VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Polytemporality in Contemporary Jazz Performance

Time related concepts in jazz such as tempo, metre, rhythm and even form—the arrangement of timespans within a piece of music—have been theorized in ways that assume a single temporal reference, The Pulse. However, jazz performances since at least the 1960s are, with increasing frequency, using polytemporality, the simultaneous presence of two or more asynchronous rhythmic layers, for creative effects such as destabilizing listeners’ sense of pulse. In this dissertation, I build on foundational research on music featuring more than one temporal stream in jazz (Benadon 2009, Folio 1995, Huang Huang 1994, Pressing 2002) to investigate the inner workings and many implications of polytemporal jazz for both performers and scholars. Through close analysis of three key recorded performances—Miles Okazaki’s “Generations,” Craig Taborn’s “Future Perfect,” and Nick Fraser’s “Disclosure”—I reckon with the ways polytemporality defies conventional approaches to transcription and analysis and develop new methods for this foundational aspect of jazz analysis and pedagogy. I then explore the implications of polytemporality for form in jazz, arguing that each performance studied can be productively understood as a combination of two forms: one notated and one kinetic. The performances analyzed, then, hinge on an agreement or set of agreements, explicit and/or tacit, among the players about how to navigate coherently the composed material. Also at issue are factors such as skill and familiarity among the band members, specific to particular groups and even particular compositions. The result of these conditions is a cohesive, yet polytemporal performance that is more than a strict rendering of a notated composition or the result of individual improvisation, but a fluid and contingent combination of the two. Finally, I examine melodic improvisational musical gestures that sit off the metric grid, discovering that they emerge in a figure/ground relationship with an orienting pulse most often established by the rhythm section. This study serves to diversify ways of understanding polytemporal jazz ensemble performance. Looking forward, this analysis of polytemporality as a rubric and the general analytical principles developed are intended to serve as foundations for the development of future polytemporal composition processes and new vocabularies for polytemporal improvisation.

Keywords: ensemble
jazz
performance
polytemporality
rhythm
Advisor: Packman, Jeff
Timbre Saturation for Chamber Orchestra (2021)

My dissertation is a work for chamber orchestra which specifically considers economy attained through efficient uses of the instruments. The work is for a smaller number of players than the standard orchestra. Typically, when it comes to scoring chord progressions for a large orchestra, two methods are common: one is doubling, and the other is harmonizing. My composition project begins by questioning whether those common practices cause any sound overload. Furthermore, what if a composer eliminates any melodic/intervallic elements that could be thought of as ‘wastefulness’, such as doubling? By seeking to create the most economic orchestration, the goal of this project is to suggest a solution to optimize the orchestral effects and colors with a limited number of instruments. In addition, this work relies on the minimum number of instruments for a large ensemble piece to be as effective as a full-sized orchestra, particularly focusing on the use of colors (timbre).

Advisor: Kulesha, Gary
Neighbourhood Engagement in Urban Forest Governance: A Case Study of Resident Associations in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Initiatives in community engagement and the struggle to conserve urban forests have risen steadily over the past 30 years. In Canada, Resident Associations (RAs) are one major group, with varying degrees of influence, that have shown potential to build working relationships with decision-makers at the local level. Although poorly studied, RAs commonly work with local or municipal representatives and engage civic managers in order to address issues at the neighbourhood scale. Urban forest and tree health have become of increasing concern for local communities because of the greater awareness of the physical and social benefits these green spaces provide to society. Unfortunately, there is little understanding as to the role of public participation in urban forest governance despite it being a key component in building frameworks for successful urban forest governance. The present study examines the role of RAs in influencing governance at the local level using the City of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada as a case study. In-depth, semi-structured interviews and a grounded theory approach reveal increased engagement by RA executive members when the benefits of and risks to their neighbourhood urban forest are understood. Increased urban forest knowledge allowed RA executive members to become involved with municipal decision-makers and more likely to participate in developing strategies and networks to conserve and improve urban forest health. Interview questions probing the power dynamics between residents and decision-makers indicated most residents build upon common objectives within existing civic processes rather than work independently from the outside for conservation. Research here demonstrates the key role that knowledge plays in both motivating and sustaining resident involvement in urban forest governance, and provides clear evidence that RAs need to build strong relationships with decision-makers and neighbourhood constituents in order to effect change. Resident knowledge about the urban forest helps raise social capital and build strategies for RA engagement in order to achieve better management.

Keywords: Community engagement
Governance
Municipal policy
Neighbourhood
Urban ecology
Urban forest
Advisor: Smith, Sandy M
Moola, Faisal
Human Medial Temporal Lobe Contributions to a Temporal Representation of Sequences in Memory

Time and space are fundamental components of our past, and our memories are rich with temporal information allowing us to remember ‘when’ a past event took place. The medial temporal lobe (MTL), and hippocampus (HPC) in particular, have been suggested to represent time in support of memory. While previous research has demonstrated an important role for the HPC in remembering the order of events, recent evidence has suggested that rodent hippocampal “time cells” can signal the passage of time on the order of seconds between events. In this thesis, I describe a series of studies inspired by findings from the animal literature, which shed light on how the human MTL may contain a temporal representation of sequences that contains information not only about order, but also the amount of time that has elapsed between successive events. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) techniques, I explored how the human MTL and HPC is preferentially involved in memory for temporal durations that are embedded within a sequence of events. Specifically, I demonstrated how human HPC patterns of activity are influenced by changes in the temporal duration of event sequences processed explicitly (Chapter 2) or implicitly (Chapter 3). Further, memory for sequences was associated with the stability of duration representations in the HPC. Chapter 4 was designed to explore if the human HPC represents information about short durations in the context of long-term sequence memories. It was found that the anterior HPC and CA1 subregion carried information about individual sequences during recognition memory, that reflected the combination of image content and temporal duration information unique to each sequence. Lastly, in Chapter 5, I demonstrated how memory for order and temporal duration contained within a sequence of events is affected in healthy ageing and MTL pathology. Together, these data speak to an important role of the human MTL in temporal duration memory, advancing our understanding of how the HPC can represent sequential information.

Keywords: Episodic Memory
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Hippocampus
Time
Advisor: Lee, Andy
What Is It to Be Wise? The Nomological Network and Necessary Conditions of Wisdom

Although wisdom has been universally valued by all cultures since antiquity, the scientific investigation of wisdom has only just begun. This dissertation aimed to move the psychological research on wisdom forward by clarifying the nomological network of wisdom and identifying the personality and cognitive constructs that constituted its necessary conditions. In Study 1, I meta-analytically summarized thirty years of empirical wisdom research on the associations between wisdom on the one hand and age, intelligence, the Big-Five personality traits, self-esteem, narcissism, social desirability, and well-being on the other. I furthermore examined whether these associations were moderated by how wisdom was operationalized. Although wisdom measures showed different patterns of correlations with these constructs, with the largest differences between self-report and performance wisdom measures, all wisdom measures were robustly associated with trait openness and the growth dimension of eudaimonic well-being. In Study 2, I examined the longstanding hypotheses that certain cognitive and personality constructs, such as intelligence and trait openness, constitute necessary conditions for wisdom. I found that the necessary conditions for wisdom depended on how wisdom was operationalized: intelligence was necessary for wisdom performance, whereas the adaptive Big-Five traits were necessary for self-report wisdom. Findings from this dissertation serve to inform the field of the strengths and shortcomings as well as the commonalities and divergences among current conceptions and operationalizations of wisdom. These findings provide a foundation and reference for future theorizing and research on the topic of wisdom.

Keywords: intelligence
meta-analysis
necessary conditions analysis
personality
well-being
wisdom
Advisor: Fournier, Marc A.
Using Research Knowledge: Immigrant South Asian Women Graduate Students as Knowledge Mobilization Agents

The distinctiveness of graduate students lies in their individual research choices. Graduate students are under-researched despite the large body of research they produce. I found little in the literature about the research conducted by graduate students and also the usage and/or implementation of their research findings. As the potential bridge between research and practice, graduate students could fill the growing demand for knowledge mobilization. Immigrant South Asian women graduate students are doubly overlooked within this under-researched graduate student pool. In this qualitative study, nine immigrant South Asian women graduate students were interviewed to explore their knowledge mobilization experiences. Using the research generation and utilization model by Gough, Tripney, Kenny, and Buk-Berge (2011), the data analysis from the in-depth interview showed that immigrant graduate students from four South Asian countries created and co-created knowledge from their research. Their research were mainly based on the challenges they faced or facing in their lives. They shared, exchanged, and transferred their research knowledge within their educational and professional communities. Along with their researcher roles as knowledge producers, they served as knowledge mediators and users, which indicates they are situating themselves in all three contexts of the knowledge mobilization process. Further studies are recommended to strengthen relationships between students and faculties and/or universities by contributing institutionalized support to graduate students with special emphasis on racialized students. These findings may inform graduate students, researchers, educators, and university administrators regarding knowledge mobilization aspects at universities and provide formalized support for graduate students.

Keywords: Graduate student research
Immigrant women
Influence of identity
Knowledge mediation
Knowledge mobilization
South Asian graduate students
Advisor: Campbell, Carol
Inference of Anxiety and Depression from Smartphone-collected Data

Anxiety and depression are widespread and have significant impact on individuals’ quality of life. Automated technology which objectively measures behaviorsrelevant to symptoms of anxiety and depression could aid in the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders in two ways. Diagnosis could be improved by using this data to build automated pre-screeners for these disorders. Treatment could be improved by sharing relevant patient data withclinicians, aiding in decision making.Smartphones offer a wide variety of objective digital data, such as GPS location and audio, which can be collected and analyzed in order to infer key behaviors which give insightinto individuals’ mental health. This thesis describes the development of passive and objective measures of individuals’ symptoms of anxiety and depression, enabled by the analysis of smartphone-collected data. A study was conducted where data was collected from participants’ smartphones and a number of features which quantify symptom severity of anxiety and depression were designed and extracted from this data. One such feature, which infers the regularity in an individual's daily pattern of activity from short recordings of their ambient audio, was found to be correlated with self-reported measures of depression (r = -0.37, P = 0.01). Another feature, which infers the number of times that an individual leaves the home from GPS location data, was found to be correlated with self-reported measures of social anxiety (r = -0.25, P = 0.04), generalized anxiety (r = -0.31, P = 0.01), and depression (r = -0.29,P = 0.01). In total, 97 features were extracted from participant data and tested for associations with self-report measures of anxiety and depression. A subset of these features were also selected and used to build predictive models of anxiety and depression, screening participants for social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, respectively. The results of this study show that objective data, passively collected from individuals'smartphones, give broad insight into individuals'behaviors and activities, and specific insight into the severity of symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Advisor: Rose, Jonathan
Katzman, Martin
Beyond PTSD: Moving Military Trauma out of the Realm of Psychiatry and into an Arts-Based Education and Community-Oriented Framework

Guided by the question: “what is military trauma, really?” this two-part research project is underscored by the assumption that hegemonic bio-medical framings of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and resulting treatment approaches fall short and that military trauma is significantly more complex, gendered, morally injurious and community-based than popular culture and well-intentioned “de-stigmatization” campaigns suggest. Employing a feminist and mad-informed existential embodied phenomenological methodology, the initial stage of this research involved in-depth narrative interviews with nine veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces who participated in the recent war in Afghanistan and with three health care workers who specialize in veteran care. In order to move conversations about military trauma out of the realm of psychiatry and into an adult education and community-oriented framework, the data from the interviews was transformed into a research-based play that was written with the express objective of transcending individual experiences of madness into a critique of culture, systems, and dominant practices and convictions. This play also seeks to offer a counterpoint to popular naturalistic and documentary approaches to creating research-based theatre that lay claim to an “aesthetics of objectivity” as the “view from nowhere” such approaches assume, is both impossible and undesirable. Drawing instead on mad approaches to storytelling, feminist theory, magic realism and expressionism in the visual arts, and Brechtian theatrical estrangement devices, this play embraces embodiment and subjectivity and encourages deep emotional and intellectual engagement. The playwriting process necessitated a secondary research question: “How might the creation of a ‘mad aesthetic’ in research-based theatre disrupt both biomedical ways of conceptualizing military trauma and objectivist attempts at representing mad stories?” In order to answer this question, the play also upends classic war hero narratives and the militarized hyper-masculine ideals they propagate. Such narratives and ideals risk further isolating traumatized veterans from their own experiences, knowledge, and coping strategies as well as from members of the public who have not been to war but who, if given access to the deep nuances of military trauma and moral injury, might be vital allies in helping veterans who are suffering transition from military to civilian life.

Keywords: arts
madness
mental health
military
theatre
Advisor: Goldstein, Tara
Diasporic Constellations: Performing on the Periphery of the Archives

This dissertation examines a wide array of performance and media practices in the Iranian diasporas. It argues that any understanding of diasporic imagination and material culture demands an in-depth engagement with cultural histories, including genealogies of media and technologies. By focusing on performance and media practices in various geographical regions within the Iranian diasporas and putting contemporary practices in dialogue with their historical precedents, this dissertation argues that histories and archives in public and digital spaces help find points of connection in diasporas. I argue that Iranian diasporas, in all their complexities and effects, are fundamentally historical subjects. Diasporic Constellations ultimately posits that the affective engagements in the Iranian diasporas undergird our diasporic imaginations and matters. Using remix studies’ broad definition of the remix as practices of “appropriation and transformation” of material and mass media texts, this project considers the remix as the aesthetics underpinning the selected diaspora cultural productions. The analysis of multiple case studies proves that the remix gives these Iranian diasporic remixers/curators and minoritarian artists techno compositional strategies to archive, queer the archival practice, and unarchive cultural histories. In doing so, the remix also offers a technology of remembrance in affective, visceral, trans-temporal, and interspecies archival encounters. In sum, despite their differences, the selected case studies this dissertation draws upon remember diasporic histories and pasts, and in doing so, envision alternative futurities that trespass hegemonic Iranian archives and historiographies.

Keywords: Affect and Identity
Archive
Cultural Memory
Iranian Diaspora
Performance
Remix
Advisor: Sharma, Sarah
Surface-modification of Rod-like Nanoparticles with Functional Copolymers via Copper Catalyzed Click Chemistry for Applications in Cancer Drug Delivery

Elongated colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) have significant potential for drug delivery and imaging applications in cancer therapy, but progress depends on developing a deeper understanding of how their physicochemical properties affect their interactions with cells and with tumours. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are biocompatible, rodlike colloids that are broadly surface-functionalizable, making them interesting as modular drug carriers. In this thesis, I start by describing the atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) synthesis and characterization of azide-terminated poly(oligoethylene glycol methacrylate) (POEGMA)-based “stealth” copolymers that can be attached to NP systems. The comonomer, aminopropylmethacrylamide (APMA) supplies amino groups for the attachment of diagnostic or therapeutic moieties. In Chapter 3, I present the synthesis and characterization of an alkyne-functionalized cellulose nanocrystal (CNC−≡) and the subsequent attachment of the N3-PAPMA-stat-POEGMA copolymers using copper catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) coupling chemistry. In this chapter I also demonstrate the versatility of this system by sequentially grafting different azide-end group-functionalized polymers to the CNC−≡. In subsequent chapters, I show these CNC NPs to be non-toxic to human ovarian cancer cell line, HEYA8, human breast cancer cell line, MDA-MB-436, and human healthy cell line, L929. The effect of actively targeting these NPs with folic acid on cellular uptake was also examined in SK-OV-3 and HEYA8 cell lines over time. I continue by discussing a series of elongated NPs of comparable length, surface polymer grafting density and structure but different surface polymer architectures. I examine their cellular uptake and penetration into multicellular tumour spheroids (MCTSs) formed from two cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-436 and HEYA8). For rod-like NPs of the same size and shape that were coated with brush-POEGMA, substantial penetration into MCTS was observed. However, when these NPs were coated with linear polyethylene glycol (PEG) polymers, much less tumour penetration was observed. I conclude by summarizing the main findings of this thesis and offering ideas for new experiments. By continuing research in this field, it will be possible to develop a deeper understanding of how the chemical nature of elongated NPs affects their interaction with biological environments and these results will provide support for applications of polymer-coated NPs in medicine and cancer treatment.

Keywords: Atom transfer radical polymerization
Cellulose nanocrystals
Click chemistry
Nanomedicine
Poly-grafting
Tumour penetration
Advisor: Winnik, Mitchell A.
Current Programmed Mode and Fast Transient Control Techniques for Multi-Level Flying Capacitor Converters

Multi-Level Flying Capacitor (ML-FC) converters are attractive alternatives to conventional two-level buck and boost topologies in low power applications typically processing power from a fraction of a watt to tens of watts. This is mostly due to reduced physical volume and improved power processing efficiency, provided by the switching node voltage swing reduction. The work presented in this thesis includes analysis of stability problems in Current Programmed Mode (CPM) control of ML-FC converters and provides solutions for the same. It also presents new control methods for achieving fast transient response. Both of these control techniques, commonly adopted in conventional converters, have been practically absent in ML-FC topologies, mostly due to unresolved stability problems and lack of practical control solutions. For ML-FC converters, the difficulty of CPM and fast transient control paradigms is compounded by the need to account for stabilization of the Flying Capacitor (FC) voltage, which is the key for ML-FC converter operations. The analysis presented in this thesis is confirmed both through simulations and experimental verifications. All the introduced control methods have been experimentally verified with mixed-signal platforms combining a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and auxiliary analog circuitry for 15 W three-level FC converters.

Keywords: Converter Modeling and Stability Analysis
Current Programmed Mode Controllers
DC-DC Converter Control
Fast Transient Controllers
Flying Capacitor Voltage Control
Multi-Level Flying Capacitor Converters
Advisor: Prodic, Aleksandar