ETD SWORD Deposit

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Open Access
Queer-Diva Collaboration in 20th Century Pop Music
(2024-05-02) Elio Iannacci; Frances J Latchford
This thesis explores the practice of “Queer-Diva collaboration” as it pertains to the work of pop music icons Grace Jones and Annie Lennox. Queer-Diva collaborations are a surprisingly common yet undertheorized artistic phenomena wherein female pop singers co-create music and art with members of the LGBTQ community. My study argues that through these collaborations, queer counterculture discourses critique and reform mainstream popular culture. While much scholarship revolves around the Diva and her Queer audience, this thesis draws on theories of artistic collaboration as “utopian modernist sites” (Green 175), forms of “gender collapse” (Butler 41, 121) and testaments to “Queer world-making” (Muñoz 22) in order to recover the Diva’s crucial relationship with LGBTQ art directors, stylists, choreographers and music producers. This study historicises and analyses two pivotal Queer-Diva collaborations as case studies, both of which reflect and broadcast the repercussions of watershed moments in LGBTQ politics. The first case study examines Grace Jones’s music video to 1986’s “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You),” directed by Jones and Queer graffiti artist Keith Haring which fuses Jones’s racial and gender pluralism with Haring’s HIV/AIDS activism. The second case study analyses Annie Lennox’s and DJ Junior Vasquez’s “No More ‘I Love You’s’” (The Sound Factory Mix), a recording released in 1995, which embodies a proliferating era of LGBTQ civil rights and an aural armament against misogynistic and homophobic oppression. Focusing on these distinctive epochs within Jones’s and Lennox’s oeuvres, this thesis examines the effects, repercussions and implications of these Queer-Diva collaborations and determines how they disrupt anti-Black, anti-Queer and heterosexist discourses.
Open Access
Efficient GNSS Signal Acquisition Method for GNSS/GNSS-R Software-Defined Receivers
(2023-08-04) Shamil Nailevich Samigulin; Sunil Bisnath; Regina Lee
This thesis presents a novel acquisition algorithm for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) that can be efficiently implemented on small digital devices such as software defined radios (SDRs) field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The algorithm is designed to improve the performance of GNSS signal acquisition for applications in GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R), a remote sensing technique that uses GNSS signals as a source of information. Using pre-acquisition processing and partial correlation, the proposed algorithm reduces the computational complexity of conventional GNSS acquisition methods by ~ 27 times, making it suitable for such low-cost devices. The thesis begins by introducing the GNSS technology and its spectrum, followed by a review of existing acquisition algorithms and their application in GNSS reflectometry. The novel acquisition strategy is developed, and its performance discussed, along with opportunities for future work.
Open Access
A Dependence Analysis Within the Context of Risk Allocations: Distributions on the Simplex and the Notion of Counter-Monotonicity
(2023-08-04) Nawaf Mahmood Abdullah Mohammed; Ed Furman; Jianxi Su
The remarkable development of today's financial and insurance products demands sound methodologies for the accumulation and characterization of intertwined risks. As a result, modern risk management emerges as a by product querying two key foundations. The first is concerned with the aggregation of said risks into one randomness which is consequently easily measured by a convenient risk measure and thereafter reported. The pooling is done from the different business units (BUs) composing the financial entity. The second pillar pertains to the opposite direction which concerns itself with the allocation of the total risk. It seeks to accurately and concretely attribute the riskiness of each individual BU with respect to the whole. The aggregation process, on one hand, has been fairly well studied in the literature, implemented in the industry and even embedded into the different accords. Risk capital allocation, on the other, is generally much more involved even when a specific risk measure inducing the allocation rule is assumed, let alone the case when a class of risk measures is considered. And unlike the aggregation exercise, which is moderately determined by the collection function, attributing capital is often more heavily influenced by the dependencies among the different BUs. In the literature, nonetheless, allocating capital can be categorized into two main camps. One is built upon the pretense that the distribution of risk should satisfy certain regulatory requirements. This leads to an axiomatic approach which is quite often mathematically tractable yet ignores the economic incentives of the market. The other school of thought is economically driven, allocating risk based on a profit-maximizing paradigm. It argues that capital allocation should reflect the risk perception of the institution and not be imposed by any arbitrary measure, for which its selection is dubious at best. However, the economic approach suffers from complex relations that lack clear definitive forms. At first glance the two perspectives may seem distant, as they arise naturally in their own contexts and are justified accordingly. Nonetheless, they can coincide for particular losses that enjoy certain peculiar model settings which are described thoroughly in the chapters thereafter. Surprisingly, the reconciliation comes in connection with the concept of trivial allocations. Triviality, in itself, attracts practitioners as it requires no discernible dependencies leading to a convenient yet faulty method of attributing risk. Regardless, when used in the right context it unveils surprising connections and conveys useful conclusions. The intersection of the regulatory and profit-maximizing principles, for example, mainly utilizes a milder version of triviality (proportional) which allows for distinct, albeit few, probabilistic laws that accommodate both theories. Furthermore, when a stronger triviality (absolute) condition is imposed, it yields another intriguing corollary, specifically that of restrictive extreme laws commonly known for antithetic or counter-monotonic variates. To address the framework hitherto introduced, in the first chapter of this dissertation, we present a general class of weighted pricing functionals. This wide class covers most of the risk measures and allocations found in the literature today and adequately represents their various properties. We begin by investigating the order characteristics of the functionals under certain sufficient conditions. The results reveal interactive relationships between the weight and the aggregation make-up of the measures, which consequently, allow for effective comparison between the different risks. Then upon imposing restrictions on the allocation constituents, we establish equivalent statements for trivial allocations that uncover a novel general concept of counter-monotonicity. More significantly, similar equivalences are obtained for a weaker triviality notion that pave the path to answer the aforementioned question of allocation reconciliation. The class of weighted functionals, though constructive, is too general to apply effectively to the allocation theories. Thus, in the second chapter, we consider the special case of conditional tail expectation (CTE), defining its risk measure and the allocation it induces. These represent the regulatory approach to allocation as CTE is arguably one of the most prominent and front-runner measures used and studied today. On the other side, we consider the allocation arising from the economic context that aims to maximize profit subject to other market forces as well as individual perceptions. Both allocations are taken as proportions as they are formed from compositional maps which relate to the standard simplex in either a stochastic or non-stochastic manner. Then we equate the two allocations and derive a general description for the laws that satisfy the two functionals. The Laplace transform of the multivariate size bias is used as the prime identifier delineating the general distributions and detailing subsequent corollaries and examples. While studying the triviality nature of allocations, we focused on the central element of stochastic dependence. We showed how certain models, extremal dependence for instance, enormously influences the attribution outcome. Thus far, nonetheless, our query started from the point of allocation relations, be it proportional or absolute, then ended in law characterizations that satisfy those relations. Equally important, on the other hand, is deriving allocations expressions based on a priori assumed models. This task requires apt choices of general structures which convey the desired probabilistic nature of losses. Since constructing joint laws can be quite challenging, the compendium of probabilistic models relies heavily on leveraging the stochastic representations of known distributions. This feat allows not only for simpler computations but as well for useful interpretations. Basic mathematical operations are usually deployed to derive different joint distributions with certain desirable properties. For example, taking the minimum yields the Marshall-Olkin distribution, addition gives the additive background model and multiplication/division naturally leads to the multiplicative background model. Simultaneously, univariate manipulation through location, scale and power transforms adds to the flexibility of the margins while preserving the overall copula. In the last chapter of this dissertation, we introduce a composite of the Marshall-Olkin, additive and multiplicative models to obtain a novel multivariate Pareto-Dirichlet law possessing a profound composition capable of modelling heavy tailed events descriptor of many extremal scenarios in insurance and finance. We study its survival function and the corresponding moments and mixed moments. Then we focus on the bivariate case, detailing the intricacies of its inherent expressions. And finally, we conclude with a thorough application to the risk and allocation functionals respectively.
Open Access
Batch Query Memory Prediction Using Deep Query Template Representations
(2023-08-04) Nicolas Andres Jaramillo; Manos Papagelis; Marin Litoiu
This thesis introduces a novel approach called LearnedWMP for predicting the memory cost demand of a batch of queries in a database workload. Existing techniques focus on estimating the resource demand of individual queries, failing to capture the net resource demand of a workload. LearnedWMP leverages the query plan and groups queries with similar characteristics into pre-built templates. A histogram representation of these templates is generated for the workload, and a regressor predicts the resource demand, specifically memory cost, based on this histogram. Experimental results using three database benchmarks demonstrate a 47.6% improvement in memory estimation compared to the state-of-the-art. Additionally, the approach outperforms various machine and deep learning techniques for individual query prediction, offering a 3x to 10x faster and at least 50% smaller model size.
Open Access
FPGA-based GNSS receiver design for reflectometry applications
(2023-08-04) Surabhi Guruprasad; Sunil Bisnath; Regina Lee
Research has shown that Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals reflecting off the Earth’s surface can be detected by receivers in low Earth orbit (LEO). The weak reflected signal properties are analyzed to characterize geophysical properties such as soil moisture, sea surface height, ocean surface wind speed and sea ice detection. This method of remote sensing is known as GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R). Commercial GNSS receivers have historically been designed to only detect and process direct GNSS signals and cannot be repurposed to collect relevant data for reflectometry. Data collected by some orbital receivers have been made public; however, due to the high volume of data, data are truncated and are insufficient for science applications. Therefore, to be able to develop and test new algorithms, a custom GNSS-R receiver is designed and implemented. The developed GNSS-R receiver is implemented using field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. The GNSS-R receiver prototype uses 1-bit signal resolution resulting in a compact design requiring minimal FPGA resources. Several field results show that the receiver prototype can successfully track direct and reflected GNSS signals in real-time. The observations indicate that the carrier-to-noise density ratio of signals reflecting from the surface of water was on average approximately 7 dB higher than the C/N_0 recorded when tracking land reflections. The difference in C/N_0 between water and land reflections is significant enough to conclude that a GNSS-R receiver using a one-bit quantization GNSS signal can be used for reflectometry applications. To increase the sensitivity of the receiver to weak reflected signals (-140 dBm), the FPGA-based signal processing module is enhanced using the alternate half-bit method. The receiver sensitivity improved from -35 dB to -46 dB (signal-to-noise ratio). Another challenge for GNSS-R receivers is generation of high-resolution delay Doppler maps (DDMs). DDMs provide insight into the reflecting surface characteristics based on signal scattering. The developed GNSS-R receiver demonstrates that high resolution DDMs can indeed be generated in real-time using 1-bit GNSS signal resolution. Data collected by the CYGNSS spacecraft are used to test and validate the receiver implementation. Results show that distinct DDMs are generated for land and water reflections and correlates (in terms of SNR) with research conducted using 2-bit signal resolution.
Open Access
Surface Roughness and Trip Effects for a Circular Cylinder at Subcritical Reynolds Numbers
(2023-08-04) Vidushan Rajavarothayam; Ronald Hanson; Philippe Lavoie
Aerodynamic drag is the major source of resistance experienced by athletes in activities such as road cycling. Over bluff bodies, which is how an athlete is typically modelled, passive flow control methods such as surface roughness and boundary layer tripwires appeared to be particularly relevant in transitioning the local boundary layer at the surfaces to turbulence, resulting in a lower drag at smaller Reynolds numbers. In the experimental study, a cylindrical model equipped with textiles and tripwires that had 2D and zigzag geometries were connected to a custom force balance to understand the effects of these surface modifications on the drag. The primary objective of the present work is to explore the effects of drag reduction when fabrics with multiple number of seams and tripwires are attached on a cylinder at different angles from the stagnation point. Utilizing these flow control methods can provide potential time gains for a cyclist.
Open Access
Settling Velocity of Straight and Curved Rods at Low Reynolds Numbers in a Quiescent Fluid
(2023-08-04) Daniel Vedant Daramsing; Ronald Hanson; Mark Gordon
The present thesis is aimed towards understanding the effects of microfibre geometry on the settling velocity. Microfibres have been mathematically modelled as simple straight rods in the past to estimate their settling velocity; however, samples collected demonstrate complex geometries. One common geometric parameter of realistic microfibres is curvature, and the effect of this parameter on the settling velocity is the focus of the present thesis. A new drop tank and particle tracking system were designed to measure the settling velocity of curved rods at low Reynolds numbers typical of microfibres found in atmospheric samples. An experimental model was developed to relate the Reynolds number at terminal velocity and drag coefficient for both straight and curved rods. Non-ideal effects can significantly affect the estimation of travel of microfibres in comparison to other existing models, which emphasizes the importance of improved models that are tuned to predict the settling velocity of microfibres.
Open Access
Examining the Atmospheric Transport of Microplastics using the HYSPLIT Model
(2023-08-04) Eric Bradley Ward; Mark Gordon; Ronald Hanson
Microplastics are tiny particles less than 5 mm in size and are a growing scientific concern, given the potential harm caused across ecosystems as plastic use increases globally. To further understand the atmosphere's role, the HYSPLIT model was utilized to identify differences in transport distance and deposition area by particle size and shape. The extent of microplastic transport and deposition varied significantly by shape for particles larger than 6 µm. Long fibres deposited over a 32% greater area than spherical particles at the largest size of 23.5 µm. The maximum deposition area occurred at 4.5 µm, varying in area by less than 0.25% by shape. As particles smaller than 10 µm have the largest potential to cause adverse health effects, accurately modelling the shape of atmospheric microplastic transport is crucial to determining the range and amount of deposition globally, especially in the 6 µm to 10 µm size range.
Open Access
LGBTQ Activisms and Hindu Nationalism in India: An Ethnographic Inquiry
(2023-08-04) Shraddha Chatterjee; David Murray; Radhika Mongia
Contemporary Indian society is marked by increasingly violent majoritarianism that is redefining India as a Hindu nation. In recent years, the heightened persecution of religious minorities and an ever-expanding definition of “anti-national” has justified violence against a widening range of people. Paradoxically, in this atmosphere of shrinking public freedoms and increasing state-sanctioned ethnic violence, there has been a simultaneous expansion of LGBTQ representation in mainstream English media and nominal advancements in LGBTQ rights. As a result, a distinct form of LGBTQ support for Hindu nationalism has become popular, even as other LGBTQ activisms have amplified their efforts to resist Hindu nationalism. Within this context, this dissertation examines how and why LGBTQ activists support and resist Hindu nationalism, and how this reconfigures what it means to be queer in Hindu nationalist times. I address these questions through a queer feminist digital ethnography of LGBTQ activists in New Delhi and Mumbai, conducted between February and October 2020. My ethnographic findings indicate that LGBTQ support for Hindu nationalism is often advanced without Hindu nationalist support for LGBTQ rights. Based on this, I argue that what we see in India is aspirational homonationalism, where Hindu nationalist rhetoric is buttressed in the present to accrue LGBTQ rights and inclusion into the nation in the future. Further, LGBTQ complicity with Hindu nationalism signals deeper desires for national belonging, especially when juxtaposed against the persistent claim that homosexuality is “alien” to Indian culture. My findings also demonstrate that LGBTQ activists resisting Hindu nationalism are amplifying these efforts despite experiencing the larger atmosphere in contemporary India as dangerous and stifling. Queer feminist and Dalit queer and trans* activisms, in particular, resist the underlying narratives of LGBTQ inclusion that support Hindu nationalism, rejecting the violence of Hindu nationalism in the process. I conclude that LGBTQ complicity with, and resistance to, Hindu nationalism maps onto existing antagonisms between gay rights activisms, queer feminisms, and Dalit queer and trans* activisms. As aspirations for homonationalism become more deeply rooted within LGBTQ activisms, and as its critiques become more stringent, Hindu nationalism deepens pre-existing fissures within these activisms by becoming another axis of difference in larger struggles over what LGBTQ activisms should fight for, and what LGBTQ lives should look like.
Open Access
Chasing the Food, Chasing the Names: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Culinary Culture of Turkic Peoples of Eurasia
(2023-08-04) Emrah Yesil; Sheila Embleton
This thesis takes a critical stance on the conventional approaches to the nomadic societies based on the historical sources written by the agents of the sedentary entities and interrogates the dominant discourse regarding the nomads. It examines an essential part of the culinary heritage of the Turkic peoples in Eurasia by focusing on the primary Turkic lexical sources available. It attempts to discover the culinary and linguistic interaction among the ancestors of Turkic peoples, “the pastoral nomads” of inner Asia, and between them and their sedentary neighbors. It focuses on pastry food items consumed by these peoples since the misrepresentations of the historical accounts about the nomads tend to define and marginalize them with their alimentation. Thus, this thesis tries to challenge one of the most common arguments underpinning the traditional approach to the nomadic peoples and also means to test its validity by examining the essential lexical material available.
Open Access
Maternal Exposure to Prostaglandin E2 Affects Hippocampal Synaptic Plasticity in Mice Offspring -A Link to Autism Spectrum Disorder
(2023-08-04) Aisha Abdul Rahiman; Dorota Anna Crawford
Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) is a lipid signaling molecule involved in early healthy brain development. Exposure to environmental risk factors such as air pollutants, infections, and drugs such as acetaminophen during early pregnancy have shown to impact PGE2 levels and have all been linked to Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). Our previous studies show that maternal exposure to PGE2 and the lack of the PGE2 producing enzyme Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) results in sex-specific abnormal dendritic morphology within the cerebellum and the hippocampus as well as ASD-like behaviors including motor deficits and anxiety in mice offspring. In this study, I investigated sex-dependent effects of prenatal PGE2 exposure on hippocampal electrophysiology in the C57bl/6 mice offspring at postnatal day 90-100. I measured Schaffer collateral long-term potentiation (LTP), paired-pulse facilitation (PPF), input/output (I/O) responses, the expression of glutamate receptor components NMDAR subunit 2A, AMPA subunit GluR1, beta-actin, and morphological characteristics such as primary dendrite length and cell soma size of pyramidal neurons in the hippocampus. I found that PGE2 exposure decreased LTP in males and I/O responses in females at higher stimulation intensities with no effect on PPF. PGE2 also increased the expression of NMDAR2A in males with no effect on GluR1 or β-actin. However, PGE2 did not affect pyramidal cell morphology. Overall, our data suggests that prenatal PGE2 exposure disrupts innate sex differences by reducing LTP maintenance in males, while impairing basal synaptic strength in females. I propose a model that PGE2-dependent upregulation of NMDAR2A observed in male offspring may reflect a neurotoxicity effect of PGE2 mediated by glutamate, subsequently leading to neuronal death, which could explain the corresponding decrease in LTP. In summary, this study adds further evidence that abnormal maternal PGE2 levels known to be influenced by many environmental risk factors may affect hippocampal function and contribute to specific deficits in ASDs in a sex-dependent manner.
Open Access
"Other languages, other landscapes, other stories": Reading Resurgence in the Contemporary Indigenous Novel
(2023-08-04) Vanessa Kimberley Evans; Lily M Cho
As settler and postcolonial countries in North America, Oceania, and South Asia contend with the complexity of reconciliation, sovereignty movements, and the fallout from colonial schools, the relevance of Indigenous resurgence is rising on a global scale. This resurgence responds, in part, to the specific role literature can and has played in disconnecting Indigenous Peoples from their knowledges, communities, and selves. Accordingly, in this dissertation I make connections between seemingly disparate Indigenous novels in an effort at beginning to understand what representations of resurgence—the everyday practices and processes that seek to regenerate and rebuild Indigenous nations—reveal about how diverse Indigenous contexts are (re)imagining Indigenous worlds and what connections across those contexts might mean (Simpson 2017). To perform this investigation, I make a case for further cross-cultural comparative methods within Indigenous literary studies that can interpret resurgence across distinct literary contexts while maintaining a commitment to nation-specific worldviews imparted by relation with land. Mobilizing the theoretical work of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg), Chadwick Allen, and Molly McGlennen (Anishinaabe), this project contributes a new comparative method called reading resurgence. Located at the intersection of global and nationalist approaches to Indigenous literary studies, this method interprets everyday acts of resurgence—specifically: storytelling, language learning, and relationship with land—trans-Indigenously across three respective literary constellations of coresistance that cluster novels from diverse Indigenous nations. The first constellation reads resurgence across David Treuer’s (Leech Lake Ojibwe) The Translation of Dr Apelles (2006), Patricia Grace’s (Māori) Potiki (1986), and Rejina Marandi’s (Santal) Becoming Me (2014). The second clusters Cherie Dimaline’s (Métis) The Marrow Thieves (2017), Sia Figiel’s (Samoan) Where We Once Belonged (1996), and Easterine Kire’s (Angami Naga) Don’t Run, My Love (2017). The third reads across Eden Robinson’s (Haisla & Heiltsuk) Monkey Beach (2000), Kiana Davenport’s (Kanaka Maoli) Shark Dialogues (1994), and Mamang Dai’s (Adi) The Black Hill (2014). Beyond its methodological contribution, this dissertation is also an effort to advance scholarly understandings of how contemporary Indigenous novels are (re)connecting Indigenous Peoples and nations with traditional ways of being and knowing.
Open Access
Le Phenomene de Grammaticalisation en Contraste : < A Gente > Le Nouveau Pronom < On > Du Portugais Bresilien ?
(2023-08-04) Christopher Marcellus Paul; Jerzy Kowal
Ce mémoire porte sur le pronom personnel portugais a gente dans une perspective à la fois diachronique et synchronique. Nous présenterons quelques notions du processus de grammaticalisation pour montrer comment le pronom a gente, ainsi que le pronom français on, s’y inscrivent. Nous montrerons la façon dont a gente s’est inséré dans le système pronominal de la langue portugaise et nous présenterons son statut dans la langue contemporaine. Nous nous concentrerons notamment sur l’emploi de a gente en portugais brésilien pour montrer comment l’emploi de ce pronom dans cette variété de la langue se distingue de son usage dans les autres variétés du portugais. Nous continuerons avec une comparaison entre a gente et on pour montrer les similarités et les différences entre ces deux pronoms aux niveaux sémantico-référentiel et syntaxique.
Open Access
The Cultural Revolution and the British Chinese: Radicalization of a Transnational Community
(2023-08-04) Dalton Allen Rawcliffe; Joshua A Fogel
This thesis bridges the bottom-up and top-down approaches favour of transnational history from the middle to understand the influence of the Leftist Riots and China’s Cultural Revolution provoked unrest in Britain’s Chinatowns in 1967. Concerned by the outburst of solidarity, the Hong Kong government sent Administrative Officer David (Kar-wah) Lai to survey why Britain’s ethnic Chinese community—often considered apolitical—demonstrated in support of the Hong Kong Leftists. Using recently released archival material from the National Archives, Hong Kong Public Records Office and the London Metropolitan Archives, this dissertation argues that, while the impetus for protest in Britain’s Chinatowns was the 1967 Leftist Riots, there were several other underlying causes that help to explain why the ethnic Chinese population of Britain demonstrated in support of the Hong Kong Leftists. The Hong Kong government survey initially believed that the ethnic Chinese community’s unrest was due to Maoist indoctrination by the Chinese Mission, its supporting pro-Beijing associations, and Leftist media. However, Lai’s survey revealed that the members of the ethnic Chinese community who gravitated towards Maoism did so for pragmatic reasons, not because of any strongly held ideological conviction. This dissertation contends that the Hong Kong Chinese and Britain’s ethnic Chinese who dabbled in left-wing politics were not true Communists or Maoists but were merely expressing their discontent with British colonial rule in Hong Kong and British society. Their lack of Communist conviction becomes increasingly clear by 1997 and the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC. By this time, Britain’s ethnic Chinese were thriving financially and many questioned returning to the “motherland” and whether Hong Kong would be able to maintain autonomy or remain insulated from the challenges within the PRC. Emigrant Chinese in Britain have held a complex relationship with the phenomenon of both British and Chinese “colonialism.” By studying the history of Hong Kong emigrants in Britain, this thesis contributes to the understanding of the decline of the British Empire and the rise of the PRC state, and how the emergence of a British Hong Kong and its diasporic citizens became central to the new Cold War Anglo-Chinese relationship.
Open Access
Modelling the Relationship Between Physiological Measures of Motion Sickness
(2023-08-04) Oluwaseyi Elizabeth Shodipe; Robert Allison
Car sickness is anticipated to occur more frequently in self-driving vehicles because of their design. This thesis involved an investigation using machine learning techniques with physiological measures to detect and predict the severity of car sickness in real-time every two minutes. A total of 40 adults were exposed to two conditions, each involving a 20-minute ride on a motion-base simulator. Car sickness incidence and severity were subjectively measured using the Fast Motion Sickness (FMS) and Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). Car sickness symptom was successfully elicited in 31 participants (77.5%) while avoiding simulator sickness. Results showed that head movement had the strongest relationship with car sickness, and there was a moderate correlation between heart rate and skin conductance. The machine learning models revealed a medium correlation between the physiological measures and the FMS scores. An acceptable classification score distinguishing between motion-sick and non-motion-sick participants was found using the random forest model.
Open Access
Regulation of Viral Subgenomic mRNA-Mediated Gene Expression in Three RNA Plant Viruses
(2023-08-04) Tamari Chkuaseli; K. Andrew White
RNA virus genomes encode different viral proteins that are essential for establishing infections in their hosts. Expression of a subset of these proteins occurs from viral genome- derived subgenomic (sg) mRNAs that are transcribed during infections. The regulation of sg mRNA transcription and translation ensures that requisite amounts of each of these viral proteins are produced at specific stages of the infectious cycle. Higher-order RNA structures present within viral genomes and sg mRNAs are commonly used as molecular switches to achieve the necessary control. The goal of my dissertation was to investigate the structure and function of RNA elements involved in regulating sg mRNA-mediated gene expression in three plus-strand RNA plant viruses: carnation Italian ringspot virus (CIRV), pea enation mosaic virus 2 (PEMV2), and PEMV1. Structural and functional analyses, both in vitro and in cell infections, allowed for the delineation of distinct regulatory RNA elements in each virus. The RNA structures involved in activating sg mRNA transcription were investigated in CIRV and PEMV2. Activation of sg mRNA1 transcription in CIRV requires the formation of a large, complex, intragenomic higher-order RNA structure that assembles via a multistep folding pathway involving six long-distance RNA-RNA base-pairing interactions. In contrast, PEMV2 sg mRNA transcription involves a small RNA stem-loop that contains a self-complementary palindromic loop sequence. Transcription is activated by viral genome dimerization via an intergenomic kissing-loop interaction involving pairing of the palindromic sequences. In PEMV1, the RNA structure required to promote translation readthrough of a C-terminally extended capsid protein from its sg mRNA was investigated. A complex, non-contiguous RNA structure assembled by sequential formation of three long-distance RNA-RNA interactions was found to be required for this recoding event. Collectively, these results have uncovered several distinct regulatory RNA structures involved in controlling different aspects of sg mRNA-mediated viral gene expression and provide novel insights into RNA-based regulation in plus-strand RNA viruses.
Open Access
I'm Watching You: Examining Mate Value Discrepancy, Power, and Jealousy in Electronic Intrusion of Romantic Partners
(2023-08-04) Grace Kathleen Millett; C. Ward Struthers
Electronic intrusion (EI), the act of monitoring a romantic partner and violating their boundaries online, has gained empirical interest as a prevalent form of digital dating abuse (DDA). The present thesis sought to explore why individuals perpetrate EI against their partners. Within the framework of evolutionary theory, prior research has revealed high mate value discrepancies (MVD) predict greater DDA perpetration. In the present research two cross-sectional correlational studies test perceived MVD as a predictor of EI perpetration, jealousy as a moderator, and desire for power as a mediator of this association. Across both studies I found that contrary to predictions, MVD did not predict EI perpetration, jealousy did not moderate this association, and desire for power did not mediate the association. These findings contribute to the literature on this new form of partner abuse and suggest that further work is needed to understand why individuals perpetrate EI towards their partners.
Open Access
Impulsivity, Mood and Unplanned Alcohol and Cannabis Use in Young Adults: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study
(2023-08-04) Nicolle J Fox; Jeffrey Wardell
Rates of alcohol and cannabis use are highest among Canada’s young people. Unplanned substance use among young adults is associated with heavier use and greater harms than planned use. Although previous research has found associations between mood and alcohol use, there has been less research on the role of mood in unplanned use. This study examined daily associations between mood and unplanned alcohol and cannabis use and explored the role of impulsivity in this relationship. Data came from a 21-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study, in which young adults, aged 19-25, completed daily surveys assessing intentions for use, and previous day substance use, as well as randomly timed surveys capturing momentary mood states. Impulsive personality traits were assessed at baseline through the UPPS-P Impulsive Behaviour Scale. Multilevel models showed significant daily-level relationships of increased positive mood and decreased negative mood with greater likelihood of unplanned vs. planned drinking. Several impulsive traits weakened the association between mood and unplanned alcohol use, such that high impulsivity appeared to reduce the impact that daily increases in positive mood and decreases in negative mood had on likelihood of unplanned alcohol use. An exception to that was lack of premeditation and perseverance, which strengthened the relationship between daily changes in positive mood and unplanned drinking. Boredom had a nuanced relationship with unplanned use, and impulsivity also appeared to weaken the association between boredom and unplanned drinking. Increases in boredom were associated with a decreased likelihood of unplanned cannabis use at the day level; however, impulsivity did not moderate associations between mood and unplanned cannabis use. These findings can help inform harm reduction interventions targeting unplanned substance use in a young adult population, given the prevalence and concurrent risks associated with unplanned alcohol and cannabis use.
Open Access
Zoom Usage and Cognitive Load
(2023-08-04) Alecia Carolli; Esther Greenglass
Self-evaluation during Zoom meetings is suspected to contribute to cognitive load. The current experimental study investigated the effects of having access to view oneself during a Zoom meeting on cognitive load, where participants either did or did not have access to view themselves, while on camera. During the call, cognitive load was assessed through performance on a task. Women in comparison to men, and those high on public self-consciousness, were expected to experience more cognitive load, especially when they could see themselves. The results found that at a low level of public self-consciousness, participants who could see themselves experienced higher cognitive load. Unexpectedly, the opposite occurred at a high level of public self-consciousness; participants who could not see themselves experienced higher cognitive load. Further investigation is required to determine the factors contributing to these results. Nonetheless, this work adds to the limited understanding of the psychological consequences of Zoom usage.
Open Access
Prove Me Wrong: The Impacts of Anxious Attachment and Non-Apology on Conflict Resolution in Romantic Relationships
(2023-08-04) Brianna Grace Davison; C. Ward Struthers
Managing conflict is an integral aspect of romantic relationships. When a romantic partner transgresses against the other partner, the way the victim of the transgression responds to conflict is often motivated by their attachment style and the post-transgression responses (PTRs) of their romantic partner. The present research involved 238 participants in romantic relationships. Participants completed an online study to assess the association between a victim's anxious attachment and destructive PTR (i.e., grudge-disdain, avoidance, and low forgiveness), the moderating role of a victim’s perception of their offending partner’s nonapology, and the mediating explanation of a victim’s perceived availability and responsiveness of an offending partner. A moderated mediation model was hypothesized and tested. Results confirmed that a victim’s perception of their offending partner’s nonapology moderated the association between victims’ anxious attachment and destructive PTRs. Perceived availability and responsiveness did not mediate the moderated association. Overall, these finds suggest that offending partners' PTRs play a role in motivating the post-transgression responses of anxiously attached victims.

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