VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Toward Listening as a Curatorial Method: Histories, Methodologies, Propositions

From the 1960s through the 1980s, an ever-expanding exploration of sound occurred within the visual arts field, helping give birth to sound art (and its exhibition) as a unique genre. The number of sound art exhibitions has grown exponentially over time, reaching into major art institutions. Building on information gathered about more than 250 sound art group exhibitions from the 1960s to the present, involving works made by a number of artists/musicians, I recognized three main approaches for curating sound: The sonic image, the exhibition as spatial music, and musical composition for visual objects. This dissertation follows these three sound curating methodologies, their histories, and the propositions and influence they have contributed to the production, positioning, and reception of sound in art today. I start with a question: Why does the most common method for displaying multiple sound works (or works with sound) within the same gallery space invariably involve constraining these sounds with acoustic barriers to keep them separate? I maintain that this separation of sounds in museums follows how we see, and not how we hear. I argue that this method, which I have termed the “sonic image,” is made in order to ‘help’ us experience sound works as we do visual objects—to hear a sound only when we see it. Since the sonic turn of the 1990s a few composers curated sound art group shows demonstrating an auditory approach to sound curation: the “exhibition as spatial music.” Composing exhibitions as spatial music means addressing sound’s materiality and applying listening philosophies into the intricacies of the exhibitionary. In doing so, these composers composed exhibitions which—like music—stimulate an inner subjective space within the listener. The third methodology—the “musical composition for visual objects”—belongs to John Cage, who composed three compositions for museum later in his life. By relating to objects as musical notes, and curating by using a musical score, Cage’s exhibitions demonstrate that listening should not be limited to the sphere of sound, and thus methodologies informed by auditory perception can stimulate multiple layers of perception in the gallery.

Keywords: Composition for Museum
Exhibition History
John Cage
Sound art
Sound Curation
Spatial Music
Advisor: Legge, Elizabeth
Numerical Modeling of Suspension Plasma Spraying Process

Suspension plasma spraying (SPS), a relatively new deposition technique in thermal spray coating technology, has been increasingly applied to deposit high-quality thermal barrier coatings using sub-micron particles. An accurate simulation of the process includes developing a realistic plasma model both within and outside the torch. In the current work, a three-dimensional time-dependent model has been developed to simulate magneto-hydrodynamic fields inside a direct current (DC) plasma torch, including arc fluctuations. Reynolds stress model (RSM) is used to simulate the time-dependent turbulent plasma flow. A two-way coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian method is employed to investigate the effects of arc fluctuations on the droplets' trajectory, temperature, and speed. Sub-micron yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) solid particles suspended into ethanol are modeled as multicomponent droplets. Kelvin-Helmholtz Rayleigh-Taylor (KHRT) breakup model is used to simulate the droplets' atomization. This model considers the effects of both aerodynamic forces (Wave model) and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities on the atomization process combing a liquid core region (Levich model). Particles are also tracked after completion of suspension breakup and evaporation to obtain inflight particles' conditions (trajectory, size, speed, and temperature). The developed model is then employed to study the droplets' shape and solid concentration on the SPS process. A dynamic drag law is applied to analyze the effect of droplets/particles' shape on the SPS process. It was concluded that the percentage of molten particles in applying dynamic drag law (non-spherical particles) decreases significantly compared to using the spherical particles. The effect of suspension concentration is also studied. It was shown that using a higher solid concentration (20 compared to 10 wt.% YSZ) provides a denser coating as a result of the larger molten landed particles with higher velocities. Finally, the developed model is used to study the in-flight droplets/particles' atomization in the SPS process. Nine case studies are investigated to see the effect of KH, RT instabilities, and breakup length on the droplets/particles' atomization. A massive difference is represented in quantity, droplets' atomization pattern, and quality of the final landed particles over the substrate of some cases. The obtained size distributions of the trapped particles over the substrate are compared to the existing data to find the suggested ranges for the breakup model’s constants.

Keywords: dynamic drag law
electromagnetic fields
solid concentration
suspension plasma spraying
three-dimensional unsteady plasma flow
yttria-stabilized zirconia
Advisor: Mostaghimi, Javad J.
Dolatabadi, Ali A.
Weakly Measuring the Tme a Transmitted Photon Causes Atoms to Spend in the Excited State

When a resonant photon traverses a sample of absorbing atoms, how much time do atoms spend in the excited state? Does the answer depend on whether the photon is ultimately scattered vs. transmitted? In particular, if it is not scattered, meaning that it emerges in the direction it entered, does it cause atoms to spend any time in the excited state, and if so, how much? In this thesis, I report an experimental measurement of the time a transmitted photon causes atoms to spend in the excited state. The experiment is carried out in an ultra-cold gas of Rubidium 85 atoms and involves simultaneously recording changes to the excited state occupation number induced by incident ("signal") photons and whether those photons are transmitted. The time atoms spend in the excited state, which is defined in terms of the time integral of the average excited state occupation number, is measured weakly using a separate, off-resonant “probe” laser to monitor the index of refraction of the sample—that is, I measure the nonlinear phase shift written by a signal pulse on this probe beam—and direct detection is used to isolate the effect of a single transmitted photon. For short pulses (10 ns, to be compared to the 26 ns atomic lifetime) and an optically thick medium (peak OD = 4, leading to 60% absorption given our broad bandwidth), I report that the average time atoms spend in the excited state due to one transmitted photon is not zero, but rather (77 +/- 16)% of the time the average incident photon causes them to spend in the excited state. This observation of “excitation without loss” is attributed to coherent forward emission, which arises, for instance, due to the sign-flip the instantaneous Rabi frequency (pulse envelope) picks up when a broadband pulse propagates through an optically thick medium with highly frequency-dependent absorption [1]. The results of this thesis reveal the complex history of photons as they propagate through an absorbing medium and illustrate the power of utilizing post-selection to experimentally investigate the past behaviour of observed quantum systems.

Keywords: Excitation without loss
Light-matter interaction
Open quantum systems
Quantum mechanics
Quantum optics
Weak measurement
Advisor: Steinberg, Aephraim M.
Fusion Product of D/G-valued Moment Maps

A fusion product is defined for Hamiltonian spaces with moment maps valued in a Lie group D generalizing those of Alekseev-Malkin-Meinrenken. An analogous theory for these general Hamiltonian spaces is developed and, among other results, versions of symplectic reduction, duality and the shifting trick are derived. The Hamiltonian spaces with moment maps valued in a homogeneous space D/G of Alekseev-Kosmann-Schwarzbach are shown to be equivalent to certain Hamiltonian spaces with group-valued moment maps. The aforementioned theory is consequently brought to bear on that of D/G-valued moment maps, thereby defining a fusion product for these. This fusion product affords many new examples of D/G-valued moment maps, of which there was hitherto a paucity. Among said examples are moduli spaces of flat principal bundles over certain surfaces with boundary.

Advisor: Meinrenken, Eckhard
Tracing the Footsteps of the Prophet across the Indian Ocean: The Materiality of Prophetic Piety in Mughal India

This dissertation adopts theoretical and methodological insights from the study of religious materiality to explore how Indian Ocean travel gave rise to religious discourses and practices in South Asia. It traces how the circulation of people, objects, and knowledge between North India and the Hejaz led to new forms of Muslim piety in the imperial centers of the Mughal Empire. A characteristic feature of this piety was belief in the auspicious nature of the Prophet Muḥammad’s body. This belief was expressed both in scholastic discourse and ritual practice as evidenced by the history of Prophetic relics and tradition examined in this dissertation.The introduction lays forth the concept of Prophetic piety and outlines what it means to study it from the perspective of material religion. It draws attention to the way material culture has been mobilized to preserve the memory of the Prophet Muḥammad. Chapter one looks at the arrival of a qadam or footprint relic associated with the Prophet to the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), and focuses on the religious debates and royal rituals of veneration it engendered. The analysis offers insight on the practice of religious inquiry at the Mughal court and its role in the performance of sovereignty. Chapter two looks at the development of two monumental reliquary shrines, one in Delhi and the other in Ahmedabad, whose central relics shared a connected history. By focusing on the religious economy of the shrines, the chapter looks at how various actors invested in the shrine, including the Mughal court, Chishtī Sufis, and Sayyids, and how their interventions may have shaped devotees’ relic practices. Chapter three contextualizes these ritual practices at the reliquary shrines within new scholastic discourses that began circulating in seventeenth century Delhi. These discourses are found in the scholastic writings of North Indian Sufis who expressed a strong devotion to the Prophet and who had travelled to the Hejaz for pilgrimage and studying hadith. It is in their writings that we see clear expression of the belief in the auspicious nature of the Prophet’s body.

Keywords: Indian Ocean
Mughal Empire
Prophet Muhammad
Qadam
Relics
Religious Materiality
Advisor: Subtelny, Maria E
Ruffle, Karen
Development and Characterization of a Novel Protein Stability Probe

As a regulator of gene transcription, (MYC) modulates cell proliferation, growth, and metabolism. The deregulation of c-MYC (MYC) drives over 50% of cancers, making it a promising therapeutic target. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to target MYC have been unsuccessful. MYC turnover is tightly regulated, with a half-life of just 30 minutes in non-transformed cells, however only one pathway has been well-characterized as regulating MYC stability. Current strategies to measure protein half-life are low-throughput or prone to false readouts, and have hampered the discovery of novel regulatory pathways for MYC that could be targeted therapeutically. To overcome this barrier, we developed a protein stability probe, consisting of c-MYC (MYC) fused to Venus fluorescent protein (MYC-Venus), and a high-content confocal screening pipeline to identify regulators of MYC using automated image analysis. This probe enables protein half-life to be scored as a function of fluorescence intensity and distribution. The MYC-Venus probe was piloted by screening a kinase inhibitor library to identify known and novel kinases that regulate MYC stability. The Venus probe was also validated with another short half-life protein, MCL-1. This validated stability probe was expanded to a cell system that models MYC-driven human breast cancer, in order to further characterize the functionality of the MYC-Venus stability probe. A 438-compound library was screened, and compounds that either increase or decrease MYC-Venus levels with minimal cytotoxicity were identified. Compounds that increased MYC-Venus levels can be attributed to an artefact of the CMV promoter used to express MYC-Venus, demonstrating that the Venus probe can also detect changes in protein levels. While compounds that decreased MYC-Venus levels were also identified, none modulated MYC stability at the timepoints tested. The utility of the MYC-Venus probe was further demonstrated by adapting an existing assay to quantify changes in protein stability through confocal imaging, increasing the number of compounds that can be validated for future screens. The development and characterization of the Venus stability probe lays the foundation for future work to identify novel regulators of short half-life proteins, a field that has been hampered by a lack of screening tools.

Advisor: Andrews, David
Therapeutic Potential of Modulating Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3 Activity in Tumor Cell-lines

Glycogen synthase kinase3 (GSK3) is a constitutively active serine/theronine kinasethat has two isoforms, alpha and beta, which play prominent roles in several distinct signaling pathways. While it has been proposed as a potential therapeutic target, the gap in our understanding of the role of GSK3 in different cancer types, compounded with the functional differences between the isoforms, limits full understanding of its therapeutic potential. We hypothesized that (i) independent loss of GSK3 isoforms in cancer would have unique functional roles in disease progression, and (ii) complete loss of GSK3 activity in cancer would debilitate their tumorigenic properties.This thesis specifically addresses two aims: (i) characterize the difference between partial (alpha or beta) and complete loss of GSK3 in cancer, and (ii) identify novel potentiator of GSK3 anti-cancer effects in colorectal cancer cell-lines. We first identified solid tumor-type(s) that were able to tolerate completed inactivation of GSK3 and characterized the impact on tumorigenic properties, including growth and transformation. While it was possible to generate single KOs in a majority of cancer cell-lines without significant morphological changes, only colorectal cancer cell lines were used as a model system to study the impact of complete inactivation of GSK3. Gradient loss of GSK3 in cancer cell-lines promotes growth arrest, compromises transformation capabilities, and increase their susceptibility to apoptosis. This rumple caused by inactivation or inhibition of GSK3 would be particularly valuable when combined with chemotherapeutics to increase their sensitivity. Through the use of pharmacological screens, we identified pathway-specific compounds/targets that enhance the vulnerability of tumor cells to GSK3-inactivation. We identified that while PI3 Kinase (PI3K) and MAP Kinase (MAPK) pathways succors GSK3 role in cancer progression, its PIK-75, an PI3K p110α specific inhibitors, that potentiated GSK3 induced anti-cancer effects in a series of cancer cell lines. Taken together, this research provides insight into anti-proliferative effects of complete loss of GSK3 and uncovered a novel combination of clinical translatable drugs with preclinical validation in cancer cell-lines.

Advisor: Woodgett, James JRW
Deployment Dynamics and Stability of a Boom-supported Solar Sail

The deployment dynamics and stability of a flexible space structure, namely a solar sail consisting of membranes attached to booms, are considered. The assumed deployment is achieved by extending the booms—modelled as Euler-Bernoulli beams with no axial deflections—at a constant rate. The overall approach involves obtaining the system's equations of motion using a time-varying generalization of the extended Hamilton's principle. These equations are then discretized upon expressing the relevant deflections as truncated series involving time-varying generalized coordinates and both time- and space-varying basis functions. The basis functions are selected based on the eigenfunctions of a cantilevered beam and a clamped membrane, but given the time-varying sizes of the components involved, they are termed "quasi-modes" and viewed as snapshots of the system's modes at given times. Two models are developed: a linear model that only accounts for the out-of-plane deflections, obtains the stress field by assuming a linearly increasing pretension at the boom-membrane interfaces, and reaches discretized equations of motion that are linear in the states (generalized coordinates); and a nonlinear model that accounts for the deflections in all directions, assumes plate strains and a suitable constitutive relation to obtain the stress field, and features nonlinear terms in its discretized equations of motion. To increase the computational efficiency, coordinate transformations and linear algebraic manipulations are performed to render all necessary spatial integrals time invariant. The extension of the linear formulation from a quadrant to a complete sail is also discussed. The linear model is used for stability analysis using two approaches: by obtaining a simple analytic expression for the rate of change of vibration energy in a quadrant, which implies decreasing energy during extension and increasing energy during retraction; and using a "frozen" eigenvalue study—assuming instantaneously constant lengths—on a complete sail, which indicates possibility of divergence depending on the extension rate and the pretension. The nonlinear model also attempts to provide wrinkling predictions using the Miller-Hedgepeth model: a coarse mesh is used, the instantaneous state of each region is determined using a wrinkling criterion and averaged principal stresses, and each region's constitutive relation is adjusted based on its wrinkling state.

Keywords: axially translating continua
deployment dynamics
solar sails
structural dynamics
vibration stability
Advisor: Damaren, Christopher J.
Instability of Electroweak Homogeneous Vacua in Strong Magnetic Fields

We consider the classical (local) vacua of the Weinberg-Salam (WS) model of electroweak forces. These are defined as no-particle, static solutions to the WS equations minimizing the WS energy locally. In the absence of particles, the Weinberg-Salam model reduces to the Yang-Mills-Higgs (YMH) equations for the gauge group U(2). We consider the WS system in a constant external magnetic field, b, and prove that (i) there is a magnetic field threshold b* such that for b

Keywords: analysis
bifurcation
electroweak
standard model
weak nuclear
Weinberg-Salam
Advisor: Sigal, Israel M
Identifying the Perceived Factors Affecting Career Transition Among International Pharmacy Graduates (IPGs) Who are in the Process of Obtaining Their License in Ontario

Every year, Canada welcomes thousands of Internationally Educated Health Professionals (IEHPs), including International Pharmacy Graduates (IPGs). While many IEHPs integrate into their career of choice, many others face challenges that make it difficult to enter the workplace in the profession for which they have qualified. Those in the latter group tend either to accept low-paying jobs or leave Canada to return to their home country. Accepting a low-paying job or returning to the origin country are true examples of “brain waste” and “brain drain” respectively. The cost of brain drain and brain waste is significant. To minimze the economic impact, many initiatives have been launched to support career transition among IEHPs. The literature discusses many determinants of career transition, yet it falls short on identifying factors that influence career transition among IEHPs who cannot get into the career of their choice. The purpose of this qualitative research is to identify the factors that affect career transition among IPGs. Twenty-five English-speaking IPGs who are in the process of obtaining their licence and living in Ontario were interviewed. Participants’ responses were analyzed deductively, using a set of integrated-model-of-career-transition-derived codes, as well as inductively. Motives and three categories of factors affecting career transition among IPGs were identified. The categories include person/career correspondence, personal factors, and availability of alternative career. The identified factors appear consistent with the integrated model for career transition. Three new factors—professional identity, culture, and knowledge—were identified. To better theorize the factors affecting career transition among IPGs, a model was proposed to describe these factors and their interaction. The findings of this research and the proposed model are a step toward building a body of knowledge about factors affecting career transition among IEHPs, yet more studies are needed.

Keywords: Career change
Career transition
Immigrant pharmacists
IPGs
Advisor: Austin, Zubin
Automatic Failure Diagnosis for Distributed Systems

Distributed software systems have become the backbone of Internet services. Failures in pro-duction distributed systems have severe consequences. A 63-minute outage of Amazon in 2018 caused a 100-million loss in revenue. Therefore, diagnosing such failures in distributed systems is particularly critical because it can reduce the service downtime and associated cost. However, failure diagnosis at data center scale is notoriously difficult because these systems are complex: there are numerous threads, processes, and nodes communicating concurrently. Despite decades of efforts dedicated to automated failure diagnosis, existing diagnosis techniques are either intrusive and incur non-negligible performance overhead in a production environment, or face scalability challenges when applied to complex software systems. This dissertation aims to automate human diagnosis procedure for distributed system failures. It makes two main contributions towards improving automated failure diagnosis techniques. The first contribution of this dissertation is a technique that can automatically locate the root cause in a failed distributed system execution. Identifying the root cause in a failed execution of a distributed system with billions of executed instructions is like finding a needle in a haystack. This dissertation designs and evaluates a tool, called Kairux, capable of pinpointing the root cause of a failure in a distributed system, in a fully automated way. The second contribution is a technique that can automatically reproduce failure from production distributed systems. Given a failure report, the first step of developers’ diagnosis is typically to reproduce the failure. To automate this step, this dissertation designs and evaluates a technique, called Pensieve, that mimics developers’ analysis of a chain of causally dependent events that lead to the failure using log analysis and program analysis. This dissertation provides the implementation of a practical tool capable of reconstructing near-minimal failure reproduction steps from log files and system bytecode, without human involvement. By evaluating on some of the most complex, real-world failures from widely-deployed dis-tributed systems such as HBase, HDFS, and ZooKeeper, this dissertation shows that Pensieve is capable of formulating a minimal set of operations necessary to reproduce the failure, and Kairux can further pinpoint each failure’s respective root cause.

Keywords: debugging
diagnosis
distributed systems
failure reproduction
root cause
Advisor: Yuan, Ding D.Y.