VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Simulating Vegetation Migration in Response to Climate Change in a Dynamic Vegetation-climate Model

A central issue in climate change research is to identify what species will be most affected by variations in temperature, precipitation or CO2 and via which underlying mechanisms. Dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) have been used to address questions of habitat shifts, extinctions and changes in carbon and nutrient cycling. However, DGVMs have been criticized for assuming full migration and using the most generic of plant functional types (PFTs) to describe vegetation cover. My doctoral research addresses both of these concerns. In the first study, I added two new tropical PFTs to an existing regional model (LPJ-GUESS) to improve vegetation representation in Central America. Although there was an improvement in the representation of some biomes such as the pine-oak forests, LPJ-GUESS was still unable to capture the distribution of arid ecosystems. The model representations of fire, soil, and processes unique to desert vegetation are discussed as possible explanations. The remaining three chapters deal with the assumption of full migration, where plants can arrive at any location regardless of distance or physical barriers. Using LPJ-GUESS, I imposed migration limitations by using fat-tailed seed dispersal kernels. I used three temperate tree species with different life history strategies to test the new dispersal functionality. Simulated migration rates for Acer rubrum (141 m year-1) and Pinus rigida (76 m year-1) correspond well to pollen and genetic reconstructed rates. However, migration rates for Tsuga canadensis (85 m year-1) were considerably slower than historical rates. A sensitivity analysis showed that maturation age is the most important parameter for determining rates of spread, but it is the dispersal kernel which determines if there is any long distance dispersal or not. The final study demonstrates how northerly refugia populations could have impacted landscape recolonization following the retreat of the last glacier. Using three species with known refugia (Acer rubrum, Fagus grandifolia, Picea glauca), colonization rates were faster with a northerly refugia population present. The number of refugia locations also had a positive effect on landscape recolonization rates, which was most pronounced when populations were separated. The results from this thesis illustrate the improvements made in vegetation-climate models, giving us increasing confidence in the quality of future climate change predictions.

Keywords: seed dispersal
vegetation model
climate change
LPJ-GUESS
refugia
Central America
tropical PFTs
Advisor: Cowling, Sharon A.
Integrating Pandemic through Preparedness: Global Security and the Utility of Threat

Emerging infectious disease has become a paradigmatic way of thinking about disease in recent years. In response to the widely-held view that an emerging pandemic is an imminent, albeit uncertain, event linked to global interconnectedness, pandemic preparedness has been the target of considerable political concern and economic investment. To date, there has been relatively little critical research questioning the broader social and political implications of this seemingly natural undertaking. My research addresses this knowledge gap by exploring pandemic influenza planning as a global approach to the regulation of emerging infectious disease. I investigate how pandemic is framed and the ways in which these framings link to broader political and economic contexts. I undertake a Foucauldian-informed, critical discourse analysis of four key pandemic planning documents produced by the World Health Organization between 1999 and 2009. I ask how infectious disease is constructed in particular ways, and how these constructions can be interpreted in relation to broader global contexts. My findings, which describe a range of discursive strategies in governing pandemic, are four-fold. First, I examine the characterizations of the influenza virus, and their effect of rendering normal and pandemic circumstances as indistinct. I describe how these constructions are implicated in the framing of preparedness as a continuous engagement with the process of emergence. Next, I explore how the delineation and regulation of boundaries simultaneously constitutes bodies and territories as distinct. Third, I describe the discursive construction of a particular kind of global geopolitics which represents vulnerability according to the interconnectedness of states. Finally, the pandemic virus acquires a form of utility that portrays preparedness as having the potential for securing society against a broad range of potential threats. Anticipating the exceptional features of pandemic is to be achieved through the integration of contingency mechanisms into existing systems of preparedness whose objective is continued economic and social functioning. The regulation of circulation central to pandemic preparedness establishes an ongoing engagement in decisions about freedom and constraint in relation to different forms of mobility or circulation. My findings are interpreted in light of their implications for understanding the global regulation of, and intervention into, molecular life.

Keywords: pandemic
global governance
biosecurity
preparedness
Advisor: McDonough, Peggy
Heavy Drinking Episodes and Heart Disease Risk

Background: The relationship between average alcohol consumption and heart disease is well researched, showing a substantial cardioprotective association. This dissertation examined the epidemiological evidence for an effect of heavy episodic drinking (HED) over and above the effect of average alcohol consumption on heart disease. Methods: Electronic databases were systematically searched for epidemiological studies on the effect of HED on heart disease and identified articles were quantitatively summarized in a meta-analysis. Meta-regression models were used to examine the effect of characteristics of primary studies. Using individual-level data, semi-parametric Cox regression models were used to investigate HED exposure within narrow categories of average alcohol consumption in a US national population sample (n = 9,937) in relation to heart disease mortality in an 11-22 year follow-up. Frequency of heavy drinking episodes was used to identify latent classes of drinking history using growth mixture modeling in a sub-sample of this US cohort. Retrieved classes were used as independent variables in Cox regression models with heart disease mortality as the outcome event. Results: A pooled relative risk of 1.45 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.24-1.70) for HED compared with non-HED drinkers with average alcohol consumption between 0.1-60 g/day was derived in a meta-analysis. A strong and consistent association with HED was found among current drinkers consuming an average of 1-2 drinks per day in the US cohort. There was no evidence of increased heart disease mortality resulting from the frequency of heavy drinking episodes before the age of forty. Conclusions: There is reasonable and consistent evidence for an association of HED and heart disease in current drinkers, negating any beneficial effect from alcohol consumption on heart health. History of frequency of heavy drinking episodes, however, showed no evidence for such an effect modification.

Keywords: alcohol drinking
heart disease
heavy episodic drinking
meta-analysis
Advisor: Rehm, Jürgen
Idiosyncratic Distortions, Misallocation and TFP Losses

How resources are allocated across plants is crucial for understanding cross-country output and productivity differences. This thesis contributes to the growing literature on resource misallocation by studying the particular channels through which misallocation can arise. In Chapter 1, I examine extortion at the plant-level, its effects on individual incentives to become an entrepreneur, and how production is affected by the presence of extortion. I show that extortion is especially burdensome on moderate-ability entrepreneurs forcing them to either forgo entry into entrepreneurship or produce at an inefficiently small scale. When property rights are weak, the frequency of extortion is higher producing a society where much of it's entrepreneurial talent is heavily under-utilized. In Chapter 2, I study plant-level distortions and it's effects on incentives to improve productivity. I build a model where plant innovation improves future productivity so that productivity dynamics are endogenous. Distortions that are tied to productivity are introduced to the model to examine how plant innovation is affected. All plants lower innovation resulting in a distribution over productivity that is right-skewed and a distribution over plant size that is left-skewed, consistent with empirical findings in developing countries. The final Chapter is closely related to Chapter 1 but is more empirically focused. I study the role of theft as a means to explaining the abundance of small plants in developing countries and estimate the causal effect of theft on plant capital demand. I find that plant capital would be significantly higher if theft is eliminated.

Keywords: Misallocation
Extortion
Advisor: Restuccia, Diego
Students' Heterogeneity and Multiple Worlds: Revisiting the Changing Student Poulations in Ontario

Abstract This qualitative study is designed to examine how the 8 university students (from 8 different secondary schools) define their high school experiences. The study focuses on how the 8 study participants’ unique identities shape their experiences of secondary schooling. The three paradigms, students’ heterogeneity, multiple worlds, and identity conceptually framed the study. Through the focus group interactions and two sets of individual interviews, each student’s unique identity and agency were revealed; both individual-social-collective entities that were developed in relations to others. The other sources of data were school websites, relevant media reports on schools and their communities, and policy documents on academic and international baccalaureate programs; finally, field notes were also taken. In so doing, the research critically explores participants’ voices on heterogeneity, multiple worlds of family, neighbourhood, peers,cultural and multicultural identities. Finally, the 8 young people also reflect on their 8 schools, their academic programs, overall educational experience, and particularly, how young people articulate their belonging in high schools. Findings of the study suggest that participants’ identities of who they were often echoed their class, race, and ethnicity, and in turn, affected their academic engagement and identity. Despite the public invitation of all schools on their websites for students to participate in the school communities, the participants painted an altogether different picture; not all adolescents had equal access to schooling. The study makes recommendations for policy-makers, schools, and their districts which address the issues of inequity raised in this study. Specifically, schools need to be aware of the cultural,socioeconomic, and ethnic issues and the challenges that are in the way of minority adolescents’ progress so that secondary schools can extend their support to low income and immigrant students.

Keywords: secondary school students, diversity, identity,
school change
Advisor: Joshee, Reva
Development and Evaluation of a Tailored Knowledge Translation Intervention to Improve Lay Health Workers Ability to Effectively Support TB Treatment Adherence in Malawi

Background: Task shifting provision of basic health care services to lay health workers (LHWs) is increasingly employed to combat the global shortage of skilled health workers, particularly in low and middle income countries, where the shortage is greatest. Despite evidence for the effectiveness of LHWs in improving access to basic health services and positively impacting a variety of health outcomes, questions remain as to how recognized weaknesses in training and supervision are best addressed. This thesis employed a sequential-concurrent mixed-methods design and is composed of 3 studies with the objective of designing and rigorously evaluating a knowledge translation (KT) intervention tailored to address identified barriers to LHWs ability to function optimally as TB adherence supporters in Zomba district, Malawi. Methods & Findings: The first study utilized the qualitative methods of focus groups and interviews conducted with LHWs routinely involved in provision of care to TB patients. Lack of TB knowledge and job-specific training were identified as the key barriers to LHWs in their role as TB adherence supporters. Based on these findings, a KT intervention was developed and tailored to the identified training gaps. The second study, evaluated the effectiveness of the intervention in improving TB treatment adherence in a cluster randomized controlled trial, which showed no evidence for effectiveness of the intervention. The third study, conducted concurrently with the cluster trial, employed qualitative interviews to explore LHWs experiences with the intervention to identify ii aspects of the intervention found to be helpful and areas in need of improvement. Study 3 found that the intervention was well received and valued, with reported benefits to LHWs through improved knowledge and skills, and increased confidence. Suggestions for improvement varied considerably, with an anticipated concern with the lack of stipends and conduct of training on-site, raised as an issue by a minority of participants. Conclusion: This thesis suggests that a multi-component KT strategy tailored to address local barriers, was well received and valued by LHWs, and may represent a cost-effective approach to LHW training. However, given the trend for effectiveness did not reach significance in this underpowered study, further research is needed.

Keywords: knowledge translation
lay health workers
Advisor: Zwarenstein, Merrick
Motor Performance in the Context of Externally-imposed Payoffs

Humans need to rapidly select movements that achieve their goal while avoiding negative outcomes. The processes leading to these decisions have only recently been studied. In the typical paradigm used to gain insight into the decision process, participants aim to a target circle that is overlapped by a penalty circle. They receive 100 points for hitting the target, and lose points for hitting the penalty region. Previous research has shown that participants generally behave like a rational decision maker by adapting their endpoint when the distance between the target and penalty circle and the penalty value changes (although some suboptimal selection has been noted). The overall purpose of the research reported in the present thesis was to determine if there are contexts when participants’ behaviour is suboptimal in a rapid, motor decision making tasks. Taken together, the results from four studies showed that: 1) participants require experience and feedback to aim to optimal locations; 2) participants often aimed closer to target center than optimal; and, 3) probability (represented through spatial parameters) has more influence over participant’s motor decisions than does the value of the penalty. Therefore, participants’ actions do not necessarily conform to a rational model of decision making; rather, there are consistent biases arising in the selection, planning, and execution of actions in specific contexts. These findings and conclusions can lead to a more descriptive understanding of motor decision making to provide information that is in addition to prescriptive models of rational behaviour.

Keywords: Motor Control
Statistical Decision Theory
Advisor: Welsh, Timothy N.
Concerto for Cello, Orchestra, and Live Electronics

The present thesis comprises a musical score and a set of specifications for a programmer to employ in the creation of a computer patch required to run the electronics. Scored for symphony orchestra and solo cello, the work also incorporates a computer operator and sound engineer who function as performers, following detailed instructions to store, activate, shape, spatialize, and regulate electronic material. The computer patch manifests two main components: the recording and playback of live sound (with the solo cello acting as the input source) and a virtual instrument feedback module. Electronic superimpositions of solo cello samples, ranging in density between a single layer and many simultaneous layers, intertwine with the live instrumentalist, forming timbrally distinct polyrhythmic contrapuntal lines. The feedback component allows for an interaction between the soloist and electronics, in which the computer operator manipulates faders connected to a series of feedback sub-patches, each employing a range of diverse delay parameters. The musical language of the work, which evolves from a series of expanding and contracting pitch clusters, continually transmutes, shifting back and forth from atonality, tonality, and polytonality. Formally, the work both opposes and espouses traditional paradigms; and it is this dichotomy, the tension created between old and new, which ultimately unifies the structure. Finally, the expansion of the role of the soloist, which entails not only the integration of multiple superimposed electronic layers but of the immersive diffusion of sound in multidimensional space, broadens the concerto form.

Keywords: Music
Orchestra
Live Electronics
Cello
Cello Concerto
Electroacoustic
Electronics
Advisor: Hatzis, Christos
Connecting, Care and Agency: The Nature of Environmental Education at an Outdoor Education Centre

This thesis reports on a study designed to investigate the nature of environmental education (EE) at one well-established school board operated outdoor education centre called Faraway Dale located in Ontario, Canada. The specific research questions that guided the study were: (a) What are the structures that characterize environmental education for educators at the outdoor education centre? (b) What are the main understandings of environment and education that guide outdoor educators work with environmental education? (c) What are the tensions and contradictions of providing environmental education through an outdoor centre? The primary data sources for this study were the nine outdoor educators who work at the facility. A variety of data collecting strategies were used, over a period of five months, to re-present their experiences of providing EE. Analysis of the data revealed that the nature of EE at the outdoor centre is significantly different from what occurs in mainstream, indoor settings. The overall goal for environmental education at the outdoor centre is to foster a culture that leads to healthy people and healthy environments by encouraging a more equitable interplay among people and nature. This overall goal can be divided into three structures that characterize EE at the centre. These are: connecting people to the environment, encouraging a care-based relational orientation towards the environment, and building agency for living low consumption low impact lifestyles. The findings also confirm that the nature of EE which educators espouse and practice is directly linked to their understandings of the terms ‘environment’ and ‘education’. The major tensions and contradictions of providing EE in an outdoor context are also illuminated. The discussion focuses on the implications of the findings for theory, practice and research in EE and the work of outdoor educators in the field.

Keywords: environmental education
outdoor education
Advisor: Pedretti, Erminia
Improvisational Intelligence: A Study of the Cognitive Process of Improvisation

The teaching of music improvisation is commonly approached as the process of incorporating the vocabulary of a specific style. In the university setting this is most often accomplished through the methodology of jazz. As an alternative, improvisation is also taught as an experimental or experiential endeavor influenced by the practice of free-improvisation. A third model teaches improvisation as games; this is common in the field of Music Education. Although all these methods accomplish their various purposes, in their pedagogical application none of these models focus on the most distinctive feature of improvisation: how the musician thinks. Improvisation as a way of “thinking music” constitutes a form of musical intelligence that entails a number of cognitive processes that solve specific problems unique to the improvisational setting. As an alternative to the existing models, I propose to teach improvisation as a form of intelligence, with the purpose of empowering the learner to construct a spontaneous yet intended musical discourse meaningful to the improviser and representative of his or her own understanding of musical organization. In order to advance a pedagogical model based on improvisational intelligence, I have conducted a grounded theory research project to construct a theoretical model of the cognitive processes of improvisation deployed by professional improvisers, with the intention that this model inform the teaching of improvisational intelligence. The research comprised individual interviews with 10 improvisers. The participants improvised a piece of music and subsequently elaborated on the cognitive mechanisms deployed while improvising. The resulting theory from this research proposes that improvisational intelligence consists of residual and emergent behaviors mediated by a monitoring system. The theory is illustrated by three models, and it is summarized in six postulates. The practical application of the model does not form part of this research; turning the theoretical model into a practical teaching method constitutes a subsequent stage to the current work. Nonetheless, the discussion section of the thesis elaborates on possible pedagogical applications and challenges for the professional musician as well as for various institutional settings such as the elementary school, the secondary school, the university jazz program, and the classical performance program.

Keywords: improvisation music intelligence cognitive cognition
Advisor: Bartel, Lee