cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Les députées du Mali: identités et motivations politiques
Creators: name: Senécal, Émilie
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2011
Subjects: Femmes et parlement
Politique africaine
Mali

description: La thèse « Les députées du Mali : identités et motivations politiques » a pour objectif principal d’analyser les motivations politiques des députées maliennes de la législature 2007-2012. Les femmes du Mali sont très actives dans les domaines économique, social, culturel et politique, mais leur présence à l’Assemblée nationale demeure modeste (10,2 %). En se basant sur le modèle de l’offre et de la demande de candidatures pour analyser la participation politique des femmes au Mali, l’étude s’intéresse de façon plus spécifique à l’un des éléments principaux de l’offre, les motivations politiques.
Supplementary document for Articular cartilage optical properties in the near-infrared (NIR) spectral range vary with depth and tissue integrity - 5366347.pdf
Creators: name: Khan, Bilour
name: Kafian-Attari, Iman
name: Nippolainen, Ervin
name: Shaikh, Rubina
name: Semenov, Dmitry
name: Hauta-Kasari, Markku
name: Töyräs, Juha
name: Afara, Isaac
Publisher: name: Optica Publishing Group
Year: 2021
Subjects: Uncategorized

description: Figures 4,5,6(c) with extended Y-axis
Living with bipolar disorder: a qualitative analysis conducted five years after completing a psychosocial group treatment program
Creators: name: Cronin, Catherine
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: There is growing recognition of the importance of studying people's subjective experiences of living with mental illness. The current research explored the lived experiences of people with bipolar disorder five years after completing a psychological treatment program. The findings of this research have improved understanding of how people with BD manage their illness and promote lasting wellbeing, and provided suggestions for clinicians involved in routine care.
Supplementary document for Denoising of pre-beamformed photoacoustic data using generative adversarial networks - 5366729.pdf
Creators: name: Refaee, Amir
name: Kelly, Corey
name: Moradi, Hamid
name: Salcudean, Tim
Publisher: name: Optica Publishing Group
Year: 2025
Subjects: Uncategorized

description: Supplement 1
Towards Efficient Certificate Revocation Status Validation in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks with Data Mining
Creators: name: Zhang, Qingwei
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2012
Subjects: VANETs
digital certificates
Certificate Revocation List
k-Means
authentication
certificate validation

description: Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) are emerging as a promising approach to improving traffic safety and providing a wide range of wireless applications for drivers and passengers. To perform reliable and trusted vehicular communications, one prerequisite is to ensure a peer vehicle’s credibility by means of digital certificates validation from messages that are sent out by other vehicles. However, in vehicular communication systems, certificates validation is more time consuming than in traditional networks, due to the fact that each vehicle receives a large number of messages in a short period of time. Another issue that needs to be addressed is the unsuccessful delivery of information between vehicles and other entities on the road as a result of their high mobility rate. For these reasons, we need new solutions to accelerate the process of certificates validation. In this thesis, we propose a certificate revocation status validation scheme using the concept of clustering; based on data mining practices, which can meet the aforementioned requirements. We employ the technique of k -means clustering to boost the efficiency of certificates validation, thereby enhancing the security of a vehicular ad hoc network. Additionally, a comprehensive analysis of the security of the proposed scheme is presented. The analytical results demonstrate that this scheme can effectively improve the validation of certificates and thus secure the vehicular communication in vehicular networks.
On advancing molecular theories for electrolyte-solutions and polar fluids
Creators: name: Kournopoulos, Spyridon
Publisher: name: Imperial College London
Year: 2023

description: This thesis explores the thermodynamics of electrolyte solutions and polar fluids, with applications in several key industries like petrochemicals, geothermal energy, and carbon capture/storage. It utilises statistical mechanics to investigate challenges in modelling these systems, exploring theories such as Debye-Hückel (DH), Mean-Spherical Approximation (MSA), and the SAFT (Statistical Associating Fluid Theory) framework. The SAFT-𝛾 Mie equation of state is employed to model CO2 solubility in aqueous electrolyte solutions, with both spherical and non-spherical water models evaluated. The non-spherical model is shown to achieve superior accuracy when compared to experiments. A detailed study of NaCl in water evaluates the accuracy of using the MSA, DH, and Born as perturbation terms to describe the chemical potential of the ions in electrolyte solutions. The MSA model aligns more closely with simulation data, while the Born contribution plays a key role in describing ion-solvent interactions. Molecular structure analysis through radial and orientational distribution functions is also presented. The thesis introduces a new molecular theory for the dielectric constant of dipolar fluids, based on the augmented modified mean-field (AMMF) approximation. The theory accurately describes the dielectric constant in dipolar hard-sphere fluids and extends to the Stockmayer fluid, achieving good agreement with simulation data. It also examines the orientational structures of the Stockmayer fluid, correlating theory with dipole angle distributions. In summary, the thesis covers CO2 solubility modelling, ion interactions, and a new molecular theory for the dielectric constant of dipolar fluids, contributing to the understanding of electrolyte solution thermodynamics.
Empowering Health Workers to Protect their Own Health: A Study of Enabling Factors and Barriers to Implementing HealthWISE in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe
Creators: name: Wilcox, Elizabeth S.
name: Chimedza, Ida Tsitsi
name: Mabhele, Simphiwe
name: Romao, Paulo
name: Spiegel, Jerry M.
name: Zungu, Muzimkhulu
name: Yassi, Annalee
Publisher: name: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Year: 2020

description: Ways to address the increasing global health workforce shortage include improving the occupational health and safety of health workers, particularly those in high-risk, low-resource settings. The World Health Organization and International Labour Organization designed HealthWISE, a quality improvement tool to help health workers identify workplace hazards to find and apply low-cost solutions. However, its implementation had never been systematically evaluated. We, therefore, studied the implementation of HealthWISE in seven hospitals in three countries: Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Through a multiple-case study and thematic analysis of data collected primarily from focus group discussions and questionnaires, we examined the enabling factors and barriers to the implementation of HealthWISE by applying the integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARiHS) framework. Enabling factors included the willingness of workers to engage in the implementation, diverse teams that championed the process, and supportive senior leadership. Barriers included lack of clarity about how to use HealthWISE, insufficient funds, stretched human resources, older buildings, and lack of incident reporting infrastructure. Overall, successful implementation of HealthWISE required dedicated local team members who helped facilitate the process by adapting HealthWISE to the workers’ occupational health and safety (OHS) knowledge and skill levels and the cultures and needs of their hospitals, cutting across all constructs of the i-PARiHS framework.
Supplementary document for Denoising of pre-beamformed photoacoustic data using generative adversarial networks - 5366729.pdf
Creators: name: Refaee, Amir
name: Kelly, Corey
name: Moradi, Hamid
name: Salcudean, Tim
Publisher: name: Optica Publishing Group
Year: 2021
Subjects: Uncategorized

description: Supplement 1
Northern Youth Abroad: Exploring the Effects of a Cross-cultural Exchange Program from the Perspectives of Nunavut Inuit Youths
Creators: name: Aylward, Erin
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2012
Subjects: volunteer tourism
Nunavut
global citizenship
Inuit youths
cross-cultural awareness
career goals
third space

description: Nunavut Inuit youths exhibit cultural resilience and leadership. However, researchers frequently neglect such assets and instead emphasize these youths’ challenges or perceived inadequacies. I conducted an intrinsic case study regarding Nunavut Inuit youths’ experiences with an experiential learning program, Northern Youth Abroad (NYA), in order to investigate participants’ growth in cross-cultural awareness, individual career goals, leadership, and global citizenship. Drawing on post-colonial theory, semi-structured interviews, archival research, and participant observation, I argue that NYA’s Nunavut Inuit participants reported significant personal growth in these four objectives. I also provide an in-depth analysis of how NYA’s Nunavut Inuit participants described and developed distinct and rich leadership styles that draw on Inuit and Euro-Canadian influences.
History of open citations: what they are and why they are crucial for metrics-based research assessment
Creators: name: Peroni, Silvio
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: open citations
responsible research metrics
metrics-based research assessment
OpenCitations
I4OC

description: This presentation discusses the importance of using open citations in the research assessment exercises, so as to make the process transparent, replicable, and verifiable by anyone, including the researchers and institutions assessed.
description: Presented during the Basel Sustainable Publishing Forum Webinar 2 | New Approaches to Evaluate Researchers' Impact, held online on 11 September 2020.
Efficient antilock braking systems in regenerative brakes
Creators: name: Dadashnialehi, Amir
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: This thesis explores the feasibility of the development of efficient antilock braking systems (ABSs) for In-Wheel Electric Vehicles (EVs). The main idea is to design a sensorless ABS that eliminates the need to install separate conventional ABS sensors. The design significantly reduces the vehicle's manufacturing and maintenance cost and improves the performance of the ABS by accurate wheel speed estimation and road identification, using wavelet signal processing. An alternative proposal in this thesis is a Sensor-fusion-based ABS that improves accuracy, reliability and robustness of the ABS. The proposed systems were developed and extensively tested for brushed and brushless In-Wheel EVs.
Correlates of Facebook use Intensity - A Saudi Arabian Study
Creators: name: Alayaf, Abeer
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2015
Subjects: Facebook Intensity
Social media

description: This study measures Facebook use intensity in residents of Saudi Arabia, and distinguishes between Saudi citizens and non-Saudi residents. This is achieved through an analysis of the antecedents and the consequences of Facebook use intensity. The sample used consists of 135 Saudi and 66 non-Saudi participants, all of whom were Facebook users aged 18 or older. The “snowball” technique was used in this study. Data was collected through a face-to-face questionnaire, and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics. Results show that there were significant relationships between the antecedents and the consequences of Facebook use intensity. Non-Saudi residents are shown to use Facebook to keep in touch with their families and friends more than Saudi do, while Saudi citizens use Facebook to search for products more than non-Saudi. The two groups are also quite different in terms of their online shopping behavior, including the sources of information and recommendations they prefer when researching a product. This study shows that there is a relationship between participants’ Facebook usage, and their demographics, personality, motivations, and values. The major limitation of this study is that it was conducted in only one city: Riyadh. Therefore, additional research should be carried out in other cities with larger samples. This thesis makes a special contribution to the literature, as it is the first to consider both the antecedents and the consequences of Facebook use intensity in a single study. It is also the first study to analyze the relationship between the Six Dimensional Achievement Motivation Scale (Jackson, Ahmed, and Heapy, 1976), the Rokeach Value System (1973), and Facebook use intensity in the world in general, and Saudi Arabia in particular.
Lutte anti-moustiques par introduction des gambusies dans des systèmes d’épuration des eaux usées (M’Diq, Nord-ouest du Maroc)
Creators: name: Ezzahri, Jamila
name: Boukil, Ahmed
name: Ennabili, Abdeslam
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: 90409 Wastewater Treatment Processes
subject: FOS: Chemical engineering

description: Afin de lutter contre les nuisances provoquées par les moustiques en été, une introduction expérimentale de la gambusie dans des systèmes aquatiques et semi-aquatiques de traitement des eaux usées a été menée au Centre expérimental MHEA@de M'Diq. Ce travail présente quelques résultats de cette opération.
FactCheck: is having a mum and a dad the very best thing for a child?
Creators: name: Crouch, Simon
name: Dempsey, Deborah
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: An Australian Senator recently argued that that having both a mother and a father is best for a child's development, according to the evidence. However, is this actually the case? This article reviews the Senator's evidence and compares it to recent Australian research on same-sex parents and child outcomes.
Supplementary document for Easy-to-make-and-use gold nanotrench arrays for surface-enhanced Raman scattering - 5367773.pdf
Creators: name: Wi, Jung-Sub
name: Chung, Choong-Heui
name: Na, Hee-Kyung
name: Oh, Tae-Sik
Publisher: name: Optica Publishing Group
Year: 2025
Subjects: Uncategorized

description: Experimental details of microRNA measurements
Consequences of Multiple Paternity for Female Fitness in an Ontario Population of Northern Map Turtles, 'Graptemys geographica'
Creators: name: Banger, Nicola A.
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2012
Subjects: polyandry
multiple paternity
turtle
hatchling
genetic benefits

description: Although sexual stereotypes paint males as being promiscuous and females as being choosy in order to increase their reproductive success, multiple mating by females is widespread and females of many taxa often produce progeny sired by multiple males – but why? In species in which there are no direct benefits associated with mating, females may adopt promiscuous mating strategies to increase their fitness through the acquisition of genetic benefits. Here, I examine the genetic mating system of map turtles, Graptemys geographica in Lake Opinicon. Based on the most conservative estimate, at least 71% of clutches in this population are sired by multiple males. There did not appear to be any relationship between female body size and frequency of multiple paternity. There was a marginally significant effect of multiple paternity on hatching success and survival of clutches, but there was no effect on hatchling morphology or locomotor performance.
Explaining the variation in the attained power of a stepped-wedge trial with unequal cluster sizes
Creators: name: Ouyang, Yongdong
name: Karim, Mohammad Ehsanul
name: Gustafson, Paul, 1968-
name: Field, Thalia S.
name: Wong, Hubert
Publisher: name: BioMed Central
Year: 2020

description: Background: In a cross-sectional stepped-wedge trial with unequal cluster sizes, attained power in the trial depends on the realized allocation of the clusters. This attained power may differ from the expected power calculated using standard formulae by averaging the attained powers over all allocations the randomization algorithm can generate. We investigated the effect of design factors and allocation characteristics on attained power and developed models to predict attained power based on allocation characteristics. Method: Based on data simulated and analyzed using linear mixed-effects models, we evaluated the distribution of attained powers under different scenarios with varying intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of the responses, coefficient of variation (CV) of the cluster sizes, number of cluster-size groups, distributions of group sizes, and number of clusters. We explored the relationship between attained power and two allocation characteristics: the individual-level correlation between treatment status and time period, and the absolute treatment group imbalance. When computational time was excessive due to a scenario having a large number of possible allocations, we developed regression models to predict attained power using the treatment-vs-time period correlation and absolute treatment group imbalance as predictors. Results: The risk of attained power falling more than 5% below the expected or nominal power decreased as the ICC or number of clusters increased and as the CV decreased. Attained power was strongly affected by the treatment-vs-time period correlation. The absolute treatment group imbalance had much less impact on attained power. The attained power for any allocation was predicted accurately using a logistic regression model with the treatment-vs-time period correlation and the absolute treatment group imbalance as predictors. Conclusion: In a stepped-wedge trial with unequal cluster sizes, the risk that randomization yields an allocation with inadequate attained power depends on the ICC, the CV of the cluster sizes, and number of clusters. To reduce the computational burden of simulating attained power for allocations, the attained power can be predicted via regression modeling. Trial designers can reduce the risk of low attained power by restricting the randomization algorithm to avoid allocations with large treatment-vs-time period correlations.
Marketing Strategy in Social Enterprises: An Exploratory Study
Creators: name: Mitchell, Alexander I
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2011
Subjects: marketing
marketing strategy
social enterprise
grounded theory

description: Due to increasing emergence of social needs and problems throughout the world, accompanied by reduced government ability to provide the funding necessary to effectively combat these problems, it is expected that social enterprises will grow in number and importance. Because of this growing importance and the lack of research concerning marketing practices in such organizations, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of both marketing in social enterprises and the context in social enterprises that has the potential to affect the marketing strategies employed in such organizations. Based upon this enhanced understanding, I develop and propose a model of marketing strategy in social enterprises. To develop this enhanced understanding and model, I conducted empirical qualitative research consisting of a comparative study of fifteen cases of social enterprises. Results show that four major dualities represent the critical context of social enterprises that influence the marketing strategies employed. Marketing is viewed as important by these enterprises and the strategies employed are quite well developed in the areas of market research, product quality, branding, and promotion.
Hemiscorpius lepturus Peters 1861
Creators: name: Navidpour, Shahrokh
name: Kovařík, František
name: Soleglad, Michael E.
name: Fet, Victor
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2008
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Arachnida
Scorpiones
Hemiscorpiidae
Hemiscorpius
Hemiscorpius lepturus

description: Hemiscorpius lepturus Peters, 1861
Figures 3, 6–7, 9, 14, 56–59
 Hemiscorpius lepturus Peters, 1861a: 426; Karsch, 1879: 15, 21; Birula, 1905 a: 146; Birula, 1917: 215; Birula, 1918: 42; Weidner, 1959: 100; Pringle, 1960: 84; Khalaf, 1962: 2; Khalaf, 1963: 68; Vachon, 1966: 214; Habibi, 1971: 44; Farzanpay & Pretzmann, 1974: 217; Pérez Minocci, 1974: 36; Vachon, 1977: 213; Vachon, 1979: 59; Farzanpay, 1987: 141, 168; Farzanpay, 1988: 42; Simard & Watt, 1990: 441; Sissom, 1990: 75; El-Hennawy, 1992: 135; Kovařík, 1997a: 48; Kovařík, 1998: 136; Fet, 2000: 429; Prendini, 2000: 44; Capes & Fet, 2001: 303; Monod & Lourenço, 2005: 902; Akbari, 2007: 76; Navidpour et al., 2008a: 26; Navidpour et al., 2008b: 20; Navidpour et al., 2008c: 15.
 Hemiscorpion lepturus: Peters, 1861b: 511; Ausserer, 1880: 466; Kraepelin, 1899: 142; Werner, 1934: 276; Moritz & Fischer, 1980: 317; Kovařík, 2002: 14.
 Hemiscorpio lepturus: Simon, 1880b: 29.
TYPE LOCALITY AND TYPE REPOSITORY. Iraq, “Mendeli bei Baghdad ” (Mendeli near Baghdad); ZMHB.
TYPE MATERIAL EXAMINED. Iraq, Mendeli bei Baghdad, 2♂ 2♀ (syntypes), leg. Petermann, ZMHB 43 a–d.
 KOHGILOUYEH & BOYER AHMAD PROVINCE MATERIAL EXAMINED. Iran, Kohgilouyeh & Boyer Ahmad Province, Zagros Mts., Kuh-e-Dinar ridge, 10 km NE of Yasuj, by road (Baba Hasan Village env.), 1800-2500 m a.s.l., 1.-2.V.1996, 1♀ 1juv. FKCP, leg. J. Pitulová; Yasuj, Deelaroo Village, 30º33'44"N 50º44'44"E, 820 m a.s.l. (Locality No. Y-2), ΙII.2008, 1♂ 3♀ FKCP, leg. Navidpour, Ghafarnia & Bahrani; Dena, Yasuj to Sisakht road, 30º48'15"N 51º28'54"E, 2000 m a.s.l. (Locality No. Y-3), ΙII.2008, 2♀ 1juv. RRLS, 1♀ FKCP, leg. Ghafarnia, Habibzadeh & Bahrani; Yasuj to Mourgah road, Jahanno Village, 30°29'20"N 51°31'38"E, 2153 m a.s.l. (Locality No. Y-4), IIΙ.2008, 2♂ 5♀ RRLS, leg. Navidpour, Ghafarnia & Bahrani; Basht to Dehdasht road, Shah Baharan Village, 30º36'51"N 50º50'46"E, 886 m a.s.l. (Locality No. Y-7) X.2007, 1♀ RRLS, leg. Gafarnia, Hayder & Habibzadeh; Cheram, 30º44'23"N 50º44' 35"E, 747 m a.s.l. (Locality No. Y-8), IIΙ.2008, 1♂ 1♀ im. RRLS, leg. Ghafarnia, Bahrani & Habibzadeh; Dehdasht to Behbahan road, Filegah Village, 30º31' 21"N 50º24'51"E, 770 m a.s.l. (Locality No. Y-9), ΠΙ. 2008, 1♀ RRLS, leg. Ghafarnia, Hayader & Bahrani.
DISTRIBUTION: Iran: known from provinces Fars, Hormozgan, Kohgilouyeh & Boyer Ahmad, and Lorestan (Kovařík, 1997a: 48), Bushehr, Ilam, and Khoozestan (Farzanpay, 1987: 141, Monod & Lourenço, 2005: 902; Akbari, 2007: 76); Iraq (Peters, 1861a: 426).
description: Published as part of Navidpour, Shahrokh, Kovařík, František, Soleglad, Michael E. & Fet, Victor, 2008, Scorpions of Iran (Arachnida, Scorpiones). Part IV. Kohgilouyeh & amp; Boyer Ahmad Province, pp. 1-24 in Euscorpius 2008 (74) on page 14, DOI: 10.18590/euscorpius.2008.vol2008.iss74.1, http://zenodo.org/record/13237101
Your questions answered on donor conception and IVF
Creators: name: Adams, Damian
name: Dempsey, Deborah
name: Kelly, Fiona
name: Houlahan, Loretta
name: Cook, Roger
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: Thanks to IVF and donor conception, infertile couples, single women and lesbian couples now have a better chance of starting families. But while you might know someone who has gone through the process, it's rarely openly discussed. Last month, you submitted your questions about donor conception and IVF and we put them - and some of our own - to The Conversation's experts in law, embryology, sociology, psychology and donor conception.
Cardiac Tissue Engineering
Creators: name: Dawson, Jennifer Elizabeth
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2011
Subjects: Embryonic Stem Cells
Cardiomyocytes
Collagen Scaffolds

description: The limited treatment options available for heart disease patients has lead to increased interest in the development of embryonic stem cell (ESC) therapies to replace heart muscle. The challenges of developing usable ESC therapeutic strategies are associated with the limited ability to obtain a pure, defined population of differentiated cardiomyocytes, and the design of in vivo cell delivery platforms to minimize cardiomyocyte loss. These challenges were addressed in Chapter 2 by designing a cardiomyocyte selectable progenitor cell line that permitted evaluation of a collagen-based scaffold for its ability to sustain stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte function (“A P19 Cardiac Cell Line as a Model for Evaluating Cardiac Tissue Engineering Biomaterials”). P19 cells enriched for cardiomyocytes were viable on a transglutaminase cross-linked collagen scaffold, and maintained their cardiomyocyte contractile phenotype in vitro while growing on the scaffold. The potential for a novel cell-surface marker to purify cardiomyocytes within ESC cultures was evaluated in Chapter 3, “Dihydropyridine Receptor (DHP-R) Surface Marker Enrichment of ES-derived Cardiomyocytes”. DHP-R is demonstrated to be upregulated at the protein and RNA transcript level during cardiomyogenesis. DHP-R positive mouse ES cells were fluorescent activated cell sorted, and the DHP-R positive cultured cells were enriched for cardiomyocytes compared to the DHP-R negative population. Finally, in Chapter 4, mouse ESCs were characterized while growing on a clinically approved collagen I/III-based scaffold modified with the RGD integrin-binding motif, (“Collagen (+RGD and –RGD) scaffolds support cardiomyogenesis after aggregation of mouse embryonic stem cells”). The collagen I/III RGD+ and RGD- scaffolds sustained ESC-derived cardiomyocyte growth and function. Notably, no significant differences in cell survival, cardiac phenotype, and cardiomyocyte function were detected with the addition of the RGD domain to the collagen scaffold. Thus, in summary, these three studies have resulted in the identification of a potential cell surface marker for ESC-derived cardiomyocyte purification, and prove that collagen-based scaffolds can sustain ES-cardiomyocyte growth and function. This has set the framework for further studies that will move the field closer to obtaining a safe and effective delivery strategy for transplanting ESCs onto human hearts.
Supplementary document for Easy-to-make-and-use gold nanotrench arrays for surface-enhanced Raman scattering - 5367773.pdf
Creators: name: Wi, Jung-Sub
name: Chung, Choong-Heui
name: Na, Hee-Kyung
name: Oh, Tae-Sik
Publisher: name: Optica Publishing Group
Year: 2021
Subjects: Uncategorized

description: Experimental details of microRNA measurements
3D Segmentation of Cam-Type Pathological Femurs with Morphological Snakes
Creators: name: Telles O'Neill, Gabriel
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2011
Subjects: Segmentation
Femur
FAI
Femoral Acetabular Impingment
CT
Cam
Morphological Snakes

description: We introduce a new way to accurately segment the 3D femur from pelvic CT scans. The femur is a difficult target for segmentation due to its proximity to the acetabulum, irregular shape and the varying thickness of its hardened outer shell. Atypical bone morphologies, such as the ones present in hips suffering from Femoral Acetabular Impingements (FAIs) can also provide additional challenges to segmentation. We overcome these difficulties by (a) dividing the femur into the femur head and body regions (b) analysis of the femur-head and neighbouring acetabulum’s composition (c) segmentations with two levels of detail – rough and fine contours. Segmentations of the CT volume are performed iteratively, on a slice-by-slice basis and contours are extracted using the morphological snake algorithm. Our methodology was designed to require little initialization from the user and to deftly handle the large variation in femur shapes, most notably from deformations attributed to cam-type FAIs. Our efforts are to provide physicians with a new tool that creates patient-specific and high-quality 3D femur models while requiring much less time and effort. We tested our methodology on a database of 20 CT volumes acquired at the Ottawa General Hospital during a study into FAIs. We selected 6 CT scans from the database, for a total of 12 femurs, considering wide inter-patient variations. Of the 6 patients, 4 had unilateral cam-type FAIs, 1 had a bilateral cam-type FAI and the last was from a control group. The femurs segmented with our method achieved an average volume overlap error of 2.71 ± 0.44% and an average symmetric surface distance of 0.28 ± 0.04 mm compared against the same, manually segmented femurs. These results are better than all comparable literature and accurate enough to be used to in the creation of patient-specific 3D models.
Supplementary document for Deep ultraviolet photodetector based on pulsed laser deposited Cs3Cu2I5 films/n-Si heterojunction - 5368762.pdf
Creators: name: Xiaoxuan, Li
name: Zhang, Lichun
name: Xiaoyu, Zhou
name: Wang, Cheng
name: Zhiying, Zhou
name: Shunli, He
name: Dan, Tian
name: Zhichao, Ren
name: Yang, Chuanlu
name: Zhao, fengzhou
Publisher: name: Optica Publishing Group
Year: 2025
Subjects: Uncategorized

description: Supplemental Document
Effect of Stacking Sequence and Fiber Orientation on the Stress-Strain Behavior of CFRP Confined Concrete Cylinders
Creators: name: Sulaiman, Ahmed
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2016
Subjects: CFRP
Confinement
Columns
Fiber Orientation
Number of Layers

description: A limited number of studies have been conducted in the literature to examine the effect of stacking sequence and fiber orientation on the compressive behavior of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) confined concrete. This thesis presents the results of an experimental investigation examining the effect of parameters such as fiber orientation, amount of confinement, and specimen size on the behavior of FRP-confined concrete. As part of the experimental study, a large set of concrete cylinders having two different sizes (100 mm x 200 mm and 150 mm x 300 mm) were jacketed with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets having various orientations and tested under pure axial compressive loading. The specimens were confined using various CFRP stacking sequences, with fibers oriented at 0⁰, 90⁰, and ±45⁰ (both unidirectional and woven). Furthermore, within each stacking sequence, the numbers of layers was varied between 4, 6, and 8 to examine the impact of number of plies on the behavior of the FRP-confined concrete cylinders. In addition, the research program included a large number of CFRP coupons made from CFRP laminates having the same properties as the CFRP jackets used in the strengthening of the cylinder series. The analytical program assesses the accuracy and suitability of using various FRP confinement models in the literature to predict the stress-strain response of the confined cylinders tested in the experimental program. The results indicate that parameters such as fiber orientation, stacking sequence, number of confinement layers and specimen size have a direct impact on the strength, ductility and stress-strain behavior of CFRP confined concrete. However, the level of influence varies from one parameter to the other, with the results demonstrating that fiber orientation has a more noticeable effect when compared to the other parameters. The results of the analytical program demonstrate the need to develop reliable confinement models which can take into account the effects of fiber orientation.
Anaerobic Co-digestion of Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste with Municipal Sludge with or without Microwave Pre-treatment
Creators: name: Ara, Efath
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2012
Subjects: Co-digestion
OFMSW
Pre-treatment

description: Anaerobic co-digestion of organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW), with thickened waste activated sludge (TWAS) and primary sludge (PS) has the potential to enhance (biodegradation) of solid waste, increase longevity of existing landfills and lead to more sustainable development by improving waste to energy production. This study reports on mesophilic batch anaerobic biological methane potential (BMP) assays carried out with different concentrations and combinations (ratios) of OFMSW, TWAS (microwave (MW) pre-treated and untreated) and PS to assess digester stability and potential improved specific biodegradability and potential increased specific biogas production by digestion of OFMSW with PS and TWAS in various tri-substrate mixtures. Results indicated improvements in specific biogas production with concomitant improvements in COD and volatile solid (VS) removal for co-digestion of OMSW, TWAS and PS vs. controls. In terms of improvements in biogas production and digester stability the OFMSW:TWAS:PS:50:25:25 ratio with or without TWAS MW treatment was deemed best for further continuous digester studies. At a 15d HRT which is the regulatory policy in the province of Ontario for municipal mesophilic anaerobic TWAS:PS treatment, co-digestion of OFMSW:TWAS:PS, and OFMSW:TWASMW:PS resulted in a 1.38 and 1.46 fold relative improvement in biogas production and concomitant waste stabilization when compared to TWAS:PS and TWASMW:PS digestion at the same HRT and volumetric VS loading rate respectively. Treatment of OFMSW with PS and TWAS provides beneficial effects that could be exploited at MWWTP that are being operated at loading rates less than design capacity.
Volatility Modelling Using Long-Memory- GARCH Models, Applications of S&P/TSX Composite Index
Creators: name: Rahmani, Mohammadsaeid
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2016
Subjects: Volatility Modelling
Long-memory
GARCH Models
Financial Time-series

description: The statements that include sufficient detail to identify the probability distributions of future prices are asset price dynamics. In this research, using the empirical methods that could explain the historical prices and discuss about how prices change we investigate various important characteristics of the dynamics of asset pricing. The volatility changes can explain very important facts about the asset returns. Volatility could gauge the variability of prices over time. In order to do the volatility modelling we use the conditional heteroskedasticitc models. One of the most powerful tools to do so is using the idea of autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic process or ARCH models, which fill the gap in both academic and practical literature. In this work we detect the asymmetric volatility effect and investigate long memory properties in volatility in Canadian stock market index, using daily data from 1979 through 2015. On one hand, we show that there is an asymmetry in the equity market index. This is an important indication of how information impacts the market. On the other hand, we investigate for the long-range dependency in volatility and discuss how the shocks are persistence. By using the long memory-GARCH models, we not only take care of both short and long memory, but also we compute the d parameter that stands for the fractional decay of the series. By considering the breaks in our dataset, we compare our findings on different conditions to find the most suitable fit. We present the best fit for GARCH, EGARCH, APARCH, GJR-GARCH, FIGARCH, FIAPARCH, and FIEGARCH models.
Path Properties of Rare Events
Creators: name: Collingwood, Jesse
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2015
Subjects: Rare Events
Point Processes
Markov Chains
Substochastic
Yaglom limit
Convergence

description: Simulation of rare events can be costly with respect to time and computational resources. For certain processes it may be more efficient to begin at the rare event and simulate a kind of reversal of the process. This approach is particularly well suited to reversible Markov processes, but holds much more generally. This more general result is formulated precisely in the language of stationary point processes, proven, and applied to some examples. An interesting question is whether this technique can be applied to Markov processes which are substochastic, i.e. processes which may die if a graveyard state is ever reached. First, some of the theory of substochastic processes is developed; in particular a slightly surprising result about the rate of convergence of the distribution pi(n) at time n of the process conditioned to stay alive to the quasi-stationary distribution, or Yaglom limit, is proved. This result is then verified with some illustrative examples. Next, it is demonstrated with an explicit example that on infinite state spaces the reversal approach to analyzing both the rate of convergence to the Yaglom limit and the likely path of rare events can fail due to transience.
The Structural and Functional Identity of the Protein Kinase Superfamily
Creators: name: Knight, James D R
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2011
Subjects: kinase
cell behaviour
catalytic domain
protein structural alignment
molecular biology
substrate binding

description: The human protein kinase superfamily consists of over 500 members that individually control specific aspects of cell behavior and collectively control the complete range of cellular processes. That such a large group of proteins is able to uniquely diversify and establish individual identities while retaining common enzymatic function and significant sequence/structural conservation is remarkable. The means by which this is achieved is poorly understood, and we have begun to examine the issue by performing a comparative analysis of the catalytic domain of protein kinases. A novel approach for protein structural alignment has revealed a high degree of similarity found across the kinase superfamily, with variability confined largely to a single region thought to be involved in substrate binding. The similarity detected is not limited to amino acids, but includes a group of conserved water molecules that play important structural roles in stabilizing critical residues and the fold of the kinase domain. The development of a novel technique for identifying kinase substrates on a large scale directly from cell lysate has revealed that substrate specificity is not what discriminates the closely related p38α and β mitogen-activated protein kinases. Instead cellular localization appears to be their distinguishing characteristic, at least during myoblast differentiation. Together these results highlight the extent of conservation, as well as the minimal variability, that is found in the catalytic domain of all protein kinase superfamily members, and that while distantly related kinases may be distinguished by substrate specificity, closely related kinases are likely to be distinguished by other factors. Although these results focus on representative members of the kinase superfamily, they give insight as to how all protein kinases likely diversified and established unique non-redundant identities. In addition, the novel techniques developed and presented here for structural alignment and substrate discovery offer new tools for studying molecular biology and cell signaling.
Telomerase Biogenesis and Activities from the Perspective of Its Direct Interacting Partners
Creators: name: Nguyen, Kathryn T. T. T.
name: Wong, Judy M. Y.
Publisher: name: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Year: 2020

description: Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT)—the catalytic subunit of telomerase—is reactivated in up to 90% of all human cancers. TERT is observed in heterogenous populations of protein complexes, which are dynamically regulated in a cell type- and cell cycle-specific manner. Over the past two decades, in vitro protein–protein interaction detection methods have discovered a number of endogenous TERT binding partners in human cells that are responsible for the biogenesis and functionalization of the telomerase holoenzyme, including the processes of TERT trafficking between subcellular compartments, assembly into telomerase, and catalytic action at telomeres. Additionally, TERT have been found to interact with protein species with no known telomeric functions, suggesting that these complexes may contribute to non-canonical activities of TERT. Here, we survey TERT direct binding partners and discuss their contributions to TERT biogenesis and functions. The goal is to review the comprehensive spectrum of TERT pro-malignant activities, both telomeric and non-telomeric, which may explain the prevalence of its upregulation in cancer.
Learning self-supervised representations of audiovisual human-centric data
Creators: name: Shukla, Abhinav
Publisher: name: Imperial College London
Year: 2023

description: Deep learning models have driven significant progress in audio and audiovisual machine learning but rely on extensive supervision from large labeled datasets. While labels are often intractable to obtain, unlabeled data is significantly more pervasive and ever growing. Self-supervised learning leverages the implicit structure of unlabeled data to learn better representations that generalize better to smaller labeled datasets of interest. This is relevant in domains like emotion and speech recognition with limited labeled data, where training from scratch is infeasible and exhaustive supervision is unavailable. In this thesis, we study the effectiveness of audiovisual self-supervised learning for learning better unimodal audio representations. The core idea is to leverage the natural synchrony and cross-modal correspondence between audio and video as a source of cross-modal self-supervision. Audio-only self-supervised learning works well, but complementary addition of visual self-supervision produces better representations. We study speech-driven facial reconstruction as a pretext task for audio representation learning in speech and find that the correlation between lip movements in video and speech content in audio; and that between facial expressions in video and speech emotion in audio provides a very rich supervisory signal. We propose new methods for audiovisual self-supervised learning for more general audiovisual content that are based on combining pretext tasks like clustering, invariance-based contrastive learning, and audiovisual sound source localization. We demonstrate strong results on a number of audio recognition tasks in both audiovisual speech data and general audiovisual content. Compared to existing methods, our proposed representations achieve better performance with smaller amounts of pretraining data while getting even better with additional data; are more robust in noisy conditions; and perform better on downstream tasks with limited labeled data. The work provides compelling evidence for the utility of self-supervision in general, and visually guided self-supervision in particular, for learning better representations of audio.
Analysis and Visualization of the Two-Dimensional Blood Flow Velocity Field from Videos
Creators: name: Jun, Yang
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2015
Subjects: Blood Flow
Velocity Field
PCA
DFT
Feature Extraction
KNN
Multiple Kernel Learning Classification
Denoising
Synthetic Video

description: We estimate the velocity field of the blood flow in a human face from videos. Our approach first performs spatial preprocessing to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the computational efficiency. The discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and a temporal band-pass filter are then applied to extract the frequency corresponding to the subjects heart rate. We propose multiple kernel based k-NN classification for removing the noise positions from the resulting phase and amplitude maps. The 2D blood flow field is then estimated from the relative phase shift between the pixels. We evaluate our approach about segmentation as well as velocity field on real and synthetic face videos. Our method produces the recall and precision as well as a velocity field with an angular error and magnitude error on the average.
Hardware Architecture of an XML/XPath Broker/Router for Content-Based Publish/Subscribe Data Dissemination Systems
Creators: name: El-Hassan, Fadi
Publisher: name: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa
Year: 2014
Subjects: Publish/Subscribe
Reconfigurable Hardware
Content-Based Networks
Content-based Routing
FPGA
Broker
XML
XPath
Data Dissemination
XML Parsing
Embedded Systems
Future Internet
Router
Hardware Accelerator

description: The dissemination of various types of data faces ongoing challenges with the growing need of accessing manifold information. Since the interest in content is what drives data networks, some new technologies and thoughts attempt to cope with these challenges by developing content-based rather than address-based architectures. The Publish/ Subscribe paradigm can be a promising approach toward content-based data dissemination, especially that it provides total decoupling between publishers and subscribers. However, in content-based publish/subscribe systems, subscriptions are expressive and the information is often delivered based on the matched expressive content - which may not deeply alleviate considerable performance challenges. This dissertation explores a hardware solution for disseminating data in content-based publish/subscribe systems. This solution consists of an efficient hardware architecture of an XML/XPath broker that can route information based on content to either other XML/XPath brokers or to ultimate users. A network of such brokers represent an overlay structure for XML content-based publish/subscribe data dissemination systems. Each broker can simultaneously process many XPath subscriptions, efficiently parse XML publications, and subsequently forward notifications that result from high-performance matching processes. In the core of the broker architecture, locates an XML parser that utilizes a novel Skeleton CAM-Based XML Parsing (SCBXP) technique in addition to an XPath processor and a high-performance matching engine. Moreover, the broker employs effective mechanisms for content-based routing, so as subscriptions, publications, and notifications are routed through the network based on content. The inherent reconfigurability feature of the broker’s hardware provides the system architecture with the capability of residing in any FPGA device of moderate logic density. Furthermore, such a system-on-chip architecture is upgradable, if any future hardware add-ons are needed. However, the current architecture is mature and can effectively be implemented on an ASIC device. Finally, this thesis presents and analyzes the experiments conducted on an FPGA prototype implementation of the proposed broker/router. The experiments tackle tests for the SCBXP alone and for two phases of development of the whole broker. The corresponding results indicate the high performance that the involved parsing, storing, matching, and routing processes can achieve.