VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Expressivist Pedagogy: Re-conceptualizing Writing through Narratives of Self in a Postsecondary Writing Classroom

What magic transpires when we give our academic experiences a personal tongue? This research sought to unravel the alternative knowledges spawned through heretical texts when students begin to trust their own experiences to lead them to meaning. To understand this, I taught and observed an Expressive Writing classroom at an Arts College in Lahore, Pakistan. I specifically wanted to explore: 1) How do students re-conceptualize writing after taking a course built on expressivist principles? 2) How does student writing change over the course using a rhetorical analysis as a guiding framework? and 3) How do student writers respond to an expressivist pedagogy? Using a narrative action oriented case study design, I collected data through semi-structured interviews with two participants, student writings, classroom observations, reflexive diary and exit tickets gathered from all students enrolled in the course. The study showed that students re-conceptualized writing as dialectical, relational, communal, situated, liberating, intuitive and transformative. Students took control of their narratives, wrote for a real audience in conversations with one another, started to understand life through the stories they chose to tell, developed their own voice/s in the midst of others, and saw their own lives as sources of meaning. Knowledge was no longer conceptualized as some elusive entity “over there,” external from them. Overall, the writing workshop model of the course was a palatable experience for the majority of students while some found that writing in discourse communities felt disconcerting. Student writing displayed a preliminary understanding of rhetorical conventions (discrepancy between defining good writing and writing good writing) and contained resonant passages (writings with added presence) of gendered rhetoric typifying Shock Expressive Writing—deeply visceral writing which shocks the reader into revisionism, meta-transcendence and/or alternative thinking through authentic expression. Based on the findings of this action research, implications include recommendations for teachers who want to teach expressive writing which centers indigeneity, decolonizes writing pedagogy, and is rooted in holistic education and a pedagogy of love (bridging the gap between the academic and the heart). Concomitantly, this study also makes a case for the language of love—a novelty—to permeate academia.

Keywords: Decolonizing Writing Pedagogy
Expressive Writing
Holistic Education
Language of Love
Pedagogy of Love
Re-conceptualizing Writing
Advisor: Miller, Jack
Musical Expression in German Neo-Baroque Organ Music: Case Studies of Selected Works by Hugo Distler and Ernst Pepping

The German neo-Baroque style of composition developed in the first half of the twentieth century. Within this style, composers used Baroque techniques and methods along with twentieth-century rhythms and harmonies. The style grew out of movements such as the Baroque revival and the Orgelbewegung, or Organ Reform Movement. In the organ world, a strong connection between organ builders and organists/composers created a specific neo-Baroque sound for the organ. Two composers, Hugo Distler (1908–1942), a professional organist, and Ernst Pepping (1901–1981), who casually played the organ, were among others in Germany to experiment in the neo-Baroque style. This thesis examines the lives of Distler and Pepping to see what may have influenced their style and the possible influences that may have contributed to their use of techniques of Baroque musical expression. Techniques such as musical rhetoric, affect, numerology, and word painting were often found in Baroque music as a way to artistically convey expression. This thesis presents evidence that these techniques may also be found in neo-Baroque music by Distler and Pepping and that they are used for similar expressive purposes. Specific case studies of the use of techniques of Baroque musical expression in Distler’s Partita “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” Op. 8, no. 2 (1935) and Pepping’s Toccata and Fugue “Mitten wir im Leben sind” (1941), and Distler’s Organ Sonata (Trio) Op. 18, no. 2 (1939) and Pepping’s Four Fugues in D, c, E♭, and f (1942) are explored. I also explore the difference between the use of techniques of Baroque expression in text-based works, using the first two scores, and in non-text-based works, using the second two scores. Finally, I conclude by showing how analyses such as those done in this thesis can be beneficial for the expression and understanding of the music by both performers and audiences.

Keywords: Baroque Musical Expression
Ernst Pepping
Hugo Distler
Musical Rhetoric
Neo-Baroque
Pipe Organ
Advisor: Elliott, Robin
Investigating Factors Underlying the Ability of Reward-Paired Cues to Function as Conditioned Reinforcers

Environmental stimuli paired with drugs-of-abuse can motivate drug use and increase the risk of relapse in abstinent individuals. These reward-paired stimuli can control behavior due in part to their ability to function as conditioned reinforcers (CRfs). In this thesis, I investigated factors underlying the ability of reward-paired stimuli to function as CRfs using the acquisition-of-a-new-response task. In Chapter 2, I examined the effects of reducing the reward value of saccharin on responding for a saccharin-paired CRf. Results showed that responding was not altered by saccharin devaluation. This raised the question of how drug-associated stimuli motivate drug use if they do so in a manner that is divorced from the value of the drug. One limitation of this chapter is that a non-drug reinforcer was used. Thus, in Chapter 3, I examined the effects of reducing the reward value of the drug reinforcer alcohol on responding for an alcohol-paired CRf. These studies found that responding was not altered by alcohol devaluation. Like drug-paired stimuli, stress increases vulnerability to drug use and relapse. In Chapter 4, I explored the effects of the pharmacological stressors, yohimbine and U50,488, on responding for an alcohol- or a sucrose-paired CRf. Yohimbine, but not U50,488, enhanced responding irrespective of the nature of the reward used. Some independent evidence also showed that yohimbine enhanced responding for sensory stimuli (e.g. light and tone) that had not been paired with reward. In Chapter 5, I revisted the question of whether the pairing between the stimulus and reward is important for the stimulus to function as CRf. This was done by examining the effects of manipulating the stimulus-reward association on responding. These studies found that the stimulus-reward association is important. However, the stimulus appeared to have intrinsic properties that facilitated responding. Taken together, these findings suggest that reward-paired stimuli acting as CRfs guide behavior in a manner that is independent of the value of the reward. They also substantiate a role for the intrinsic reinforcing properties of these stimuli in facilitating responding for apparent conditioned reinforcement.

Keywords: Alcohol
Conditioned reinforcement
Cues
Rats
Saccharin
Sucrose
Advisor: Fletcher, Paul
Development of Methacrylic Acid Biomaterial-based Therapeutic Tissues for Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is characterized by the autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing β-cells found in pancreatic islets. Islet transplantation is a promising treatment option for T1D that restores the body's ability to predict, measure, and regulate blood glucose levels in ways that other, artificial systems (e.g., exogenous insulin injection) can only approximate. However, a significant number of islets are destroyed because of inflammation associated with the current transplant site (the portal vein) and the persistent autoreactive and allogeneic (non-self) immune responses, resulting in graft failure within a number of years. In this work we studied the use of an inherently vascularizing, immunomodulating poly(methacrylic acid) (MAA)-poly(ethylene glycol) (MAA-PEG) hydrogel as a platform for cell therapies that restore blood glucose control and mitigate the immune response. The vascularizing nature of the MAA-based biomaterial allowed us to focus on cell delivery to the alternative subcutaneous site; this site has numerous advantages over others (including the portal vein) but without added vascularization (by MAA) it cannot support a graft. We found that rodent islets (600 islet equivalent units) transplanted subcutaneously in degradable MAA-PEG hydrogels survived, integrated into a vascularized, innervated host tissue, and reversed chemically induced diabetes in immunocompromised mice. The MAA-PEG hydrogel was further an effective platform for immunomodulation in the autoimmune diabetic NOD mouse model. MAA-PEG recruited an alternative host response in the subcutaneous space that worked together with added vitamin D3-derived tolerogenic dendritic cells (VDDCs) to effect enhanced immunomodulation (e.g., Treg expansion) locally and at secondary lymph sites. This modulation led to a delay in onset of autoimmune diabetes compared to control vehicles. In allogeneic islet transplant studies, targeted immunotherapy (short-term (4-7 day) neutrophil depletion) allowed mismatched BALB/c islets injected in degradable MAA-PEG to survive in the subcutaneous space and reverse diabetes in immune competent C57BL/6 mice for more than 50 days without immunosuppression. Our work demonstrates the potential of MAA-PEG hydrogels as platforms for therapeutic tissue engineering in the context of T1D.

Advisor: Sefton, Michael V
Essays on Business Cycles, Banks, and Money

This thesis studies the relationship between business cycles, banks, and money. The first chapter focuses on the relationship between bank credit supply and economic volatility. I build a DSGE model with nominal and financial frictions. The novel aspect of the model is the banking sector which finances its lending activity with both pre-accumulated household savings and deposits that are created—ex nihilo—by the banking sector. I contribute to the literature by studying the relative importance of bank credit supply shocks in driving economic volatility. The model is estimated using US data. There are three main results of this chapter. First, I find that an unexpected contraction in the supply of bank credit leads to an economic recession. Second, bank credit supply shocks account for 55% of the volatility in investment and GDP. Third, the model can replicate two stylized facts previous models failed to capture: bank net worth is sticky and bank leverage is procyclical. In the second chapter I focus on the Canadian banking sector. The first half of the chapter provides a brief historical account of the development of the banking system in Canada and makes comparisons with the development of the US banking system. The second half of the chapter uses detailed bank-level balance sheet data of the Big Five Canadian banks to tease out six stylized facts of the Canadian banking sector. They are: first, it is dominated by five large banks; second, credit is deepening; third, net worth is ‘sticky’; fourth, leverage is procyclical; fifth, balance sheet risk is falling; and sixth, rising bank output is driven by liquid liabilities. In the third chapter I estimate a bank credit supply shock using both firm and bank qualitative survey data regarding lending/borrowing conditions in the Canadian economy. The survey data is purged of factors which also affect loan demand. Using a monetary VAR model, I find that an unexpected one-standard-deviation contraction of bank credit supply leads to a mild economic recession. Moreover, I find that the results are robust to a variety of specifications and a different identification strategy.

Keywords: bank credit supply shock
Bayesian estimation
business cycles
DSGE
money creation
VAR
Advisor: Alexopoulos, Michelle
Optimisation Methods for Advanced Gamma Knife Radiosurgery Treatment

Stereotactic radiosurgery is a high-precision mode of radiotherapy that delivers high dose radiation to brain tumours in one or a few sessions. Recent developments in Gamma Knife radiosurgery machines (Elekta AB, Stockholm, Sweden) have increased treatment precision and functionality, allowing the exploration of new and promising treatment methods. This thesis works to bring two such methods towards clinical implementation. One method is dose painting, which leverages tumour heterogeneity to deliver variable prescribed doses to different parts of a tumour, potentially improving tumour control while reducing unnecessary dose to healthy tissue. A second method is dynamic treatment, which delivers radiation while moving the treatment isocentre, potentially reducing treatment time while improving dose conformity and homogeneity. For dose painting, we first developed a set of metrics to allow the assessment of dose painting radiosurgery plan quality, meeting both clinical radiosurgery needs while being calculated with non-uniform dose painting prescriptions. We then used treatment planning optimisation and automated isocentre placement to generate treatment plans for dose painting prescriptions, allowing us to examine the quality of dose painting Gamma Knife plans achievable through optimisation, quantify how dose painting prescription methods affect plan quality, and explore how automated isocentre placement affects plan quality. For dynamic treatment, we conducted physical experiments to validate the real-world feasibility of dynamic Gamma Knife treatment. The experiments allowed us to address assumptions made with previous computational studies (such as the validity of treating a continuous path as discretised points), investigate uncertainties in translating computed plans to actual dynamic treatment, and determine ideal treatment planning parameters (such as interval distance for the discretisation of movement paths, collimator change limitations, and minimum isocentre treatment times). Through our work, both dose painting and dynamic treatment are better investigated as potential treatment methods for the current Gamma Knife radiosurgery machines.

Keywords: Gamma Knife
healthcare
optimisation
radiosurgery
Advisor: Aleman, Dionne M
Coolens, Catherine
Supporting Aspirations in University Students

Classical ideas of character education emphasize the importance of self-transformative aspiration to the successful cultivation of wisdom and virtue. Aspiration is however rarely discussed in contemporary models. Using the work of Callard (2018) on aspiration as a starting point, specifically her characterization of aspiration as a self-transformative project central to a university liberal arts education, two studies investigated aspiration in the personal projects of undergraduate students. The initial mixed-methods study conducted an online survey of 140 undergraduate students to solicit their personal projects, cognitive and affective appraisals of their projects, as well measures of potential aspirational outcomes. Canonical correlation analysis revealed two significant functions: an inverse relationship between Negativity and Positivity, and another inverse relationship between Challenge and Achievement. Environmental mastery and Self-Acceptance were more strongly associated with Achievement, while Autonomy and Purpose in Life were more strongly associated with Challenge. Following Study 1, a longitudinal mixed-methods analysis examined differences in students’ personal projects over the course of a university semester. Students were enrolled in either a Control course (an introductory cognitive science class; n = 42) or an Aspirational course (a course in the cognitive science of spirituality, covering topics such as the development of wisdom, self-transcendence, and mystical experience; n = 33; total N = 75). Both courses were delivered in the same semester and taught by the same instructor, with data being collected in September, October, November, and December. Coding of personal projects was broadened to include a category of change-related projects, and a series of measures assessing autonomous, controlled, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivations were added. Baseline bivariate correlations found that autonomous striving was most broadly associated with outcome measures. Multilevel modelling of change-related project prevalence and motivation variables found that both change-related project prevalence and autonomous striving declined month over month, while appraisals of projects as challenging and depressing increased. The aspirational course, however, showed recovery in autonomous striving in December. Overall, these results give some pause to Callard's characterization of university education as an inherently aspirational project, and raise concerns about the feasibility of teaching for aspiration within a university setting.

Keywords: Aspiration
Personal Projects Analysis
Virtue
Wisdom
Advisor: Ferrari, Michel
Computational Methods for Resilience Analysis in Interdependent Urban Infrastructure Systems

This thesis concerns methods for reliability and resilience assessment of urban infrastructure systems. The demands made upon urban infrastructure systems are increasing due to population growth and the ongoing trend of urbanization. There is a corresponding need for tools that can aid urban planners in reasoning about the impacts of growth and planning interventions on legacy infrastructure. The first part of the thesis presents a method for constructing district-scale models from public datasets. Detailed information on infrastructure systems is typically not available to the public for a variety of reasons. Several sources of data are discussed, as well as synthetic data generation, virtual cities, and digital twins. The proposed method is a hybrid approach that uses street network and utility data as input. The second part introduces a new set of centrality measures that can be employed on either isolated or interconnected networks. Unlike existing measures, which were typically developed for social network analysis, the proposed measures are designed explicitly for use in flow networks. They can be combined with reliability estimation techniques to yield a set of composite measures that give information about fallback routes. A graph transformation technique is used to simplify computations on interconnected networks. The third part investigates methods for clustering components according to their functional role in resource delivery. Due to the lack of labeled datasets, only unsupervised methods are used. Infrastructure systems are represented as flow networks with dedicated backup components. Each network component has a rich set of features that includes structural node embeddings and multi-valued resilience measures.

Keywords: Centrality measures
Component importance measures
Decision support systems
Reliability
Resilience
Urban planning
Advisor: Easterbrook, Steve
A Line-of-Sight Light Antennation Measurement for Droplet sizing (LADS)

We present a novel Line-of-Sight Light Antennation Measurement technique and system for Droplet Sizing (LADS). This method revolves around the measurement of attenuation responses and light scattering phenomena when a particle or droplet stream intersects with an incident light beam. The system processes recorded light scattering signals, analyzing their attenuation-time characteristics, and employing wavelet-based matching filter algorithms for precise attenuation-time transient extraction.The sizes of particles or droplets are determined by comparing these signals to a calibrated library containing signals corresponding to specific particle/droplet sizes. We specifically investigated the temporal intervals between rise and fall elements in the wavelet traces of spray signals. These traces, marked by identified matching coefficients, were meticulously compared using Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) to establish precise patterns. Particles falling within a predetermined threshold of 75% similarity, as determined by Multiresolution Analysis (MRA), were categorized as belonging to the same size spectrum and marked as "found." This research offers three folds of contributions: 1. We successfully developed and tested an innovative technique, allowing the conversion of low-resolution field samples into high-definition size distributions. 2. We extended the application of the offline droplet size distribution technique to field measurements. Additionally, we developed an algorithm capable of accurately determining in-situ parameters using an offline library. 3. In capturing the diffraction peaks, we employed wavelet derivatives to enable simultaneous scaling. Our system underwent rigorous testing on various droplet streams and liquid sprays. Validation was achieved by comparing its results with those obtained from a commercial droplet sizer, the Malvern Spraytec. LADS represents a straightforward technique that provides rapid analysis, rendering it suitable for the examination of diverse samples, including powders and liquids.

Advisor: Ashgriz, Nasser
Adaptive Regulation: Modelling Cerebellum-driven Processes

Understanding the function of the cerebellum remains an open problem of systems neuroscience. The thesis adopts a recent hypothesis that characterizes the cerebellum as an adaptive internal model, with the goal of rejecting disturbances acting on various regulated subsystems. The main challenge in utilizing regulator theory to explain cerebellar functions arises from its traditional development being primarily focused on engineering applications, which presents limitations in its application for brain modeling. The thesis aims to advance regulator theory and make it more suitable for systems neuroscience applications by addressing two main obstacles. The first obstacle regards the fact that traditional optimal control theory is concerned with optimizing transient behavior making it not suitable for capturing the brain’s optimization of its steady-state operation. To bridge this gap, we formulate the optimal steady-state regulation (OSSR) problem, which incorporates a cost on maintaining steady-state inputs and outputs of controllers contributing to regulation. We develop a fully adaptive control architecture to solve a specific instance of the OSSR problem involving two control modules: an inexpensive state feedback and a costly adaptive internal model. The design is used to realize a model of long-term adaptation of the brainstem neural integrator motor command in the oculomotorsystem, successfully recovering several experimental findings. The second obstacle addressed by the thesis regards intermittency of measurements which leads to a switched system with multiple equilibria. We extend the methods in the literature to provide the first stability results for discrete-time switched systems with multiple equilibria that do not impose any dwell-time constraint on the switching signal. These results are applied to show the stability ofa model of visuomotor adaptation under intermittent visual error measurement.

Keywords: averaging analysis
oculomotor system
optimal steady-state control
output regulation
switched systems
visuomotor adaptation
Advisor: Broucke, Mireille E