VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Seeking Possibilities in a Transnational Context: Asian Women Faculty in the Canadian Academy

This dissertation examines the questions: “What are the experiences of Asian women faculty in the Canadian academy?” and “How do they navigate this space?” The study aims to generate new insights into how this understudied and underrepresented population negotiates various aspects of identity, such as gender, race, language and citizenship, as they pursue their academic careers. It provides an original examination of how “Asian” women faculty who have transnational life experience interpret the Canadian academy. Using a qualitative inquiry methodology with a transnational feminist perspective, I conducted in-depth interviews with nine Asian women faculty members in Canadian universities concerning their motivations, desires, contradictions, struggles, and coping strategies within their academic lives. Themes for the analysis arose from the literature, the conceptual framework, my own background and the data. Four major themes organize the analysis: 1) what impact the socially constructed discourse of Canadian citizenry has in the everyday lives of Asian women faculty and how “Asian-woman-ness” operates in the given contexts; 2) what technical difficulties and social barriers emerge from Asian women faculty’s experiences with spoken and written English language; 3) what “cultural logics” Asian women faculty utilize in order to survive/thrive in their social locations as Asian women in the Canadian academy; and 4) how Asian women faculty create their own legitimate space from their marginalized points of view. Through the dual process of their citizenry being de-legitimized in the academy and the nation-state, Asian women faculty strive to become legitimate through creating alternative understandings and definitions of their academic lives. This study was meant to initiate and promote reconfiguration of study on faculty’s lives by foregrounding the transnational feminist framework, which looks at/beyond the institutional, national and temporal borders and at the same time pays close attention to gender and race within the different types of borders. The study suggests that efforts to make higher education more diverse are more complex than some might imagine.

Keywords: Asian women faculty
higher education
transnational feminism
Canada
Asianness
neoliberalism
subject making
qualitative inquiry
academy
cultural logics
Advisor: Acker, Sandra
Canadian School-aged Heritage Language Learners' Patterns of Language Use, Proficiency and Beliefs about Learning their Two Languages

The present dissertation examined the language use, proficiency and beliefs of child heritage language learners (HLLs) from Spanish and Chinese heritage language (HL) backgrounds exposed to English as a second language (L2) upon school entry (N=63). Data were collected via HL and L2 proficiency measures and a semi-structured interview and pictorial measure, during the primary years, a period noted for HL loss (Wong Fillmore, 1991). Study 1 focused on patterns of language input and use in children’s lives. Children mostly used L2 in their activities and in their interactions with siblings, cousins and peers. With parents, grandparents and older relatives, children mostly used HL. Study 2 investigated children’s proficiency and changes in proficiency across HL and L2 language and literacy domains. Children appraised their HL oral language skills at low to moderate levels, and viewed their HL literacy skills as very low. Contrarily, their appraisals of L2 skills were uniformly high across all domains. Children demonstrated limited HL proficiency, whereas they demonstrated moderate L2 skills in all domains. Concordance between perceived and demonstrated proficiency was low, with only one in three children accurate in their self-evaluations. While children indicated loss, stability and growth in their HL skills equally, most children indicated growth in L2 skills since beginning school. Children demonstrated growth in HL oral language and reading and in all L2 domains. Qualitative analysis indicated that children overwhelmingly referenced markers of language and literacy skill in explanations of their appraisals. Other attributions for proficiency and changes in proficiency included assistance from others, different learning approaches, the influence of language environments, and feedback received from others. Study 3 investigated children’s affects and beliefs in relation to HL and L2 situations. Positive affect was associated with listening and speaking HL in the home context, and with L2 across all domains and contexts. Skill in the domain or language was a common rationale for children’s affective responses to language and literacy situations. Children also associated their affect with interest in the target domain/language, availability of assistance, membership in language groups and the influence of language environments. Considerations for further research with this population and recommendations for relevant parties are discussed.

Keywords: heritage language
children
maintenance
Advisor: Geva, Esther
Low-power Multi-Gb/s Wireline Communication

This thesis discusses low-power wireline receivers with particular focus on clocking circuitry and architectures. These clocking solutions can be used for a 1-D partial response channel as well as for a conventional DC coupled channel. The receiver front end for a 1-D channel requires more consideration to recover an NRZ signal from the received narrow pulses. Two possible solutions are presented. First, a full-rate detection technique is presented, where the speed is limited by the settling time of a latch circuit which has to be less than 1 UI. Second, a novel demuxing technique is introduced. It is demonstrated through theory, simulation and measurement results that the half-rate architecture can improve maximum achievable speed by a factor of 1.6. The distribution and alignment of high-frequency clocks across a wide bus of links is a signi¯cant challenge in modern computing systems. A low power clock source is demonstrated by incorporating a bu®er into a cross-coupled oscillator. Because the load is isolated from the tank, the oscillator can directly drive 50-Ohm impedances or large capacitive loads with no additional bu®ering. Using this topology, a quadrature VCO (QVCO) is implemented in 0.13 um digital CMOS. The QVCO oscillates at 20 GHz, consumes 20 mW and provides 12% tuning range. Injection locked oscillators (ILOs) are an attractive clocking tool for low-power area- e±cient wireline receivers. In this work, we explored their use as a clock deskew element, a clock recovery unit and a programmable jitter lter. A study of both LC and ring ILOs indicates signi¯cant variation in their jitter tracking bandwidth when used to provide large phase shifts. By selectively injecting di®erent phases of a quadrature-LC or ring VCO, this problem is obviated resulting in reduced phase noise. First, an ILO based half-rate clock recovery technique is presented, which can be used for AC coupled links where low frequency signal components are attenuated by the channel. The nonlinear path comprises a hysteresis latch that recovers the missing low frequency content and a linear path that boosts the high frequency component by taking advantage of the high pass channel response. By optimally combining them, the front-end recovers NRZ signals up to 13 Gb/s burning only 26 mW in 90 nm CMOS. A simple theory and simulation technique for ILO-based receivers is discussed. The clock recovery technique is veried with experimental results at 5-10 Gb/s in 90 nm CMOS consuming 70 mW and acquiring lock within 1.5 ns. Second, a clock forwarded 65nm CMOS receiver uses two ILOs to frequency- multiply, deskew, and track correlated jitter on a pulsed clock forwarded from the transmitter. Di®erent data rates and latency mismatch between the clock and data paths are ac- commodated by a jitter tracking bandwidth that is controllable up to 300MHz. Each receiver consumes 0.92 pJ/bit operating at 7.4 Gb/s and has a jitter tolerance of 1.5 UI at 200MHz.

Keywords: High-speed, transceiver, wireline, injection locking, burst mode
Advisor: Carusone, Anthony Chan
The Influence of Gender and Culture on First and Second Language Writing of Chinese and Japanese-speaking University Students

This study investigated the influence of gender and culture on 23 university students’ first language (L1) and second language writing (L2). Specifically, the study investigated the extent to which gender differences would emerge in students’ L1 and L2 writing and whether any such differences would manifest themselves differentially in L1 as opposed to L2 writing. Students represented three national groups (8 Japanese students, 7 Chinese students, and 8 Taiwanese students). The Japanese and Chinese groups received their schooling in their home countries and came to Canada for purposes of university studies. However, the Taiwanese group came to Canada during their schooling years and consequently their English academic skills were better developed than their Chinese skills. L1 and L2 writing was sampled with four different writing tasks and analyzed for patterns of lexical and rhetorical usage. Stimulated-recall interviews were conducted with each student after they had completed the four writing tasks. The goal of the interviews was to identify the metacognitive strategies the students utilized in their L1 and L2 writing. Issues related to how students’ identities intersected with their L1 and L2 writing were also explored. Because the national groups are heterogeneous with respect to L1 and L2 writing experience, each group was considered as a separate case study for purposes of analysis. Exploratory cross-group analyses were carried out only to throw additional light on within-group trends. In the sample as a whole, statistical differences related to gender did not emerge. However, qualitative analysis of students’ L1 writing showed a distinct gender difference within the Japanese group. Specifically, Japanese females used considerably more politeness markers in their Japanese writing in comparison to Japanese males whose L1 writing tended to be more assertive. These differences were not apparent in males’ and females’ L2 (English) writing. No gender differences were observed in either L1 or L2 among the Chinese and Taiwanese groups. The findings suggest that learners absorb the instruction they receive in relation to effective ways of writing in their L2 environments and are fully capable of adjusting lexical and rhetorical features from L1 norms to L2 norms. The fact that female Japanese students did not generalize the politeness features they used in Japanese to English suggests that student identities are fluid and shift according to the cultural and linguistic context.

Keywords: Gender
Culture
Multilingual
Writing
Advisor: Cummins, James
Feature-based Control of Physics-based Character Animation

Creating controllers for physics-based characters is a long-standing open problem in animation and robotics. Such controllers would have numerous applications while potentially yielding insight into human motion. Creating controllers remains difficult: current approaches are either constrained to track motion capture data, are not robust, or provide limited control over style. This thesis presents an approach to control of physics-based characters based on high-level features of human movement, such as center-of-mass, angular momentum, and end-effector motion. Objective terms are used to control each feature, and are combined via optimization. We show how locomotion can be expressed in terms of a small number of features that control balance and end-effectors. This approach is used to build controllers for biped balancing, jumping, walking, and jogging. These controllers provide numerous benefits: human-like qualities such as arm-swing, heel-off, and hip-shoulder counter-rotation emerge automatically during walking; controllers are robust to changes in body parameters; control parameters apply to intuitive properties; and controller may be mapped onto entirely new bipeds with different topology and mass distribution, without controller modifications. Transitions between multiple types of gaits, including walking, jumping, and jogging, emerge automatically. Controllers can traverse challenging terrain while following high-level user commands at interactive rates. This approach uses no motion capture or off-line optimization process. Although we focus on the challenging case of bipedal locomotion, many other types of controllers stand to benefit from our approach.

Keywords: Control
Animation
Optimization
Advisor: Hertzmann, Aaron
Numerical Modelling of Sooting Laminar Diffusion Flames at Elevated Pressures and Microgravity

Fully understanding soot formation in flames is critical to the development of practical combustion devices, which typically operate at high pressures, and fire suppression systems in space. Flames display significant changes under microgravity and high-pressure conditions as compared to normal-gravity flames at atmospheric pressure, but the exact causes of these changes are not well-characterized. As such, the effects of gravity and pressure on the stability characteristics and sooting behavior of laminar coflow diffusion flames were investigated. To study these effects, a new highly-scalable combustion modelling tool was developed specifically for use on large multi-processor computer architectures. The tool is capable of capturing complex processes such as detailed chemistry, molecular transport, radiation, and soot formation/destruction in laminar diffusion flames. The proposed algorithm represents the current state of the art in combustion modelling, making use of a second-order accurate finite-volume scheme and a parallel adaptive mesh refinement algorithm on body-fitted, multi-block meshes. An acetylene-based, semi-empirical model was used to predict the nucleation, growth, and oxidation of soot particles. Reasonable agreement with experimental measurements for different fuels and pressures was obtained for predictions of flame height, temperature and soot volume fraction. Overall, the algorithm displayed excellent strong scaling performance by achieving a parallel efficiency of 70% on 384 processors. The effects of pressure and gravity were studied for flames of two different fuels: ethylene-air flames between pressures of 0.5–5 atm and methane-air flames between 1–60 atm. Based on the numerical predictions, zero-gravity flames had lower temperatures, broader soot-containing zones, and higher soot concentrations than normal-gravity flames at the same pressure. Buoyant forces caused the normal-gravity flames to narrow with increasing pressure while the increased soot concentrations and radiation at high pressures lengthened the zero-gravity flames. Low-pressure flames at both gravity levels exhibited a similar power-law dependence of the maximum carbon conversion on pressure which weakened as pressure was increased. This dependence decayed at a faster rate in zero gravity when pressure was increased beyond 1–10 atm.

Keywords: Laminar flames
Combustion
High pressure
Zero-gravity
Numerical modelling
Soot formation
Advisor: Groth, Clinton P. T.
Gulder, Omer L.
The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953

“The Gulag and Soviet Society in Western Siberia, 1929-1953” examines the history of forced labour during the Stalin era in Western Siberia, or present-day Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Kemerovo Provinces. The region was a key site of Stalin-era repression, as it was home to numerous Gulag camps including Siblag, one of the longest lasting and most economically diversified of the many prison-labour camps scattered throughout the former Soviet Union. Western Siberia was also one of the main areas of exile for peasants and, later, displaced ethnic groups. The dissertation traces the seeming contradictions in the development of the Gulag by juxtaposing the very modern, bureaucratic “Gulag” as it appeared on paper, with the “Gulag” on the ground that relied heavily on informal practices, data falsification, and personal connections. The Gulag is thus emblematic of the “neo-traditional” modernization of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The dissertation also examines points of illicit and condoned interaction between the Gulag and surrounding population centres, thus challenging Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s seminal and enduring depiction of the Gulag as an isolated archipelago of concentration camps. Illicit interaction included widespread black-market activity, the smuggling of correspondence, sexual affairs, and, surprisingly, even instances of locals sneaking into the camps to use camp facilities. Condoned interaction took place at the level of local economic planning (the transfer of prisoners for help with specific projects), a striking overlap in cultural and propaganda campaigns, the contracting out of prisoners to local enterprises, and the granting of unescorted status to large numbers of prisoners, who thus had the right to move outside of the camp zones without guard. Because many of Western Siberia’s camps were located in and around major urban centres, including Novosibirsk and Tomsk, the region is important for examining issues of interaction. The dissertation draws extensively on sources from four archives in Moscow and four archives in Siberia, as well as Gulag newspapers, published and unpublished memoirs, document collections, and archival collections available in the United States. Many of these sources are under-utilized, including Communist Party documents from the local camp administrations, personal files of prisoners, and NKVD operational orders.

Keywords: Gulag
Siberia
forced labour
Siblag
Stalin era
Advisor: Viola, Lynne
Parents' Day-to-day Involvement and Challenges with the Early Learning and Care System: Implications for Policy and Practice

In Canada and internationally, policy makers are moving towards more comprehensive and integrated service delivery models for early learning that include parent involvement and support as integral to their design. The current study was part of an ongoing evaluation of the Best Start project in Peel Region, a municipality in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Best Start aims to integrate preschool, junior/senior kindergarten, child care, public health and parenting programs into a seamless, easily accessible early child development system. This study examined whether parents with kindergarten children enrolled in Best Start schools, where kindergarten and child care were co-located and service integration was underway, would report lower levels of parenting daily hassles compared to parents of children in demographically similar schools where there was no service integration. Parental perceptions about hassles specific to child care and early learning settings were measured using the Early Childhood-Parenting Daily Hassles Scale (EC-PDH) (Arimura, 2008). Three areas of parenting stress that could potentially be reduced through service integration were explored: (1) seamless day – seamless access to care, education and family support; (2) connectedness – parents feeling involved and connected to their child’s school; and (3) parenting capacity – parents feeling confident in their parenting role. The study also combined hassles scores from Best Start and comparison schools to examine all parents’ involvement in the early learning and care system and the hassles they may or may not face on a daily basis as a function of parent demographics and program usage. Parents from 369 families in 10 schools were included in this study. Although Best Start parents did not report lower levels of parenting daily hassles compared to comparison parents, qualitative analyses at Best Start sites where parents used child care suggested that parents were feeling supported and they were forging positive relationships with staff. The positive relationships reported among parents and ECEs or other staff were not as frequent between parents and kindergarten teachers. Combined data indicated that all parents seemed to be experiencing the greatest hassles in the parenting capacity domain. Results are discussed in terms of policy implications for parent involvement in integrated full-day early learning programs such as full-day kindergarten.

Keywords: early learning
kindergarten
service integration
parent involvement
child care
educare
Advisor: Pelletier, Janette
Development of Methods for the MR-guided Percutaneous Revascularization of Chronic Total Occlusions

The percutaneous revascularization of chronic total occlusions represents a major challenge to interventional cardiologists. Procedural success is currently limited by the inadequate soft-tissue contrast of x-ray fluoroscopy and the inability to visualize the position and orientation of a revascularization device with respect to the lesion and the vessel wall. In this thesis methods are developed that enable the percutaneous revascularization of occlusive lesions to be guided using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Unlike x-rays, MR has excellent soft-tissue contrast and this can be exploited to provide valuable information regarding the composition and geometry of the lesion. The first method is a robust and redundant technique for determining the position and orientation of a catheter inside an MR scanner. The technique uses phase information introduced into the MR signal by a small receive coil located at the distal tip of the catheter. The technique is developed theoretically and is demonstrated with a feasibility experiment. A forward-looking intravascular imaging catheter is then presented that is capable of acquiring of high-resolution MR images of occlusive lesions and the vessel wall in front of the catheter. The imaging catheter consists of two orthogonal receive coils located at the distal tip of the catheter. The use of the imaging catheter is demonstrated in phantoms and in vivo. A third method enables active visualization of MR compatible guidewires. The method utilizes a catheter-based pick-up coil that is magnetically coupled to the guidewire. The proposed technique enables one to concentrate all active components on a catheter thereby facilitating the use of safety features. Complete characterization is presented theoretically and validated experimentally. In addition, the use of a practical catheter device is demonstrated in an in situ environment. Finally, future work required for the development of an integrated catheter-based device for the MR-guided revascularization of chronic total occlusions is discussed.

Keywords: MRI
Interventional MRI
Chronic Total Occlusion
Medical Imaging
Advisor: Wright, Graham
Enactive Education: Dynamic Co-emergence, Complexity, Experience, and the Embodied Mind

The potential of a broad enactive approach in education has yet to be realized. This thesis contributes to the development of a well-rounded enactive educational theory and practice. This thesis argues that a broad enactive perspective has the potential to challenge, reframe and reconfigure problems, issues and practices in education in ways that improve teaching, learning and research communities. It establishes that a broad enactive approach as a theory of embodied mind, a dynamic co-emergence theory, and a method of examining human experience helps to realize the meaning, scope, and potential of enactive education. It takes as its point of departure Dewey’s broad enactive philosophy of mind, cognition, embodiment, experience, and dynamic co-emergence. It shows, through an examination of an actual public classroom encounter, that a broad enactive approach has the potential to reconfigure responsibility, ethics and justice in education. It demonstrates using a case study of the enactment of impostor feelings in higher education how a broad enactive approach to education as the potential to reconfigure teaching, learning and research practices.

Keywords: Enactivism
Embodiment
Complexity
Dynamic Systems
Experience
Phenomenology
Embodied Mind
Emergence Theory
Ethics
Philosophy of Emotions
Advisor: Boler, Megan