VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Synthesis and Size-separation of Colloidally-stable Silicon Nanocrystals for the Investigation of their Size-dependent Optical Properties

Silicon nanocrystals (ncSi) possess unique optical properties that vary predictably with crystal size, which means they can be tailored to suit specific requirements for use in optoelectronic devices and biological applications. The work presented in this thesis outlines contributions made in developing size-separation methods to obtain uniform-sized samples of colloidally-stable ncSi from non-uniform ensembles, which result from most common syntheses that produce colloidally-stable particles. Non-uniform samples of ncSi were prepared using the straightforward thermal processing of sol-gel glasses, followed by HF etching to liberate hydride-capped ncSi from an encapsulating matrix. Thermal hydrosilylation was employed to passivate the ncSi surface with both allylbenzene and 1-decene. Density gradient ultracentrifugation and size-selective precipitation methods were used to isolate size-separated ncSi, which enabled definitive characterization of size-dependent optical properties including photoluminescence (PL), PL absolute quantum yields, and PL lifetimes. A detailed investigation of the chemical reactivity of allylbenzene-capped ncSi with different gaseous atmospheres as probed by in situ luminescence spectroscopy, conducted under both continuous and intermittent illumination, helped elucidate the roles of O2, H2O and mixtures of O2/H2O, with respect to oxidation of ncSi as a function of size. The results presented in this thesis have played a crucial role towards obtaining a complete understanding of ncSi, a most promising material, and providing vital information that will aid in developing and tailoring perceived applications in advanced materials and biomedical devices.

Keywords: Density Gradient Ultracentrifugation
Photoluminescence
Silicon Nanocrystals
Size-Selective Precipitation
Size-Separation
Advisor: Ozin, Geoffrey A
Virtuosos of the Ordinary: Comparative Interpretations of Daoist and Stoic Thought

"Virtuosity in the ordinary" is an idea, attributed by this work to the ancient Stoicism and Zhuangzi's Daoism, that it is possible to achieve an extraordinary excellence in the realm of ordinary, mundane activities. This possibility is based on the view that there is a perfect fit between one's psychological and cognitive faculties and the structure of reality. By achieving such a perfection, one not only achieves personal fulfillment but also fulfills one's role in the overarching scheme of things. Within this interpretive framework, the work reconstructs two different versions of this idea in two different cultural contexts. By so doing, it pursues two goals. First, it seeks to use the comparative perspective to engage with existing interpretations of Stoicism and Zhuangzi's Daoism. In particular, it challenges the view that Stoics were rigid moralists utterly indifferent towards the ordinary world and values, and the tendency to understand Zhuangzi as an anti-rationalist. Second, it tries to interpret the differences between Stoic and Daoist versions of the virtuosity in the ordinary in light of larger divergences between the two intellectual traditions. It suggests that the overarching conceptual dichotomy in the ancient Greek and Roman tradition was that of rational and non-rational, while in the Chinese tradition it was that of artificial and natural.

Keywords: Daoism
Ethics
Stoicism
Advisor: Shen, Vincent
An Investigation of Complementary Autonomic Measurements as an Approach to Improve Single-switch Access for Children with Profound Physical Disabilities

The combination of single-switch access and scanning is arguably one of the most versatile solutions in restoring communication and environmental control for children with profound physical disabilities. Erroneous switch behaviours due to failures in decoding functional intent heighten the risk of declining use and technology abandonment, especially if those errors restrict participation. Complementary information about the user's internalized monitoring of single-switch scanning and reactions to switch output could lead to strategies for managing error instances as opposed to merely, and perhaps futilely, preventing them. This thesis investigates the possibility of using measurements of a switch user's autonomic nervous activity during single-switch scanning as complementary information. The thesis comprises three studies. The first study explains a process involving learning and mastery behaviours, whereby repeated exposure to isolated error instances can diminish the confidence of a proficient switch user and instill apprehension towards switch use. The findings of this study strongly motivate the need for augmenting single-switch access with complementary information to manage error instances. The second study demonstrates, at an ensemble level, the existence of autonomic responses (cardiac deceleration and increased phasic electrodermal activity) to correct, accidental and missed switch activations by three paediatric single-switch users. The third study analyzes a representation of the cardiac activity measurement (line length time series derived from the empirical mode decomposition of the inter-beat interval time series) that can independently track the state of single-switch scanning on an individual switch event basis, without any prior knowledge of the location of scanning events and dwell time. These findings encourage further study of autonomic measures as complementary information channels to enhance single-switch access.

Keywords: Access technology
Cerebral palsy
Interaction errors
Paediatric rehabilitation
Physiological measurements
Advisor: Chau, Tom
The Application of Feedback in Secondary School Classrooms: Teaching and Learning in Applied Level Mathematics

The power of feedback has been established as an effective support for teaching and learning. The formative nature of feedback has been shown to have positive but varied effects for the learning and self-regulation of students. The varied effect of feedback has important implications for teachers to support the needs of students in grade 9 applied level mathematics. The present study examined the instructional strategies that teachers use to help students seek, evaluate and apply feedback in mathematics. The investigation also focused on the determining the strategies that teachers use to support the self-regulation of students and overcome pedagogical barriers in applied level mathematics. Teachers of grade 9 applied level mathematics were involved in collaborative inquiry to discern their professional practices and to discuss effective means of providing feedback to students. Three interviews form the basis of a descriptive case study to investigate the factors that teachers perceive as important to the provision of feedback in the teaching and learning of grade 9 applied level mathematics. The findings of the investigation reveal that teachers in grade 9 applied level mathematics perceive students to experience significant difficulty evaluating the merits of feedback. The lack of basic skills and proficiency in mathematics provide significant limitations on the ability of students in applied level classrooms to judge the value of feedback. The findings show that students in applied level classrooms have experienced many years of failure which detracts from their confidence and success in learning. The study identifies affective supports that are necessary to create a safe learning environment and the program planning that teachers use to support the mathematical communications of students. The findings show that teachers value the immediacy of feedback, establish a learning environment that is conducive to frequent rehearsal and practice and require students to justify their understanding by focusing on oral communication. The findings also highlight discrepant results from the body of research on the use of feedback. The study demonstrates that teachers may be aware of the value of strategies that support metacognition, however, the use of learning goals, success criteria and manipulatives to support feedback and communications may not be intentionally applied.

Keywords: Applied Level Mathematics
Feedback
Grade 9
Metacognition
Secondary
Self-regulation
Advisor: McDougall, Doug
Primitive Neural Stem Cells in the Mouse Brain

Neural stem cells (NSCs) reside in the tissue lining the lateral ventricles of the adult mouse brain. At the top of the hierarchy are primitive (p)NSCs that arise in advance of definitive (d)NSCs embryonically. After the discovery that pNSCs persist in the adult mouse brain, I sought out to characterize pNSCs and determine whether they express the pluripotency gene Oct4 in the adult brain as the do embryonically. Next, I addressed the cell cycle time of pNSCs and whether they are activated to proliferate to repopulate dNSCs after dNSC and downstream progenitor ablation. Finally, I identified cell type specific markers of pNSCs and pharmacological methods to selectively target and activate endogenous pNSCs. These selective markers can be used for future studies to enrich for pNSCs and to develop future therapies to target pNSCs endogenously. Together, this thesis presents evidence that pNSCs are an Oct4-expressing, reserve population at the top of the NSC hierarchy capable of repopulating dNSCs.

Keywords: neural stem cells
Advisor: van der Kooy, Derek
Homeland Activism, Public Performance, and the Construction of Identity: An Examination of Greek Canadian Transnationalism, 1900s-1990s

This thesis examines cases of Greek Canadian transnationalism throughout the twentieth century. It utilizes a large database of oral interviews, newspaper records, both Greek and English language publications, and a variety of archival documents, including government correspondence, community records, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police files, to investigate the ways that Greek immigrants, and to a lesser extent their Canadian-born children, responded to political and humanitarian crises in Greece and engaged in homeland practices. Focusing on Greek Canadians' use of public performances, namely cultural presentations, humanitarian relief campaigns, commemorative celebrations, and public protests, in mobilizing broader support for their cause, I argue that such transnational acts nurtured a diasporic space that drew Greek Canadians into a public dialogue on the meaning of Greek immigrant identity. Mediated by immigrant elites and shaped by particular conditions in both Greece and Canada, Greek Canadians' transnationalism contributed significant material and symbolic aid to Greece, but also served as a vehicle for them to privilege and project their ethnic and national identities on a public stage. Though, to be clear, no single narrative emerged, as multiple authors professed to represent the majority of Greeks even while women and working-class men were relegated to less public roles and, often, engagement in homeland affairs engendered political and ideological strife among Greeks. While chapter one addresses various forms of public and private transnationalism among early twentieth century Greek immigrants, each of the remaining chapters provide a detailed case study of homeland activism. Chapter two examines Greek Canadians' humanitarian aid work in the Greek War Relief Fund during the Second World War, and chapters three and four focus on Greeks' political engagement in response to the right-wing military dictatorship and competing claims over Macedonia. In exploring how homeland practices and politics became localized in the diaspora, this thesis demonstrates the significance of transnationalism in the construction of Greek immigrant identity.

Keywords: diaspora
Greek Canadians
homeland activism
political protest
public performance
transnationalism
Advisor: Iacovetta, Franca
How Does Diversity Impact Innovation in Research Network? A Multilevel Study of the GRAND NCE

In this dissertation, I study the interplay between network structure and group characteristics of diversity as well as the motivation of members in a collaborative research network and the innovative outcomes produced by its members. To achieve this goal, I examine GRAND (an acronym for Graphics, Animation and New Media), a Canadian network with over 200 researchers funded by the Canadian government. I develop a framework which combines multilevel models and social network analysis, in order to understand how memberships in multiple projects, disciplinary diversity in research projects, members' motivation to participate in multidisciplinary collaborations (MDCs), and prior collaborations influence GRAND members' cross-disciplinary collaborations as well as creation of innovation. I conducted qualitative analysis to explain the complexity of MDCs by discussing the difficulties brought about by disciplinary diversity, the disciplinary differences in MDC norms, researchers' perceptions of disciplinary boundaries, and the various types of MDC activities. The findings show that the network structure and multidisciplinary culture emphasized by GRAND indeed foster intellectual interactions cross disciplinary boundaries. However, disciplinary diversity does not directly lead to innovation. Instead, its effect is mediated by diversity in researchers' ego networks. Furthermore, motivation also has a strong effect on diversity in ego networks rather than on innovative outcomes. In other words, diversity in interaction rather than diversity in composition creates innovation, and the former type of diversity can be increased by a high level of motivation and membership in multiple projects. This study has confirmed the strengths of network form of organizations. The findings suggest that allowing members to be involved in multiple work units provides them with more opportunities to interact with their colleagues from various disciplines and thus, produce innovative outcomes.

Keywords: Diversity
Innovation
Motivation
Multidisciplinary collaboration
Multilevel networks
Scholarly network
Advisor: Wellman, Barry
International University Partnerships in Contemporary Cambodian Higher Education

This thesis explores the issue of power relationships in international partnership programs between Cambodian universities and universities in France, the United States, Japan and South Korea, two decades after Cambodia began to be reintegrated into the regional and international communities in the early 1990s. In particular, it examines how far each of the four cases is characterized by mutuality. The cosmopolitan concept of mutuality - made up of equity, autonomy, solidarity and participation - is adopted as the theoretical framework. The study follows a qualitative case study research design, with interviews as the primary method of data collection. The findings have revealed that although in decline in recent years, French-Cambodian university partnerships over the last two decades have been supported by the French government, whose primary purpose is to promote French culture and language in Cambodia. American-Cambodian university partnerships have taken place on a relatively small scale, with modest support from American aid agencies. Clearly, the US has shown limited interest in Cambodia, other than spreading such concepts as liberal democracy and neo-liberalism in the country. Cambodian university partnerships with Japanese and Korean universities have recently expanded and have been seen to be tied to the increased economic activities of both countries in Cambodia. Most international partnerships between Cambodian universities and their French, American and Japanese counterparts manifested each aspect of mutuality to some degree. In those programs, academicians from both sides had already built close relationships with each other before moving to establish a formal institutional agreement. By comparison, the degree of mutuality varied among Cambodian-Korean university partnerships, mostly newly established with few prior people-initiated connections. The findings suggest not only the greater maturity in the international experience of French, American and Japanese universities, as opposed to South Korean universities, but also the significant role of human agency and culture in international academic activities.

Keywords: Cambodia
cosmopolitanism
international university partnerships
mutuality
power relationships
Advisor: Hayhoe, Ruth E. S.
Prospective Evaluation of Cognitive Functioning following Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

Cognitive functioning may be affected by cancer and its treatment, including allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT). However, clinicians are poorly suited to counsel patients in this regard, given the lack of prospective evidence to describe how cognitive functioning may change over time, which patients may be most vulnerable to these effects, and what the consequences of these effects may be. The objectives of this study were to: (1) evaluate cognitive functioning among patients treated with allogeneic HCT over the first six months following transplant; (2) identify demographic, physiological and psychological factors that predict cognitive functioning in the six months following transplant; (3) evaluate the relationship between neuropsychological performance and self-reported cognitive problems; and (4) explore the relationship between cognitive functioning with functional performance, specifically medication management ability. To this end, 58 patients treated with allogeneic HCT completed measures of cognitive functioning prior to transplant, and at Day 100 and six months post-transplant. Measures of cognitive functioning included a standardized battery of neuropsychological tests and questionnaires of self-reported cognitive problems. Medication management ability at each time point was assessed using a standardized task in which they were asked to dispense and make inferences about a simulated medication regimen. Finally, demographic, physiological and psychological characteristics were collected through chart abstraction and self-administered questionnaires. Linear multilevel models and correlational analyses formed the basis of the analytic procedure. Prior to transplant, 46% of participants met the criteria for neuropsychological impairment. On average, cognitive functioning at six months after transplant was stable in comparison to pre-transplant levels. This was shown for measures of both neuropsychological performance and self-reported cognitive problems. Pre-transplant characteristics, such as age, sex, IQ, education, and pre-transplant co-morbidities were significant predictors of neuropsychological performance at all time points. However, post-transplant outcomes, such as lower functional status at six months, and higher peak severity of acute graft-versus-host disease were also significant predictors of worse neuropsychological performance after allogeneic HCT. Self-reported cognitive problems were predictive of poorer neuropsychological performance, even when controlling for depression. Poorer cognitive functioning, particularly in the domain of executive functioning and working memory was associated with impaired medication management ability.

Keywords: cognitive functioning
medication management
neuropsychological performance
nursing
self-reported cognitive problems
stem cell transplantation
Advisor: Metcalfe, Kelly
Melodic Jazz Drumming

This dissertation examines and explores how jazz drummers consider the concept of "melodic drumming" and how it relates to their own personal performance practice. The drum set, in the context of jazz music, can easily be considered a primarily rhythmic instrument by its very nature. It is, nevertheless, worthwhile and necessary to discuss the significance of how jazz drummers consider other musical elements in their own personal style. An overall musical approach to the drum set is recognized and encouraged, but the term and concept of playing "melodically" is also important. However, an exact definition of this idea is difficult to absolutely define. The definition and application of a melodic approach to jazz drumming is often as unique as the individual who chooses to either define or apply it. For the purpose of this research, the question of how jazz drummers incorporate and consider melody in their own playing was determined through a series of extensive interviews with contemporary jazz drummers. The interviews also explore how melody is viewed in the larger scope of jazz drumming. The findings from these interviews, combined with various other available sources, were then compared with the findings further organized, compared and discussed. In addition to the importance of playing the drums with an overall musical agenda, jazz drummers also describe using melody on the drum set in the context of being both an accompanist and a soloist. This includes very literal expressions of melodic structures on the drum set to more conceptual (and perhaps less obvious) applications. Many drummers also explored how melody can be an effective tool in pedagogical applications. Furthermore, many jazz drummers also discussed their sources of melodic influence. Jazz drummer Max Roach figured quite prominently in many of these interviews and his contributions and stylistic relationship to melodic drumming are also discussed.

Keywords: Drummers
Drumming
Drums
Drum Set
Jazz
Melody
Advisor: Hartenberger, Russell
Optimization of Permanent Breast Seed Implant Dosimetry Incorporating Tissue Heterogeneity

Seed brachytherapy is currently used for adjuvant radiotherapy of early stage prostate and breast cancer patients. The current standard for calculation of dose around brachytherapy sources is based on the AAPM TG43 formalism, which generates the dose in homogeneous water medium. Recently, AAPM task group no. 186 (TG186) emphasized the importance of accounting for heterogeneities. In this work we introduce an analytical dose calculation algorithm in heterogeneous media using CT images. The advantages over other methods are computational efficiency and the ease of integration into clinical use. An Inhomogeneity Correction Factor (ICF) is introduced as the ratio of absorbed dose in tissue to that in water medium. ICF is a function of tissue properties and independent of the source structure. The ICF is extracted using CT images and the absorbed dose in tissue can then be calculated by multiplying the dose as calculated by the TG43 formalism times ICF. To evaluate the methodology, we compared our results with Monte Carlo simulations as well as experiments in phantoms with known density and atomic compositions. The dose distributions obtained through applying ICF to TG43 protocol agreed very well with those of Monte Carlo simulations and experiments in all phantoms. In all cases, the mean relative error was reduced by at least a factor of two when ICF correction factor was applied to the TG43 protocol. In conclusion we have developed a new analytical dose calculation method, which enables personalized dose calculations in heterogeneous media using CT images. The methodology offers several advantages including the use of standard TG43 formalism, fast calculation time and extraction of the ICF parameters directly from Hounsfield Units. The methodology was implemented into our clinical treatment planning system where a cohort of 140 patients were processed to study the clinical benefits of a heterogeneity corrected dose.

Advisor: Pignol, Jean-Philippe