VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Strength in Numbers: The Moral Antecedent and Consequence of Consumer Conformity

Consumers often encounter moral violations in their daily life, from every day transgressions such as adultery and tax evasion to infamous company frauds. News reports about immoral behaviors of one type or another have become regular features on TV programs, radio stations, and social media websites. Previous research has mainly focused on how exposure to others’ moral violations can influence one’s own behaviors in a personal setting. However, we know very little about how moral violations may affect the way consumers relate to others. To fill this gap, my dissertation focuses on understanding the social nature of morality by exploring the moral antecedent (Essay 1) and consequence (Essay 2) of consumer conformity. Essay 1 investigates the moral antecedent of consumer conformity. By synthesizing insights from research on social order and conformity, I propose that exposure to others’ immoral behaviors can heighten the perceived threat to social order, which may increase consumers’ endorsement of conformist attitudes and hence their preferences for majority-endorsed choices in subsequently unrelated consumption situations. Moreover, I show that the effect disappears (a) when the moral violator has already been punished by third parties (Study 4) and (b) when the majority-endorsed option is perceived as immoral and therefore may be viewed as being complicit with the moral violators (Study 5). Essay 2 examines the moral consequence of consumer conformity. Extending the results of Essay 1, I propose and demonstrate that perceptions of being in the majority (vs. minority) group, even in a completely unrelated domain (e.g., consumption), can induce perceptions of being in the moral majority and signal social order to consumers, which has important downstream consequences on consumers’ moral judgments such as reducing their concerns about condemning and punishing moral transgressors. Three studies provide support for these propositions. By advancing our understanding of the moral antecedent and consequence of consumer conformity, this dissertation adds to a growing research stream showing that moral concerns can affect consumer behavior by exploring (a) how moral principles could serve as a basis for consumers’ preferences and choices and (b) how consumption conformity can buffer moral threats.

Advisor: Zhong, Chen-Bo
Aggarwal, Pankaj
Maximizing feedback for language learning: English language learners' attention, affect, cognition and usage of computer-delivered feedback from an English language reading proficiency assessment

Attention to personalised feedback for language learning is increasing as computer-based assessment increases practicality, but little attention has been paid to how language learners interact with and use feedback from computer-based assessments. The purposes of the present research were two-fold: to investigate how adult immigrant English language learners engaged with and processed computer-based feedback on their English reading skills, and to explore how these learners used feedback depending on their processing outcomes, psychological characteristics, and English proficiency. To examine these issues, six data sources were analysed using mixed methods for complementary and developmental purposes through interviews, surveys, language assessments, and eye tracking with 102 adult immigrant English language learners in Canada. Data were analysed using qualitative coding and analysis and quantitative methods such as regression analyses and latent class profiling. Results were organized and synthesized by research questions. Study findings were that the personalised sections received most attention, particularly visual results, but detailed descriptive text was useful at intermediate stages of feedback processing and usage. Learnersâ cognitive and affective strategies for negotiating feedback included emotional reactions, deflecting responsibility for negative feedback, critically evaluating report content, negotiating comprehension difficulties, and relating the report to their own lives. Learners were generally positive about personalised feedback, adapted it for their own purposes, and used known affective and cognitive strategies, confirming earlier research in these areas. In addition, confirming other previous research, major factors impacting understanding and usage were external circumstances such as English language environment and language proficiency. A mastery goal orientation, trust in report content, reflection on English skills, and desire to use the report, were positively associated with report usage. Implications included an observed need to fully factor feedback design into test design where impact/effects/outcomes are a guiding principle in test validation processes. From an instructional perspective, a key implication was the need to embed feedback in a high-quality, regular, and social learning environment. Further research is required to understand how feedback design can be personalized to promote more constructive feedback usage in learners with different background characteristics.

Keywords: Cognitive diagnostic assessment
Educational technology
Eye tracking
Feedback
Psychology of learning
Second language assessment
Advisor: Jang, Eunice E
Applications of blood biomarkers of traumatic brain injury across the severity spectrum---a focus on pathophysiological mechanisms

INTRODUCTION. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a global health concern. Spanning mild cognitive disturbances to unsurvivable trauma, the clinical challenges of TBI range from acute life-saving predicaments to the management of chronic cognitive impairment. While the primary insult leading to injury is irreversible, the subsequent secondary manifestations are seemingly amenable to intervention. Yet, no effective therapies exist across the spectrum of brain injury, primarily owing to our inability to understand the multifaceted, complex, secondary manifestations that occur after the primary insult. While experimental animal research has been informative in this regard, our knowledge of these processes in humans is lacking. However, a growing body of evidence suggests blood biomarker analysis may be a useful tool to aid in the elucidation of important pathophysiological mechanisms across a range of severities in human TBI. OBJECTIVE. The aim of this thesis was to use blood biomarkers as a tool to advance knowledge of secondary injury processes across the severity spectrum of TBI. METHODS. To investigate moderate-to-severe injury, we evaluated patients over the first 24 h from hospital admission after isolated TBI. To investigate mild injury, we studied varsity athletes with a clinically diagnosed sport-related concussion (SRC), sampled from the subacute period throughout clinical recovery, and chronically up to years after injury. Using multiplex immunoassay techniques, we evaluated a total of 58 blood biomarkers associated with numerous previously defined secondary injury processes, including central nervous system (CNS) injury, sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity, inflammation, vascular injury and hemostasis. RESULTS. In moderate-to-severe TBI, we found significant, dynamic pathological associations between SNS hyperactivity, inflammation, hemostasis, and vascular injury. In SRC, we found subacute alterations to numerous peripheral indices of CNS injury, inflammation and neuroinjury that persisted at medical clearance, as well as in ostensibly healthy athletes exposed to repetitive head impacts. CONCLUSION. Blood biomarkers are a useful tool to evaluate secondary injury processes across the spectrum of TBI. The results from these works necessitate future investigations into: (1) the potential therapeutic benefit of Î˛-blockers acutely after moderate-to-severe injury, and (2) the interrelationships between chronic inflammation and CNS injury after SRC, and their potential involvement in neurodegeneration.

Keywords: coagulopathy
concussion
inflammation
SNS
TBI
trauma
Advisor: Baker, Andrew J
Rhind, Shawn G
High Stakes Technical Skill Assessments in Surgery: Development, Implementation and Predicting Performance

A paradigm shift in surgical training from an apprenticeship to a competency based model requires valid assessment platforms to assess surgical competence. Several domains of competence are currently formally assessed, however technical skill, despite being the hallmark of a surgeon, is not directly or formally assessed upon completion of surgical training. The development, evaluation and implementation of objective tools to evaluate technical skill are essential, as surgical bodies mandate the documentation of competence. The first manuscript describes the first key step in developing a high stakes examination, using a Delphi methodology to develop a blueprint for the General Surgery Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skill (GOSATS) exam. An essential component of a high stakes exam is setting a pass score. The second and third manuscripts address this aspect of high stakes exam development. The second manuscript applies and compares three standard setting methodologies to the worldâ s largest Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skill (OSATS) database to set passing scores for the OSATS exam. General surgery residents (n=133) from the University of Toronto between 2002 and 2012 were then assigned a pass/fail status allowing for comparison of the consistency of the pass/fail decision across the methodologies. The third manuscript investigates the validity of these set pass scores by evaluating the predictive ability of the OSATS pass/fail status. The general surgery residents that had passed the OSATS were compared to the residents that had failed the OSATS in terms of their PGY2 and PGY4 technical skill. The results indicate that passing the OSATS exam predicts technical skill in the PGY2 and PGY4 year. The final manuscript is a validation study investigating the results of the first North American technical skills certification examination. In 2014 the Colorectal Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skill (COSATS) was a mandatory component of the American Board of Colon and Rectal Surgeons certification process and represents the last paper in this dissertation. The results indicate that individuals who failed the COSATS, passed both the oral and written ABCRS exams, suggesting that the current certification process may fail to identify individuals with technical deficiencies.

Keywords: assessment
competence
surgery
training
Advisor: Grantcharov, Teodor
Search for Dark Gauge Bosons Decaying into Displaced Lepton-Jets in Proton-proton Collisions at 13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

The dark photon (A'), the gauge boson carrier of a hypothetical new force, has been proposed in a wide range of Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) theories, and could serve as our window to an entire dark sector. A massive A' could decay back to the Standard Model (SM) with a significant branching fraction, through kinetic mixing with the SM photon. If this A' can be produced from decays of a dark scalar that mixes with the SM Higgs boson, collider searches involving leptonic final states provide promising discovery prospects with rich phenomenology. This work presents the results of a search for dark photons in the mass range 0.2 ≤ mA' ≤ 10 GeV decaying into collimated jets of light leptons and mesons, so-called ``lepton-jets". It employs 3.57 fb–1 of data from proton–-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s =13 TeV, collected during 2015 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. No deviations from SM expectations are observed. Limits on benchmark models predicting Higgs boson decays to A's are derived as a function of the A' lifetime; limits are also established in the parameter space of mA' vs. kinetic mixing parameter ϵ . These extend the limits obtained in a similar search previously performed during Run 1 of the LHC, to include dark photon masses 2 ≤ mA' ≤ 10 GeV and to cover higher ϵ values for 0.2 ≤ mA' ≤ 2 GeV, and are complementary to various other ATLAS A' searches. As data-taking continues at the LHC, the reach of lepton-jet analyses will continue to expand in model coverage and in parameter space.

Keywords: ATLAS detector
beyond the Standard Model
dark matter
Higgs boson
Large Hadron Collider
Advisor: Trischuk, William
Co-registration of Ultrasound and Photoacoustic Radar Imaging and Image Improvement for Early Cancer Diagnosis

Unlike mainstream biomedical photoacoustics, mostly based on pulsed laser excitation, this work explores the alternative photoacoustic radar (PAR) modality, using intensity-modulated continuous-wave laser sources driven by frequency-swept (chirp) waveforms. A one-dimensional, axisymmetric model, and quantitative blood oxygenation analysis were developed for analyzing experimental results. Signal processing tools are investigated to enhance system parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), dynamic range and spatial resolution. Besides applying pulse compression through matched-filtering to generate high peak power cross-correlation response, SNR can be improved by leveraging the distinct phase channel to filter the PAR amplitude channel acquired by the cross-correlation of the PA response and the reference waveform. Phase-filtering is also investigated as a spatial-resolution improvement technique. An in-vivo study of a cancer cell-injected mouse recorded a 14-15 dB SNR gain for the phase-filtered image compared to the amplitude and phase independently, while the phase PAR image produced ~340 Îźm spatial resolution compared to ~840 Îźm for the amplitude image. Additionally, to accelerate clinical acceptance and use, the combination of the PAR system with clinically-accepted ultrasound is explored. PAR tomography is investigated toward in-vivo functional analysis and the effects of the number of scan lines on image quality, resolution and contrast, examined. Furthermore, addressing assumptions of linear fluence dependence in conventional multispectral photoacoustic imaging is crucial for obtaining accurate spatially-resolved quantitative functional information by exploiting known chromophore-specific spectral characteristics. A study conducted introduces the non-invasive phase-filtered wavelength-modulated differential photoacoustic radar technique to address this issue by eliminating the effect of the unknown wavelength-dependent fluence. It employs two laser wavelengths modulated out-of-phase to significantly suppress background absorption while amplifying the difference between the two photoacoustic signals. This facilitates (pre)malignant tumor identification and hypoxia monitoring with significant improvement in dynamic range, SNR and spatial resolution, as minute changes in total hemoglobin concentration and oxygenation are detectable.

Keywords: Biomedical photoacoustic imaging
Differential imaging
Frequency modulation
Hypoxia
Spectroscopy
Ultrasound
Advisor: Mandelis, Andreas
An Archeology of Cryptography: Rewriting Plaintext, Encryption, and Ciphertext

This dissertation is an archeological study of cryptography. It questions the validity of thinking about cryptography in familiar, instrumentalist terms, and instead reveals the ways that cryptography can been understood as writing, media, and computation. In this dissertation, I offer a critique of the prevailing views of cryptography by tracing a number of long overlooked themes in its history, including the development of artificial languages, machine translation, media, code, notation, silence, and order. Using an archeological method, I detail historical conditions of possibility and the technical a priori of cryptography. The conditions of possibility are explored in three parts, where I rhetorically rewrite the conventional terms of art, namely, plaintext, encryption, and ciphertext. I argue that plaintext has historically been understood as kind of inscription or form of writing, and has been associated with the development of artificial languages, and used to analyze and investigate the natural world. I argue that the technical a priori of plaintext, encryption, and ciphertext is constitutive of the syntactic and semantic properties detailed in Nelson Goodman’s theory of notation, as described in his Languages of Art. I argue that encryption (and its reverse, decryption) are deterministic modes of transcription, which have historically been thought of as the medium between plaintext and ciphertext. By developing a new understanding of encryption as standing between two agents, I characterize the process in terms of media. As media, encryption technologies participate in historical desires for commodious and even “angelic” transmission, popular until the twentieth century. I identify how cryptanalysis, or “code-breaking,” is distinct from cryptography, and instead relates to language, being associated with the history of machine translation. Finally, I argue that ciphertext is the perspectival, ordered result of encryption—similar to computation—and resists attempts to be spoken. Since ciphertext resists being spoken, its application problematizes the category of language, and has, at least once in antiquity, been considered a means of creating silence. This dissertation is the first of its kind to offer a historically-rich, ontological analysis of cryptography, which therefore opens the topic to new fields of scholarship and humanistic forms of inquiry.

Keywords: code
computation
cryptography
Goodman
Nelson
media
notation
Advisor: Smith, Brian C
Keilty, Patrick
Imaging Fermionic Atoms in a Quantum Gas Microscope

This thesis describes the methods used to achieve single-atom and single-site resolved fluorescence imaging of a quantum gas of fermionic atoms held in an optical lattice. This kind of quantum gas microscopy has been previously applied to bosonic atoms in two experiments, and has allowed for extensive studies of many-body quantum systems. Here we detail methods to extend the techniques of quantum gas microscopy to fermionic species of atoms, opening the door to quantum simulation of electronic models of condensed matter physics. We prepare quantum degenerate gases of fermionic 40K through sympathetic cooling with a gas of \Rb. The gas prepared is trapped less than 1 mm away from a thin vacuum window, an experimental geometry which permits interrogation with a large Numerical Aperture microscope objective. The cloud is loaded into a 527 nm-period cubic optical lattice, ideal for quantum simulation of many-body models of fermionic particles such as the Hubbard model. The optical lattice is designed to allow for potential depths up to V/kB = 250 microKelvin, sufficient to strongly confine 40K atoms into individual lattice sites. EIT cooling --- a technique previously demonstrated in ion-trapping experiments --- is used to cool the fermionic atoms deeply towards the ground motional state of the lattice wells. We collect the photons scattered during continuous application of EIT cooling, while atoms are kept pinned in the lattice for many seconds. We strongly suppress all other sources of light with the use of a modulated cooling scheme and a spinning chopper wheel. Collecting the scattered light produced during 2 s of EIT cooling allows us to resolve single atoms in a fluorescence image. We demonstrate that the high resolution of our imaging apparatus also permits atom positions to be precisely identified on the length scale of the optical lattice. Thus we demonstrate the realisation of a quantum gas microscope for fermionic atoms, allowing for precise investigation of the ground states and dynamics of correlated quantum states of fermionic particles.

Keywords: Atomic Physics
Quantum Gas Microscope
Quantum Simulation
Ultracold Atoms
Advisor: Thywissen, Joseph
Design and Evaluation of Novel Devices to Facilitate Long Bone Fracture Reconstruction

Intramedullary (IM) nailing is the standard of care for adult lower extremity long bone fracture stabilization. In IM nailing, obtaining the correct entry point for nail insertion has been identified as the most important technical aspect of the operation [1]. Upon accurate entry point selection and opening the intramedullary canal, intra-operative reduction is necessary to insert a long guide wire through the proximal and distal fragments to enable subsequent IM reaming and nail insertion. Despite widespread usage of IM nailing, significant surgical challenges arise in accurate entry point selection and obtaining adequate provisional reduction to allow conventional intramedullary guide wire insertion. Such challenges can significantly impede the surgical workflow, introduce surgical complications, requiring additional operative time and radiation exposure to both patients and medical staff, as well as elevating surgical frustration levels. This thesis focuses on analyzing the IM nailing surgical process and the development and evaluation of two novel surgical tools, FAST, to facilitate entry point selection and FLEX FiRST wire, to aid long bone fracture reduction. FAST (Femoral Antegrade Starting Tool) is a surgical tool that enables maintenance of Kirschner (K) wire anteroposterior (AP) alignment when lateral images are acquired to obtain accurate K-wire positioning in the sagittal plane. FLEX FiRST (FLEXible Fracture Reduction Steerable Telescoping) Wire is a flexible endoscopic device whose insertion is guided by a proximal joy-stick like controller which enables navigation of the device tip through a malreduced fracture site under standard intra-operative fluoroscopy. Ultimately, the design of these novel tools can address the lack of connectivity in utilizing sequential 2D fluoroscopic images to achieve 3D alignment and may facilitate the overall surgical workflow in IM nailing of femoral shaft fractures.

Advisor: Whyne, Cari Marisa
Yee, Albert
A Novel Gene Therapy Approach Based on Secreted Antiviral Proteins for the Control of HIV Replication

HIV entry into target cells requires the interaction of the HIV envelope glycoprotein (Env) with a primary receptor (CD4) and a co-receptor (most commonly CCR5 or CXCR4). Protein-based HIV entry inhibitors are highly effective in protecting cells from infection. However, their clinical application is limited because their use requires the frequent injection of highly purified proteins. This study focuses on the development of a gene therapy strategy for the delivery of protein-based HIV entry inhibitors. In Chapter 2 we show that an antibody fragment targeting CCR5 (sscFvPRO140) is secreted from gene-modified human cells and can protect unmodified cells from infection. Chapter 3 describes the secretion and antiviral effect of entry inhibitors targeting HIV Env. A soluble receptor (sCD4), sCD4 covalently linked to a fusion inhibitor (sCD4-FIT45) and sCD4 linked to an antibody fragment targeting the co-receptor-binding site (sCD4-scFv17b) were secreted in significant quantities and protected primary HIV target cells from infection. In Chapter 4 we examine the secretion of sCD4 in a mouse model of HIV infection. sCD4 was present in the blood (~100 ng/ml) of mice engrafted with gene-modified hematopoietic stem cells, reduced viral load over time and protected CD4+ T cells from depletion. Chapter 5 describes the use of gene-modified cell lines for the production of secreted human proteins and their small-scale purification from the culture media. In Chapter 6 we further investigate the antiviral potency of sCD4-FIT45. The bifunctional protein inhibited HIV Env-mediated cell fusion and HIV entry of several primary isolates more potently than VRC01, sCD4, or sCD4-scFv17b. Taken together, we have shown that human cells can be engineered to secrete HIV inhibitors. Furthermore, our results highlight the benefit of combining inhibitors that target receptor-binding and membrane fusion.

Keywords: Bifunctional entry inhibitor
Fusion inhibitor
Gene therapy
HIV entry
Lentiviral vector
Secreted entry inhibitor
Advisor: Joshi, Sadhna