature of RPC lineage commitment. A Bayesian model comparison framework, relying centrally on the Galilean Monte Carlo nested sampling algorithm for estimation of model evidence and posterior parameter distributions, is subsequently elaborated as an improved method for testing models in organogenesis. The utility of this approach is proved by comparing models of \textit{D. rerio} RPC populations in the postembryonic Circumferential Marginal Zone (CMZ). The inferential framework is used to show that the activity of CMZ RPCs in the postembryonic period is best characterised by a decaying cell cycle rate, with similar activity across morphological axes, despite asymmetrical population dynamics. Changes to RPC lineage commitment over this time suggest an explanation for the changing photoreceptor mosaic. These studies establish that CMZ RPC behaviours change over time, whose postembryonic function is not adequately described as a recapitulation of an embryonic program. Finally, the \textit{D. rerio} mutant \textit{rys} is shown to arise from a lesion in the npat locus, and the apparently paradoxically enlarged CMZ RPC population observed in these animals is demonstrated to arise from a failure of these cells to specify and exit the proliferative niche, and not from a proliferative defect. Nested sampling is used to show that unique populations of nucleosome positions in \textit{rys} mutants and sibling arise from separate causal processes. A mechanism for these observations involving simultaneous changes to the subunit composition of the nucleosome pool, and loss of positioning control, is suggested.

Keywords: Bayesian statistics
circumferential marginal zone
nested sampling
retinal progenitors
stem cells
zebrafish
Advisor: Tropepe, Vincent
Parallel Architecture Exploration for Data-intensive Applications

The work presented in this thesis focuses on the exploration of alternative architectures and computer paradigms for data-intensive applications. Our goal is to design and build a scalable and low-power solution to the emerging high-volume, low locality problem. Instead of parting from an existent computer architecture or trying to adapt and accelerate an existing implementation, our approach is to extract the essential requirements of data-intensive applications to turn them into easy to scale building blocks that can make better use of new,highly parallelizable technologies. This work is divided into two main components. First, Compass, an architecture-agnostic simulation framework. Compass allows the modeling of the functions performed by a data-intensive application without the need of defining an underlying architecture. We focus on a specific type of data-intensive application: the in-memory store, due to the challenges and possibilities it presents. The second component of the research is Prismatic, a hardware architecture for data-intensive applications. To test Prismatic, we create a key-value in-memory store based on the results we obtained from Compass. In this store, small modules perform individual tasks to attend a request from a client. When new data arrives, these modules try to hold the necessary resources in the system, and perform their function to then pass the output to the modules in the following stage. We implement Prismatic in an FPGA board using the relatively new High Bandwidth Memory, which offers 32 independent memory channels. Prismatic is able to attend requests from remote clients through TCP/IP. Our proof-of-concept in-memory store is compatible with the Memcached binary protocol, so both clients and benchmark tools that support this protocol can interact with our system.

Keywords: architectural exploration
data-intensive applications
FPGA
parallel architectures
Reconfigurable logic
system simulation
Advisor: Chow, Paul
Pedagogies of Be[Ing], Be[Longing] and Be[Coming]: Social Justice and Peacebuilding in the English Curriculum of a Marginalized Colombian Public High School

Colombia has experienced over five decades of political unrest and extreme violence. This has caused suffering not only for those involved in the armed conflict, but for marginalized populations in general, and specifically for disadvantaged students in public schools. Although the education system has required that issues of peace, conflict resolution, citizenship and social justice be addressed in history and social studies classes, this has not been the case for English classes. In fact, English language teaching has mainly focused on linguistic aspects of the language through content that is sometimes irrelevant to the most vulnerable communities. Starting with a personal onto-epistemological paradigm as a point of entry, this critical ethnographic case study considers how lived social justice and peacebuilding curriculum (SJPBC) occurs in three English classrooms, and how this helps high school students to learn English communication skills that allow them to discuss issues of social justice, as well as to help resolve problems that are relevant for their communities. From May to December 2018, fieldwork was carried out in a public high school, in Bogotá, Colombia with three English teachers and students from Grades 6 to 11. Data collected included teacher interviews, student focus groups, field observations, and artifacts which were used content and theme analysis as interpreted through the lens of grounded theory. Findings revealed four major theoretical ideas related to 1) how teachers create a social justice-inspired curriculum that guides students to learn English, 2) how this curriculum reflects the students’ and teachers’ sense of community and, 3) how selected classroom activities raised social awareness towards a more humanizing pedagogy for English, and 4), how to create a novel research-based model for teaching English that resonates with the students’ needs, expectations, and dreams for their future . Ultimately, in this project I juxtapose the teachers’ classroom pedagogy with the students' lived experiences. Research and pedagogical implications are provided to shed light on the future of English language teaching, especially in marginalized countries such as Colombia.

Keywords: Colombia
Decolonization
English Language Teaching
Ethnography
Peace Education
Social Justice
Advisor: Gagné, Antoinette
Phenological Responses of Plants and Pollinators to Human-altered Climates

The timing of plant and animal life cycle events are changing in response to human-altered climates. These shifts in phenological event dates can be detected through time and across space. For example, shifts through time are usually detected in response to global climate alterations, such as increases in average spring temperature since the Industrial Revolution. In contrast, shifts across space are usually detected in response to local-scale climate alterations, such as increases in temperature in urban compared to rural areas. Phenological responses to altered climates can also be studied through experimentation by directly manipulating the relevant environmental cues. Despite the relative ease of phenological measurement, how we interpret phenological shifts and changes to species interactions is not always straightforward. Careful consideration of the metadata, such as the underlying sampling and pooling decisions made across spatial and temporal scales and across levels of biological organization, is often required. In addition to scale-dependency, a lack of knowledge of the cues driving phenological responses further complicates the interpretation of phenological shifts. In my thesis, I address certain knowledge gaps and issues relevant to phenological sampling, scaling, mechanism, and synchrony between interacting species. I do this through the re-analysis of a long-term dataset on plant phenology and through observational and manipulative studies of Cercis canadensis, the eastern redbud tree, and some of its bee pollinators. In Chapter 2, I show how sampling decisions across space and time can affect phenological patterns and our ability to attribute those patterns to climate change. In Chapter 3, I show that the flowering phenology of C. canadensis within the City of Toronto is highly variable in space. This variability correlates with microclimate and may result in greater temporal overlap with certain C. canadensis floral visitors. In Chapter 4, I experimentally manipulate temperature cues and show that cue-response differences can lead to changes in temporal overlap between C. canadensis flowering onset and the emergence of a pollinator, Osmia lignaria. Through the use of novel sampling and experimental approaches, my thesis addresses knowledge gaps in phenological scaling and mechanism and improves our understanding of how plants and pollinators respond to human-altered climates.

Keywords: Climate change
Eastern redbud
Pollination
Urban ecology
Wild bees
Advisor: Thomson, James D
MacIvor, Scott
Cannabis Use Motives in Emerging Adulthood: Using Daily Diary Method to Inform Intervention

The increasing rate of cannabis use among emerging adults is a growing public health concern in Canada. Research has shown that frequent cannabis use is associated with a myriad of negative mental health outcomes. However, little is known about the motivations or reasons behind such use in emerging adulthood. Daily diary data provides information on both the proximal and distal factors for cannabis use, which can inform interventions to prevent and treat problematic use in emerging adulthood. The first phase of the study assessed four trait motives (coping, sleep, enjoyment, and celebration) that were hypothesized to moderate the daily relationships between negative and positive affect and cannabis use and related consequences. A sample consisting of 63 emerging adults (ages 18-25) recruited from the community completed baseline questionnaires followed by 14 daily reports on mood, motives, cannabis use, and consequences. Across the 14 days, daily negative mood was associated with greater cannabis consequences, although for those who use cannabis to cope, the strength of this relationship was greater on days when participants reported less negative mood. Enjoyment motives moderated the relationship between daily positive mood and consequences, such that the relationship was even stronger on days when participants experienced less positive mood, acting as a buffer against cannabis-related consequences. The second phase of the study investigated the impact of using a daily diary as a self-monitoring tool to enhance motivation to change cannabis use. Additionally, at the end of the daily diary period, participants were randomly assigned to either receive a brief personalized feedback intervention or to a control condition. Although there were no differences in cannabis use or consequences between the intervention and control groups, men exhibited a significant reduction in cannabis consequences from baseline to follow-up, supporting the efficacy of self-monitoring via an electronic device as an intervention tool. Overall, findings highlight that the relationship between daily mood and cannabis motives contribute to daily cannabis consequences and ought to be considered when developing prevention and interventions for emerging adults.

Keywords: cannabis
daily diary
emerging adulthood
intervention
motives
substance use
Advisor: Goldstein, Abby L