Faculty of Graduate Studies

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Open Access
3 Seconds Divorce: An Interactive Documentary
(2016-11-25) Javed, Shazia; Longfellow, Brenda
3 Seconds Divorce is an Interactive Documentary (I-doc) that explores the effect of the prevailing practice of Triple Talaq, or Oral Divorce, on the lives of Indian Muslim women. This I-doc also highlights the grassroots movement that has been campaigning to ban this method of divorce, while examining the opposition faced by women activists from institutionalized patriarchy within the community. In creating a digital space for the local Muslim feminists and victims of this law to share and amplify their voices, 3 Seconds Divorce seeks to construct a model of the Interactive Documentary as a tool of empowerment for those subaltern feminist voices that may otherwise go un(der)-represented in mainstream feminist discourse.
Open Access
3D Classification of Power Line Scene Using Airborne Lidar Data
(2015-08-28) Kim, Heungsik; Sohn, Gunho
Failure to adequately maintain vegetation within a power line corridor has been identified as a main cause of the August 14, 2003 electric power blackout. Such that, timely and accurate corridor mapping and monitoring are indispensible to mitigate such disaster. Moreover, airborne LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) has been recently introduced and widely utilized in industries and academies thanks to its potential to automate the data processing for scene analysis including power line corridor mapping. However, today’s corridor mapping practice using LiDAR in industries still remains an expensive manual process that is not suitable for the large-scale, rapid commercial compilation of corridor maps. Additionally, in academies only few studies have developed algorithms capable of recognizing corridor objects in the power line scene, which are mostly based on 2-dimensional classification. Thus, the objective of this dissertation is to develop a 3-dimensional classification system which is able to automatically identify key objects in the power line corridor from large-scale LiDAR data. This dissertation introduces new features for power structures, especially for the electric pylon, and existing features which are derived through diverse piecewise (i.e., point, line and plane) feature extraction, and then constructs a classification model pool by building individual models according to the piecewise feature sets and diverse voltage training samples using Random Forests. Finally, this dissertation proposes a Multiple Classifier System (MCS) which provides an optimal committee of models from the model pool for classification of new incoming power line scene. The proposed MCS has been tested on a power line corridor where medium voltage transmission lines (115 kV and 230 kV) pass. The classification results based on the MCS applied by optimally selecting the pre-built classification models according to the voltage type of the test corridor demonstrate a good accuracy (89.07%) and computationally effective time cost (approximately 4 hours/km) without additional training fees.
Open Access
3D Modelling for Improved Visual Traffic Analytics
(2018-08-27) Soto, Eduardo R Corral; Elder, James H.
Advanced Traffic Management Systems utilize diverse types of sensor networks with the goal of improving mobility and safety of transportation systems. These systems require information about the state of the traffic configuration, including volume, vehicle speed, density, and incidents, which are useful in applications such as urban planning, collision avoidance systems, and emergency vehicle notification systems, to name a few. Sensing technologies are an important part of Advanced Traffic Management Systems that enable the estimation of the traffic state. Inductive Loop Detectors are often used to sense vehicles on highway roads. Although this technology has proven to be effective, it has limitations. Their installation and replacement cost is high and causes traffic disruptions, and their sensing modality provides very limited information about the vehicles being sensed. No vehicle appearance information is available. Traffic camera networks are also used in advanced traffic monitoring centers where the cameras are controlled by a remote operator. The amount of visual information provided by such cameras can be overwhelmingly large, which may cause the operators to miss important traffic events happening in the field. This dissertation focuses on visual traffic surveillance for Advanced Traffic Management Systems. The focus is on the research and development of computer vision algorithms that contribute to the automation of highway traffic analytics systems that require estimates of traffic volume and density. This dissertation makes three contributions: The first contribution is an integrated vision surveillance system called 3DTown, where cameras installed at a university campus together with algorithms are used to produce vehicle and pedestrian detections to augment a 3D model of the university with dynamic information from the scene. A second major contribution is a technique for extracting road lines from highway images that are used to estimate the tilt angle and the focal length of the camera. This technique is useful when the operator changes the camera pose. The third major contribution is a method to automatically extract the active road lanes and model the vehicles in 3D to improve the vehicle count estimation by individuating 2D segments of imaged vehicles that have been merged due to occlusions.
Open Access
3D Printed Smart Materials of Continuous Wire Polymer Composites for Sensing Applications
(2023-03-28) Elsayed, Mennatullah Mohamed Adel Saleh; Melenka, Garrett; Kempers, Roger
Smart material with sensing capability is an exciting new technology that will impact many applications, including structural health monitoring, biomedical implants, wearable sensors, and actuators. Internal damage in polymer composites is usually hard to predict, and they need to be continuously monitored for any sign of internal damage for safety issues and to increase the life cycle. In this study, continuous wire polymer composites (CWPCs) were 3D-printed using the fused filament fabrication (FFF) technique to produce functional smart materials with different sensing capabilities like strain and thermal sensing. Here, the integrated wire within the conductive polymer composite structure acts as a sensing element. For strain sensing characterization, different design parameters such as matrix type, wire type, and loading condition were investigated to study the effect of these parameters on the efficacy of the CWPC sensor. The different matrices used have different mechanical properties representing rigid (polylactic acid) and flexible (thermoplastic polyurethane) structures to widen the range of applications of CWPCs as strain sensors. The change of the electrical resistance of the integrated wire within the CWPCs was measured under tensile loading and plotted against the applied strain. The results of this electromechanical testing demonstrate the ability of CWPCs to be used as strain sensor for either rigid or flexible structures. To check the reliability and reversibility of CWPCs structure as strain sensor, the electromechanical behaviour was investigated under fatigue/cyclic loading. The results of this work demonstrate the reverse piezoresistance behaviour of the CWPC sensor. From thermal sensing standpoint, different design parameters like wire type, matrix type, and sensor thickness were studied to investigate the application of CWPCs as temperature and heat flux sensors which can be readily designed and adapted to suit unique and bespoke thermal applications. The change of the electrical resistance of the integrated wires was correlated to the applied temperature to measure the heat conducted through a surface. A prototype of a real-world application was designed for the heat flux measurements using CWPC sensor. Generally, this study demonstrates the applicability of FFF technique to print sensors with continuous integrated wire with tuneable properties for different sensing applications.
Open Access
3D Printing of Continuous Wire Polymer Composite for Mechanical and Thermal Applications
(2019-07-02) Ibrahim, Yehia Elsayed Mahmoud; Kempers, Roger
Recently, continuous fiber reinforcement has been combined with 3D printing techniques such as fused filament fabrication to create stronger and stiffer printed composite components. The continuous nature of the reinforcing material can improve both mechanical and thermal properties of the polymeric material significantly. However, several parameters can affect the printed composite properties such as filler volume fraction, type of polymer matrix and filler treatment. The work presented in this study addresses the effect of reinforcing polymers with continuous metal wire on the composites properties and the potential applications for these composites. In the first part of this study we presented a novel 3D printing technique in which metal wires were combined with polymer matrixes in order to improve both mechanical and thermal properties of the printed components. In the second part, we investigated the tensile and bending properties of the continuous wire polymer composites which was superior compared to the base polymer. In addition, we studied the effect of introducing continuous wires to the polymer matrix on the effective thermal conductivity which was found to increase significantly. In addition, we investigated the use of the fabricated composites as a novel fabrication technique for low-temperature heating elements and explored this technology for de-icing and anti-icing applications.
Open Access
3D Reconstruction of Building Rooftop and Power Line Models in Right-of-Ways Using Airborne LiDAR Data
(2016-11-25) Jwa, Yoonseok; Sohn, Gunho
The research objectives aimed to achieve thorough the thesis are to develop methods for reconstructing models of building and PL objects of interest in the power line (PL) corridor area from airborne LiDAR data. For this, it is mainly concerned with the model selection problem for which model is more optimal in representing the given data set. This means that the parametric relations and geometry of object shapes are unknowns and optimally determined by the verification of hypothetical models. Therefore, the proposed method achieves high adaptability to the complex geometric forms of building and PL objects. For the building modeling, the method of implicit geometric regularization is proposed to rectify noisy building outline vectors which are due to noisy data. A cost function for the regularization process is designed based on Minimum Description Length (MDL) theory, which favours smaller deviation between a model and observation as well as orthogonal and parallel properties between polylines. Next, a new approach, called Piecewise Model Growing (PMG), is proposed for 3D PL model reconstruction using a catenary curve model. It piece-wisely grows to capture all PL points of interest and thus produces a full PL 3D model. However, the proposed method is limited to the PL scene complexity, which causes PL modeling errors such as partial, under- and over-modeling errors. To correct the incompletion of PL models, the inner and across span analysis are carried out, which leads to replace erroneous PL segments by precise PL models. The inner span analysis is performed based on the MDL theory to correct under- and over-modeling errors. The across span analysis is subsequently carried out to correct partial-modeling errors by finding start and end positions of PLs which denotes Point Of Attachment (POA). As a result, this thesis addresses not only geometrically describing building and PL objects but also dealing with noisy data which causes the incompletion of models. In the practical aspects, the results of building and PL modeling should be essential to effectively analyze a PL scene and quickly alleviate the potentially hazardous scenarios jeopardizing the PL system.
Open Access
3D Reconstruction of Indoor Corridor Models Using Single Imagery and Video Sequences
(2020-05-11) Jahromi, Ali Baligh; Sohn, Gunho
In recent years, 3D indoor modeling has gained more attention due to its role in decision-making process of maintaining the status and managing the security of building indoor spaces. In this thesis, the problem of continuous indoor corridor space modeling has been tackled through two approaches. The first approach develops a modeling method based on middle-level perceptual organization. The second approach develops a visual Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) system with model-based loop closure. In the first approach, the image space was searched for a corridor layout that can be converted into a geometrically accurate 3D model. Manhattan rule assumption was adopted, and indoor corridor layout hypotheses were generated through a random rule-based intersection of image physical line segments and virtual rays of orthogonal vanishing points. Volumetric reasoning, correspondences to physical edges, orientation map and geometric context of an image are all considered for scoring layout hypotheses. This approach provides physically plausible solutions while facing objects or occlusions in a corridor scene. In the second approach, Layout SLAM is introduced. Layout SLAM performs camera localization while maps layout corners and normal point features in 3D space. Here, a new feature matching cost function was proposed considering both local and global context information. In addition, a rotation compensation variable makes Layout SLAM robust against cameras orientation errors accumulations. Moreover, layout model matching of keyframes insures accurate loop closures that prevent miss-association of newly visited landmarks to previously visited scene parts. The comparison of generated single image-based 3D models to ground truth models showed that average ratio differences in widths, heights and lengths were 1.8%, 3.7% and 19.2% respectively. Moreover, Layout SLAM performed with the maximum absolute trajectory error of 2.4m in position and 8.2 degree in orientation for approximately 318m path on RAWSEEDS data set. Loop closing was strongly performed for Layout SLAM and provided 3D indoor corridor layouts with less than 1.05m displacement errors in length and less than 20cm in width and height for approximately 315m path on York University data set. The proposed methods can successfully generate 3D indoor corridor models compared to their major counterpart.
Open Access
A [Re]membered Place: Missed Opportunities of the "Educational" for Incarcerated Youth and the Ongoing Effects of York Detention Centre's Closure
(2016-11-25) Davey, Natalie Joy; DiPaolantonio, Mario G.
This dissertation investigates the question of what is educational in the education of incarcerated youth? Biesta (2012) writes that one goal of education is or should be subjectification, pointing to educations orientation towardsstudents as subjects of action and responsibility (2012). If educations aim, then, is for students to become subjects in their own right, what happens when objectification dictates how incarcerated youth are taught? Can that objectification be disrupted from the inside out? Prefaced by a philosophical consideration of concatenated concepts such as the wasted lives (Bauman, 2003) of the incarcerated and the sporadic identity of the teacher (Biesta, 2013) in such spaces, my research focuses on the continued impact of the educational site that was York Detention Centre in Toronto. YDC was formerly the central booking facility for young offenders in Ontario, closed in 2009, and this dissertation is a metaphorical return to what I suggest was an unlikely and, therefore, missed educational site for incarcerated youth to become. The ongoing educational impact of the former detention centre emerges through a narrative analysis of remembered stories shared by participant interviewees of both the teaching and learning they experienced within its walls. By compiling the narratives of four former staff and residents, and adding to them my own memories of teaching in that space, this place-based (Till, 2004, 2011) project culminates in an aesthetic narrative curation of missed educational happenings. This new educational story of YDC works to disrupt the limited discourse that exists around incarcerated youth and education in the present day.
Open Access
A Behavioural Genetic Model of the Mechanisms Underlying the Link Between Obesity and Dimensional Measures of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
(2015-12-16) Patte, Karen Allison; Davis, Caroline A.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate genetic and psycho-behavioural mechanisms contributing to the strong ADHD symptom-obesity association. Genetic variants associated with hypo-dopaminergic functioning have been implicated in ADHD, particularly the 7-repeat allele of a VNTR located on the DRD4 gene, likely due to the receptor’s predominance in the prefrontal cortex. Based on this evidence, some experts have suggested that a shared aetiology of a dysfunctional dopamine (DA) system is responsible for the link. However, this conflicts with accumulating evidence that it is actually an amplified DA signal that increases the risk for overeating and weight gain due to a stronger appetitive response to food cues. It seems plausible that individuals with ADHD symptoms who are predisposed overeat are those who also possess a high sensitivity to, and greater motivation to seek out, rewarding stimuli, as reflected by increased DA availability in the brain reward pathways. Accordingly, the current study tested the hypothesis that symptoms of ADHD, predicted by hypo-dopaminergic functioning in the prefrontal cortex, in combination with an enhanced appetitive drive, predict hedonic eating, and in turn, higher BMI. Methods: Functional markers of the DRD2 and DRD4 were genotyped to determine their contributions to ADHD symptoms and various indices of hedonic eating, respectively. The model was tested using Structural Equation Modeling procedures in a general population sample (n=421 adults) representing a broad range of body mass index (BMI) values. Results: Overall, the fit indices indicated that the proposed model was a good fit to the data. Controlling for education level, all parameter estimates were in the expected direction and statistically significant with the exception of the pathway from the DRD4 marker to ADHD symptoms. The indirect effect was significant, indicating that overeating mediated the association between ADHD symptoms and BMI. Conclusions: Results lend support to the hypothesis that overeating and an elevated DA signal in the ventral striatum – representative of a greater reward response – are responsible for the link between ADHD symptoms and obesity. The current study was the first to connect the most prominent and supported theories of ADHD with evidence-based models of hedonic eating.
Open Access
A BIM - GIS Integrated Information Model Using Semantic Web and RDF Graph Databases
(2023-03-28) Hor, Abdelhadi; Sohn, Gunho
In recent years, 3D virtual indoor and outdoor urban modelling has become an essential geospatial information framework for civil and engineering applications such as emergency response, evacuation planning, and facility management. Building multi-sourced and multi-scale 3D urban models are in high demand among architects, engineers, and construction professionals to achieve these tasks and provide relevant information to decision support systems. Spatial modelling technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are frequently used to meet such high demands. However, sharing data and information between these two domains is still challenging. At the same time, the semantic or syntactic strategies for inter-communication between BIM and GIS do not fully provide rich semantic and geometric information exchange of BIM into GIS or vice-versa. This research study proposes a novel approach for integrating BIM and GIS using semantic web technologies and Resources Description Framework (RDF) graph databases. The suggested solution's originality and novelty come from combining the advantages of integrating BIM and GIS models into a semantically unified data model using a semantic framework and ontology engineering approaches. The new model will be named Integrated Geospatial Information Model (IGIM). It is constructed through three stages. The first stage requires BIMRDF and GISRDF graphs generation from BIM and GIS datasets. Then graph integration from BIM and GIS semantic models creates IGIMRDF. Lastly, the information from IGIMRDF unified graph is filtered using a graph query language and graph data analytics tools. The linkage between BIMRDF and GISRDF is completed through SPARQL endpoints defined by queries using elements and entity classes with similar or complementary information from properties, relationships, and geometries from an ontology-matching process during model construction. The resulting model (or sub-model) can be managed in a graph database system and used in the backend as a data-tier serving web services feeding a front-tier domain-oriented application. A case study was designed, developed, and tested using the semantic integrated information model for validating the newly proposed solution, architecture, and performance.
Open Access
A Blast from the Past: Armed Drones, International Humanitarian Law, and Imperial Violence
(2022-08-08) Andersen, Kirsten Per; Alnasseri, Sabah
Scholars of conflict and its regulation have regarded armed drones as a new ‘puzzle’ for international humanitarian law’s (IHL) theory and application to adapt. While drones indeed offer exceptional technological capabilities, their significance to the future of war resides not in their strategic or tactical possibilities but in their ability to reveal the contradictions in the idea of war embodied in its regulating law. This dissertation argues that the seemingly novel challenges weaponized drones present to IHL are, in fact, not new at all. Rather, it is through the introduction of drones that the kinds of violences occurring for centuries in the global periphery are made both visible and recognizable. The real trouble drones pose for IHL is that critical analyses of their regulation under IHL yields conclusions that directly challenge the persuasiveness of IHL’s ostensibly humanitarian motives. These conclusions reveal that IHL was developed and applied to facilitate the use of force by hegemonic and imperial state actors against foreign populations by means of increasingly sophisticated weapons technologies. In arguing this, the dissertation revisits not only IHL’s history, but also the narratives that have been (and continue to be) told about the regime’s origin, development, and application. It considers the particular actors, weapons, and violences IHL incorporated across the trajectory of its historical development, as well as the representation of war it depicts versus its realities. The argument is illustrated by way of a case study examining drone use by the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Open Access
A Branch-and-Price Algorithm for Bin Packing Problem
(2015-12-16) Ataei, Masoud; Chen, Michael
Bin Packing Problem examines the minimum number of identical bins needed to pack a set of items of various sizes. Employing branch-and-bound and column generation usually requires designation of the problem-specific branching rules compatible with the nature of the pricing sub-problem of column generation, or alternatively it requires determination of the k-best solutions of knapsack problem at level kth of the tree. Instead, we present a new approach to deal with the pricing sub-problem of column generation which handles two-dimensional knapsack problems. Furthermore, a set of new upper bounds for Bin Packing Problem is introduced in this work which employs solutions of the continuous relaxation of the set-covering formulation of Bin Packing Problem. These high quality upper bounds are computed inexpensively and dominate the ones generated by state-of-the-art methods.
Open Access
A Case Study of Indigenous Representation in Film Music: Smoke Signals and Dances with Wolves
(2020-08-11) D'Amata, Stephanie Anne; Johnson, Sherry
This thesis explores the representation of North American Indigenous cultures through film music of the 1990s. I use two films as case studies: a Hollywood-produced film Dances with Wolves (1990) and an independent film by an Indigenous filmmaker Smoke Signals (1998). My analysis of the films examines elements of film, such as mise-en-scne, cinematography, editing, and form, as well as musical cues, instrumentation and melodic/rhythmic motifs. The combination of these analyses allows me to consider how meanings about Indigenous cultures are communicated to viewers. I consider the following research questions: How are North American Indigenous cultures represented in film? How do Indigenous filmmakers choose to represent Indigenous culture in comparison to non-Indigenous filmmakers? What can be said about agency, representation, commercialization, and cultural expression through each filmmakers visual and musical choices? I find that music is integral to constructing meaning in films, and that representations of Indigenous cultures, through both music and visual cues, differ significantly across time and film genres.
Open Access
A Chironomid-Based Paleolimnological Assessment of Long-Term Cumulative Effects Of Multiple Anthropogenic Stressors on Hypolimnetic Oxygen Dynamics in Lake Erie
(2018-08-27) Perlov, Dmitri; Quinlan, Roberto
The central basin of Lake Erie is annually subjected to hypoxia, which has implications for fish communities and nutrient recycling. As limnological monitoring data for Lake Erie does not extend beyond the 1970s, paleolimnological techniques can be used to reconstruct long-term water quality trends. Chironomidae (Diptera) remains preserved in dated sediment cores from the western, central, and eastern basins in Lake Erie were used to assess the long-term cumulative effects of multiple anthropogenic stressors on hypolimnetic dissolved oxygen. Results from analyses of subfossil chironomid remains indicated that the central basin has exhibited mesotrophic to eutrophic conditions since 1850. However, a transition in chironomid communities further towards anoxic-type taxa between 1930-1950 suggests that the severity and duration of hypolimnetic anoxia has increased in recent decades. Variance partitioning analysis (VPA) indicated that the effects of land use and climate had significant implications in driving changes in chironomid assemblages in the central basin.
Open Access
A Closer Look at the Effect of Bilingualism on Working Memory
(2019-11-22) Capani, Angela M.; Bialystok, Ellen B.
Previous research suggests that bilinguals act as experts when engaged in tasks requiring attentional control (Incera & McLennan, 2015). Experts across various domains are slower to initiate a response, but then produce a more efficient response. We used mouse-tracking to determine whether bilingual (n = 51) and monolingual (n = 51) young adults (M = 20.65) employed different strategies while engaged in two sets of memory tasks, the n-back and item/associative tasks. Language groups displayed similar performance on most tasks, however, bilinguals had longer initiation and reaction times than monolinguals on the associative task. When examined as a continuous factor, degree of bilingualism was positively correlated with initiation time. The results of the regression analysis support the conclusion that bilingualism impacts the strategies that participants display while completing memory tasks. In the future, tasks requiring more controlled processing should be utilized to allow for more robust differences to appear.
Open Access
A Cloud-Based Extensible Avatar For Human Robot Interaction
(2019-07-02) AlTarawneh, Enas Khaled Ahm; Jenkin, Michael
Adding an interactive avatar to a human-robot interface requires the development of tools that animate the avatar so as to simulate an intelligent conversation partner. Here we describe a toolkit that supports interactive avatar modeling for human-computer interaction. The toolkit utilizes cloud-based speech-to-text software that provides active listening, a cloud-based AI to generate appropriate textual responses to user queries, and a cloud-based text-to-speech generation engine to generate utterances for this text. This output is combined with a cloud-based 3D avatar animation synchronized to the spoken response. Generated text responses are embedded within an XML structure that allows for tuning the nature of the avatar animation to simulate different emotional states. An expression package controls the avatar's facial expressions. The introduced rendering latency is obscured through parallel processing and an idle loop process that animates the avatar between utterances. The efficiency of the approach is validated through a formal user study.
Open Access
A Collage Barbarous
(2021-11-15) Zhao, Ruobing; Longfellow, Brenda
A Collage Barbarous is a short experimental film that navigates a voyage of exile and femininity, and drifts towards the embodied experience of traveling between worlds. On a train moving through Sichuan, the traveling actress meets the imaginary. Confused, she struggles with an upcoming performance of a local adaptation of Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan.
Open Access
A Collection of Afro and Latin-Caribbean Jazz Compositions
(2016-09-20) Lapps-Lewis, Joy; Elmes, Barry
This thesis explores the use of steelpan in the jazz idiom. It includes reflections on the history of the instrument in the jazz context and experiences of steelpan jazz pioneers Othello Molineaux, Andy Narell and Rudy Two Lefts Smith. This thesis also includes scores of seven original compositions for steelpan in the context of a small Afro and Latin-Caribbean jazz ensemble. These compositions have been inspired by the work of the above mentioned 'Pan Jazz' pioneers and practitioners. An analysis is provided for each piece exploring aspects of rhythm, melody, harmony, texture and form.
Open Access
A Comparative Study of Judicial Safeguards in Relation to Investor-State Dispute Settlement
(2020-05-11) Kristkova, Pavla; Van Harten, Gus
ISDS is a relatively young and dynamic regime. It faces challenges for which other adjudicative systems, after centuries of development, have found solutions. In ISDS, fair rules and procedures are essential since ISDS is an adjudicative regime said to be based on the rule of law. The importance of complex and carefully crafted rules and procedural safeguards is underscored by the impact of ISDS on a wide array of parties and interests and by its encroachment on the powers of sovereign states affecting their populations. Yet ISDS is criticized as unfair and open to unacceptable appearances of bias due to a lack of institutional safeguards. In this thesis, I assess whether these criticisms are compelling. Considering their prevalence in the debates about ISDS, I focus on issues of neutrality and fairness and, in particular, on two core values: (1) adjudicative independence and impartiality; and (2) the right of standing. I do so by examining institutional measures adopted to safeguard these values. These include: a) methods of appointment and case assignment; b) protections of the independence of individual adjudicators in the form of tenure and financial security; and c) guaranteed standing for parties with a legal interest. The goal of the thesis is to evaluate institutional safeguards of these values in ISDS through the method of a comparative study of adjudicative bodies in various contexts and to map the spectrum of safeguards used by other forums based on their common comparisons and similarities with ISDS. The results of the research highlight that, although ISDS has been lauded for its perceived neutrality and as a system superior to domestic courts, it is the regime with the weakest safeguards among all comparators, while domestic courts employ the strongest institutional safeguards. The central conclusion is that ISDS has systemic flaws and failures because it lacks mechanisms to safeguard the examined values, thus substantiating the relevant concerns about the institutional design of ISDS. To safeguard these essential values, it appears unavoidable that ISDS must be rejected in its current form.
Open Access
A Comparative Study Performed on Two Ambient Ionization Techniques: Desorption Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry (DESI-MS) and Easy Ambient Sonic Spray Ionization Mass Spectrometry (EASI-MS)
(2015-08-28) Hamid, Tanam Sanjana; Ifa, Demian R.
Main project of my master’s thesis involved comparison between two sister methods: desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI−MS) and easy ambient ionization mass spectrometry (EASI−MS). These methods are compared in terms of spatial resolution, limits of detection and imaging capabilities. Their applicability in forensic science was further explored by comparing the MS/MS imaging capabilities. Under the same experimental conditions, we found that both DESI and EASI−MS have similar spray spot size resulting in similar spatial resolution. For the limits of detection (LOD) experiment, the LOD of DESI−MS was found to be lower than EASI−MS by an order of magnitude. When we compared the mass spectra and the chemical images of DESI and EASI, we found that both methods produce similar chemical specificity. When the spectra were carefully inspected, a reduction in signal intensity was observed for EASI−MS compared to DESI−MS demonstrating that the sensitivity of DESI−MS is higher than EASI−MS. Other projects involved characterization of zebra fish tissue system made up of bile salts, phospholipids and fatty acids. By mapping the spatial distribution of these ions, 2D chemical images of organs such as the stomach, the nervous system and the whole body zebra fish were created. I also studied if matrix can impact ionization of proteins by DESI−MS. The aim was to improve the poor desorption of proteins from the surface of DESI−MS. We concluded that the matrix neither increase nor decreases the ionization efficiency of proteins by DESI−MS.