ETD SWORD Deposit

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/27543

ETDs in this collection are being checked for completeness and are in the process of being transferred to their respective collections under the FGS ETD collection umbrella.

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Access status: Open Access ,
The Removal Of D-Alanine From The Cell Wall Teichoic Acids Of Staphylococcus Aureus By The Fmta Protein Drives Strain-Specific Viability Alterations Under Environmental Stress Conditions
(2025-07-23) Capota, Matthew; Dasantila Golemi-Kotra
Antibiotic resistance of highly infectious Staphylococcus aureus makes eliminating this microorganism increasingly difficult, contributing to hospitalizations and severe infections worldwide. Wall teichoic acids (WTAs), linked to the bacterial cell wall, play key roles in resistance, cell lysis, and survival. WTAs are modified by the addition of D-alanine (D-Ala), which helps control bacterial surface charge and antibiotic resistance. S. aureus naturally cleaves D-Ala using the enzyme FmtA. We investigated whether purified FmtA could influence bacterial growth and survival by removing D-Ala from WTAs in vivo under favourable or unfavourable environments. Our findings confirmed that FmtA removes D-Ala from S. aureus and other Gram-positive bacteria. While S. aureus viability remained stable under favourable conditions, strain-specific responses emerged under variable stress. Notably, methicillin-resistant strains became more sensitive to oxacillin when exposed to FmtA. These results suggest that targeting WTA modifications could be a strategy to alter S. aureus viability under specific stress-inducing conditions.
Access status: Open Access ,
Left In The Waiting Room: A Virtual Intervention For Siblings Of Youth With Disabilities
(2025-07-23) Marie Diane Hooper; Mary E. Desrocher
Evidence-based, psychosocial interventions for siblings of youth with disabilities are rare, but those that do exist typically occur in-person. Research is lacking on the impact of virtual support groups for siblings. This dissertation comprises two studies that describe the adaptation of an in-person intervention- SibWorks- into a virtual format (iSibWorks) and the psychosocial functioning of siblings before and after participating in the six-week iSibWorks intervention. The objectives of Study One included: (1) Adapt the in-person SibWorks group intervention for use on a virtual healthcare platform; and (2) Assess the acceptability of the adapted intervention, iSibWorks. Siblings were youth aged 8 to 12 years who had a sibling with a disability, and their caregivers. One week after the final session, siblings and their caregivers participated in separate semi-structured interviews, which were analysed using qualitative content analysis to examine intervention acceptability. The adaptation was successful, and iSibWorks was deemed acceptable and beneficial. Suggestions were provided to enhance the intervention’s future delivery, content, and engagement. The objective of Study Two was to evaluate the impact of participating in iSibWorks on psychosocial functioning at three time-points: before the intervention, one-week post-intervention and three-months post-intervention. Symptom severity at baseline was examined in relation to changes in psychosocial functioning over time. Validated measures were employed: Youth Self-Report (YSR; siblings) or Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; caregivers) and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; siblings and caregivers). Participants (12 siblings and 13 caregivers) reported significant improvements in psychosocial functioning from baseline to post-intervention and these gains were maintained at three-month post-intervention. Participants reporting a high level of psychosocial difficulties at baseline demonstrated greater gains at follow-up. Overall, iSibWorks is a promising intervention to support the psychosocial functioning of siblings. Further research using control groups and comparing delivery models directly is recommended.
Access status: Open Access ,
"I Have A Sense That Gay Is Diluting Significantly." Gay Nostalgia In A Post-Gay World And The Intergenerational Transitions Of Toronto's Church-Wellesley Village (1973-2023)
(2025-07-23) Myers, Joseph Gary; Carolyn Podruchny
Understandings and/or experiences of being gay in Toronto have changed over the past 50 years and are now at risk of being revised or forgotten. There is a diminishment of gay villages, spaces, and organizations across North America, Western Europe and Australia. A post-gay period has emerged in these spaces with a recognition of greater fluidity in sexual and gendered identities. This includes Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village (TCWV). The social, cultural, and political experiences of an older generation of gay men differ from a younger queer generation who no longer align themselves to gay identity, gay culture, or gay villages and see little need to sustain them. Changes in the built and demographic environments are also contributing to these concerns. Fears about such changes and the risk that the histories of older gay men will be lost are prompting some gay men to express nostalgia during a transitional period. This dissertation explores perspectives about the past, present and future of Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village (TCWV) through oral histories of 27 self-identified gay men and written narratives on Vintage Gay Toronto (VGT) Facebook website to map the changing social, political, cultural, and spatial environment of the neighbourhood and gay Toronto. This work presents their experiences before and after the area was reconceptualized from a ghetto of segregated and predominantly gay residential space in the 1970s, a flourishing gay commercial, entertainment, and residential village by the late 1980s and 1990s, to a transitional period in which many gay men feel a lost sense of community and identity. This research is also informed by a knowledge mobilization strategy of community engagement. It provides a step-by-step process of a Community Engagement Workshop. The workshop generated feedback and research themes to prioritize questions for the project’s oral history interviews.
Access status: Open Access ,
Prosecuting Hate Speech: Keegstra, Zundel, And The Criminal Law's Ability To Protect Vulnerable Communities
(2025-07-23) Grad, Kenneth; Benjamin L Berger
There has been an alarming increase in hate speech in recent years, both in Canada and abroad. There is wide consensus that increased emphasis on criminal law will help suppress harmful expression. Numerous countries have proposed or enacted new criminal laws targeting hate speech. But there is little evidence of governments and policymakers taking into account the experience of countries that have long had criminal laws aimed at harmful expression. Canada, which has criminalized hate speech since 1970, is one such country. The Canadian experience may hold lessons regarding whether the criminal law has proved an effective tool for countering racism and uplifting vulnerable groups. This question—whether the criminal law is an effective tool for countering racism and uplifting vulnerable groups—forms the core inquiry of this dissertation. I explore this question through the cases of R v Keegstra and R v Zundel. Both prosecutions commenced in 1985 and both were ultimately decided by the Supreme Court of Canada. Both involved antisemitism and Holocaust denial. They remain the leading cases in Canadian law on the scope and limits of freedom of expression. Keegstra and Zundel have received attention primarily from scholars interested in the proper ambit of freedom of speech in a liberal-democratic society. Missing from this scholarship is any significant assessment of whether hate-speech laws serve the goals of the criminal sanction and how hate-speech prosecutions impact victim groups. This dissertation fills this gap by providing a history of these cases from the perspective of the Canadian Jewish community. The Keegstra and Zundel prosecutions had a profound impact on Canada’s Jews. Yet no comprehensive history of these prosecutions has been written. I provide that account here. This dissertation makes three main findings. First, to understand and respect vulnerable communities, we must acknowledge divisions within these groups. Second, the criminal law is a poor mechanism for countering hate speech. Third, civil law remedies and non-legal approaches should be relied on to supplement the criminal law in the fight against harmful expression.
Access status: Open Access ,
Biochemical And Structural Characterization Of The S. Pombe La-Related Protein 1 (Slr1p)
(2025-07-23) Mansouri-Noori, Farnaz; Mark Bayfield
La and La-related proteins (LARPs) are conserved RNA-binding proteins that share a characteristic La motif (LaM) and have important functions in RNA metabolism. Several LARP families exist where members possess specific domains that allow for binding to unique substrates. The LARP1 family, which includes a DM15 domain, binds a cohort of mRNAs encoding factors involved in the process of mRNA translation. These mRNAs contain a sequence of 5-15 pyrimidines in their 5′UTRs, immediately following the m7G cap, and are characterized as 5′ terminal oligopyrimidine (5′TOP) mRNAs. The DM15 domain of human LARP1 has been suggested to specifically recognize this motif, thereby affecting the translation and stability of 5′TOP mRNAs. However, the specific function of LARP1 in this context remains unclear. Intriguingly, the 5′TOP motif does not exist in yeast, and LARP1 orthologs in this system lack the characteristic DM15 domain. In this work, we characterize the S. pombe La-related protein 1, Slr1p, as an RNA-binding protein with conserved functions relative to other LARP1 orthologs. Through proteomic and transcriptomic studies, we show that Slr1p regulates the translation and stability of mRNAs that encode ribosomal proteins and other components of the translational apparatus in S. pombe. We further identify a 5′ Proximal AC-rich (5′PAC) motif, residing close to the start AUG, in these mRNAs and propose that they represent a cohort of proto-5′TOP mRNAs. Through structural analyses and mutagenesis studies, we show that the LaM of Slr1p is responsible for binding to the 5′PAC RNA motif, where mutagenesis of a single amino acid in our characterized binding site disrupts this interaction. We further demonstrate that Slr1p plays a role in adaptation to translation stress and that its phosphorylation status may allow for several functional states. Our findings are consistent with the conservation of LARP1 function across eukaryotes, and suggest that the involvement of this protein family in ribosomal protein mRNA translation and stability is influenced by a more fundamental LaM-dependent form of LARP1 regulation that is utilized in S. pombe.
Access status: Open Access ,
CHARLES DENNEY AND WAHKOOTOWIN: HOW A POPULIST GENEALOGIST INADVERTENTLY SHAPED METIS IDENTITY IN WESTERN ARCHIVES, 1967-2002
(2025-07-23) Dolmage, Erin Rae Marion; Carolyn Podruchny
This dissertation investigates the genealogical collection held at the Glenbow Archives in Calgary. Curated by Edmonton genealogist Charles Denney and collected from the mid-1960s up until his death in 2002, the collection documented the genealogical data of Metis families. The Denney collection is not merely a repository of information. It actively contributes to the construction of contemporary Metis identities. Denney’s collection began with documenting his Metis wife Mildred Sherlock’s family history. The collection changed through Denney’s ‘kitchen table’ collaborations with Metis genealogists Clarence Kipling and Pat McCloy, its purchase by the Glenbow archives, and the use of the Denney collection by the Metis Nation to pursue wahkootowin (relatedness) and post-Powley section 35 rights. By critically engaging with genealogical records, this dissertation concludes that Denney’s archive was guided by the Metis concept of wahkootowin. Although these genealogies originated in a colonial concept of white-pioneer narratives, they have transformed into an act of Metis agency that asserts Metis identities and sovereignty. This study emphasizes the importance of understanding the creation and curation of archival collections and their impact on the recognition and preservation of Indigenous worldviews.
Access status: Open Access ,
TIDES
(2025-07-23) Huras, Jessica Elizabeth; Fabio Basso Montanari
Thesis Screenplay Title: Tides © Jessica Huras 2025 Masters in Screenwriting Feature length dramatic screenplay adaptation of the novel Tides by Sara Freeman After a stillbirth, 39-year-old Mara leaves her life in Montreal, unable to bear the weight of her grief or the presence of her husband, Lucien, or her brother, Paul, and his wife with their newborn baby. Seeking escape, she arrives in a remote Nova Scotia seaside town, where the vast tidal swells reflect her teetering between self-annihilation and self-preservation. As the possibility of connection and the slow return of desire begin to draw her back to herself, scenes from her past unfold, revealing moments of intimacy and estrangement. Through these memories, Mara confronts her grief and begins to carve a new path forward. My research examines how grief shapes a woman’s capacity for connection, autonomy, and self-reconstruction after loss. Additionally, I explore the visual representation of grief in film and how isolation and relationality function as catalysts for redefining identity.
Access status: Open Access ,
Field Testing and Economic Analysis of Residential Vehicle to Grid Deployment
(2025-07-23) Nasr, Khunsha; Hany E. Z. Farag
The development of Electric Vehicles (EVs) has surged in recent years, positioning them as direct replacements for fossil fuel-dependent internal combustion engines. However, the rise in EVs will place considerable strain on the grid, necessitating transmission and distribution infrastructure upgrades. In this regard, EVs equipped with bidirectional charging can act as independent energy storage, managing energy at home during normal and emergency conditions, feeding excess energy back into the grid to reduce its strain, and potentially generating revenue for their owners. However, the high cost of Residential Bidirectional Chargers (RBC) and the limited availability of EVs that support bidirectional charging, particularly Vehicle-to-Home/Grid (V2H/G), remain significant barriers. Despite extensive theoretical research on bidirectional charging of EVs, there is a lack of real-world testing and comprehensive techno-economic analysis to assess the feasibility of the wide deployment of these technologies in residential areas. This thesis aims to investigate the techno-economic viability for the wide deployment of RBC throughout the following: 1. Field Testing for RBCs: Conducting practical evaluations of RBCs to gather empirical data on their performance, efficiency, and reliability under real-world conditions. 2. Identification of Policy and Regulatory Barriers: Analyzing the legislative and regulatory frameworks in Ontario to identify obstacles that hinder the deployment of RBCs, and proposing solutions to overcome these barriers. 3. Development of a Mathematical Model: Creating a model to perform a regional-wide cost-benefit analysis for RBC deployment programs, considering three main stakeholders: local distribution companies, EV owners, and ratepayers. By addressing these aspects, this research will provide a comprehensive understanding of the practical and economic implications of implementing RBC technologies, paving the way for its broader adoption and integration into the energy infrastructure.
Access status: Open Access ,
I'm Not That Person: A Qualitative Study Of Moral Injury In Forensic Psychiatric Patients
(2025-07-23) Sarah Kate Atkey; Joel Goldberg
Few studies have examined the psychological impacts of committing criminal acts of violence on the lives of perpetrators who were mentally ill at the time of offence and in which the act itself may reflect behaviour that is uncharacteristic of the individual. Theoretical and clinical reports describe a phenomenon termed moral injury which profiles the deleterious emotional effects that can arise from actions that transgress moral beliefs and expectations (Litz et al., 2009). Shame, guilt, spiritual/existential conflict, and loss of trust are considered to be core symptoms of moral injury (Jinkerson, 2016) with growing empirical studies which examine moral injury in military and public safety worker samples. The extent to which these kinds of moral injury phenomena might be evident among mentally ill perpetrators was explored using a qualitative-methods approach in a sample of 19 adult participants hospitalized in a forensic program inpatient service in Ontario, Canada. A qualitative interview was conducted where participants were asked to describe feelings about the index offence, the effect it has had on their well-being, and how they have coped with having committed the offence. We also collected quantitative measures of shame, guilt, psychopathology, and traumatic stress; findings indicated that the sample was demonstrating mean moderate levels of traumatic stress. Qualitatively, using a reflexive thematic analysis process, five themes and 23 subthemes were generated. Each theme relates to the various impacts, emotions, and cognitions experienced by the participants as a result of the index offence. The five themes which emerged were: (1) Living with the Emotional Aftermath; (2) Trying to Make Sense and Coming to Terms; (3) My Eyes Have Opened; (4) Facing the Music; and (5) Moving On. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding forensic inpatients who may be attempting to come to terms with offences they committed and for informing moral injury intervention strategies which might be adapted for the forensic mental health hospital service and recidivism prevention programs.
Access status: Open Access ,
Effects Of Anthropogenic Light And Noise On Anti-Predator Behaviour And Reproductive Success Of An Urban Nesting Passerine
(2025-07-23) Scialla, Ileana; Laura McKinnon
Species inhabiting urbanized habitats are continually facing challenges as urbanization intensifies. For urban birds, noise pollution may affect acoustic communication, and light pollution may affect circadian rhythms, yet very little research has been conducted in these areas. I investigated the effects of noise and light pollution on daily nest survival and anti-predator behaviour of American robins (Turdus migratorius) Toronto, ON Canada over 2 summers by monitoring nests and by using an observational and experimental approach. Anti-predator behaviours were influenced by light and noise pollution, but nest survival was unaffected. Higher levels of anthropogenic light and noise had no effect on nest survival; even experimentally increasing light levels at nests had no effect. Higher light and noise pollution did increase the frequency of anti-predator behaviours by nesting birds. Lastly, in areas of higher noise pollution robins were less likely to respond to experimental predator calls.
Access status: Open Access ,
Bayesian Methods For Data Integration And High Dimensional Linear Model With Non-Sparsity
(2025-07-23) Zhang, Guan-Lin; Xin Gao
We address data integration where correlated data are collected across multiple platforms, modeling responses and predictors linearly. We extend this framework by incorporating random errors from sub-Gaussian and sub-exponential distributions. The goal is to identify key predictors across platforms, even as the number of predictors and observations grows indefinitely. Our approach combines marginal response densities from multiple platforms into a composite likelihood and introduces a Bayesian model selection criterion. Under regularity conditions, this criterion consistently selects the true model, even with a diverging model size. When true models differ across platforms, our method recovers the union support of predictors—those relevant in at least one platform. We implement a Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) algorithm for model selection. Simulations show that integrating multiple platforms improves model selection accuracy. Applied to financial data, our method combines information from three indices, identifying key predictors and yielding a more accurate predictive model with lower mean squared error than single-source models. In high-dimensional regression, sparsity assumptions on regression coefficients often fail when most coefficients are nonzero, causing bias. To address this, we propose Bayesian Grouping-Gibbs Sampling (BGGS), which partitions coefficients into 𝑘 groups, enabling efficient high-dimensional sampling. We explore 𝑘-selection via simulations and recommend an "elbow plot" for optimal determination. Theoretical analysis ensures model selection consistency and bounded prediction error. Numerical experiments confirm BGGS’s advantage in estimation and prediction. Applied to financial data, it effectively identifies robust predictive models.
Access status: Open Access ,
Chronically Excluded? Public Toilet Access For Youth With Gastrointestinal Illnesses
(2025-07-23) Kiriazis, Stefanie; Alison Bain
This thesis explores the intersection between public infrastructure, health and youth geographies, time geography, and sensuous and emotional embodiments to highlight public toilets as a critical yet often overlooked urban space. Through these intersections, this thesis not only spotlights public toilets as central nodes in everyday life, but also the differential ways these spaces impact populations who rely on them most for medical needs. Through a feminist methodological approach that employs semi-structured interviews and space-time diaries, this thesis asks: How do the daily mobility patterns of youth with chronic gastrointestinal illnesses depend on the spatial and temporal availability and accessibility of public and private toilet facilities? This thesis investigates the constraints to mobility and wellness that these individuals face when met with inadequate and inaccessible toilet infrastructure, with a case study in the Greater Toronto Area. Encompassing both suburbs and city centre, the research sample illustrates the infrastructural disparities between dense and sparse landscapes. From the ‘in-betweens’ from one toilet to the next, to the sensuous and emotional experiences felt within these spaces themselves, this research investigates how the everyday lifeworlds of chronically ill youth – through work, school, and play – can be enabled and disabled by the quality of infrastructure they are met with, and the coping mechanisms they employ to aid their journeys and experiences, attributing to overall wellness.
Access status: Open Access ,
Tail Sets And Level Curves Of Bivariate Distributions: Geometry And Estimation
(2025-07-23) Patgunarajah, Rishigesh; Edward Furman
By incorporating Gumbel's bivariate exponential (BVE) distribution as the foundation, we aim to minimize losses between two business lines. Motivated by the need for a financial model, we chose Gumbel’s BVE for its thin-tailed property, serving as a great foundation for future extensions to multidimensional risk measures. We derive a closed-form expression for $H(x,y$) using the law of total probability, linking it to the value-at-risk concept represented by set $\mathcal{A}_p$. Recognizing that companies allocate capital near the boundary of $\mathcal{A}_p$, we define set $\mathcal{O}_p$ as the level $p$ curve of optimal values. A convexity analysis via a Hessian matrix and Sylvester’s Criterion provides insight into optimal capital allocation, and we apply Lagrange multipliers to prove a loss-minimization theorem. Graphs and tables illustrate our findings. Overall, this research offers practical insights into resource allocation, boosting company growth and financial stability.
Access status: Open Access ,
An Immigrant Neighbourhood As A Site Of Planetary Urbanization: The Case Of St. James Town, Toronto
(2025-07-23) Formanowicz, Dominik Tadeusz; Joseph Mensah
Immigration is a contested topic in a global reality defined by the spatiality of nation-states. However, in the case of South-North mobility, the public debate usually overlooks the role of colonial legacies and capitalist dependencies in shaping the patterns and trajectories of migration. On the scale of the Global North’s cities, narratives tend to revolve around the immigrant enclaves as problematic or dangerous. This dissertation informs the debate with a qualitative overview of the neighbourhood of St. James Town in Toronto, an area characterized by a strong immigrant presence. Analyzing the spatiality of immigrants on the scale of the nation-state, the city and the neighbourhood itself, it employs the conceptual framework of planetary urbanization to explain the role of newcomers as agents creating and maintaining global flows of capital and ideas, actively taking part in the production of space in Canada and far beyond it. At the same time, this work examines the spatiality of an immigrant enclave as an expression of a settler colonial nation-state, highlighting the vital role of spaces such as St. James Town in global and domestic patterns of precarity and exploitation. Portraying the neighbourhood in a dynamic moment of change, both in terms of infrastructural interventions as well as population structure, this dissertation highlights the resilience and community-formation skills of newcomers as well as the great cost of spatial and social adaptation. It also points out the shortcomings of the planetary urbanization concept, underscoring the necessity to include post-colonial criticisms and a nuanced, multi-faceted role of human mobility in explaining the works of global capitalism.
Access status: Open Access ,
Neural Effects Of Multisensory Dance Training In Parkinson's Disease: A Longitudinal Neuroimaging Case Study
(2025-07-23) Simon, Jenny Royze Daoang; Joseph FX DeSouza
Dance is associated with a range of motor and non-motor benefits in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and recent evidence suggests that regular dance participation may delay progression of these symptoms. However, little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms of dance interventions in PD. This thesis aimed to explore potential neuroplastic changes in a 69-year-old male with mild PD participating in regular dance classes over 29 weeks. Functional MRI was performed at four timepoints (pre-training, 11 weeks, 18 weeks, 29 weeks), in which the participant imagined a dance choreography while listening to music. Neural activity was compared between dance-imagery and fixation blocks. Region of interest analysis revealed significant BOLD signal activation in the supplementary motor area, right and left superior temporal gyri and the right insula, with modulation observed over the training period. These results suggest the potential for dance to induce neuroplastic changes in people with PD.
Access status: Open Access ,
AN UNEASY TRUCE: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SCHOOLING AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT FOR ROHINGYA REFUGEE YOUTHS IN ONTARIO
(2025-07-23) Phyu, Hnin Pwint; Sandra Ruth Schecter
This dissertation explores how Rohingya refugee youths are navigating their historical legacy and past and ongoing lived experiences as they familiarize themselves with the culture of mainstream schooling in Canada and attempt to determine their place within this complex network. In particular, it investigates the role that the habitus and social position of participants within this migration community in southwestern Ontario play in structuring refugee youths’ choices and opportunities in and through education. Given these goals, I pay special attention to the youths’ evolving attitudes to the predispositions of their parents with regard to child language socialization and cultural continuity, and the influences that schooling experiences have in introducing youths to alternate cross-cultural currents. I use two primary conceptual frameworks: (a) Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977a, 1977b) perspective on habitus and cultural capital and (b) linguistic and cultural socialization (Bayley & Schecter, 2003; Schecter, 2015; Schecter & Bayley, 2002, 2004). These frameworks ground ethnographic case studies representing the perspectives I have identified in my empirical research—through participant observations, surveys/questionnaires, ethnographic interviews, and other, secondary data sources. My research findings revealed that participating youths are struggling to adopt a concept of victimhood that their parents, as genocide survivors, have embodied, but that is not part of the youths’ direct experiential reality. In addition, although my focal participants were well aware of the shortcomings and weaknesses of the school system in providing for their learning, they didn’t appear especially surprised or unsettled by these inadequacies; nor did they expect school personnel to initiate imminent improvements in meeting their academic needs. These generally positive attitudes reflected an appreciation of the affordances of the public education system in Canada in terms of freedom of association and life choices as compared with their desperate status in Myanmar and/or horrible existence in refugee camps.
Access status: Open Access ,
Assessing And Enhancing The Quality Of News Headlines Using Machine Learning
(2025-07-23) Omidvar, Amin; Aijun An
Headlines play a pivotal role in capturing readers' attention, and their quality is critical for engaging audiences. In this thesis, we propose various solutions to assist news media in crafting high-quality headlines. First, we delve into headline quality assessment, devising four innovative indicators that automatically evaluate headlines' quality. Our proposed model empowers news outlets to automatically determine the quality of published headlines. We evaluate the quality of headlines from The Globe and Mail using these four indicators and provide insightful results. We then use this labeled data to train our novel headline quality prediction model to predict the quality of unpublished headlines, assisting journalists in selecting high-quality headlines for their articles. Furthermore, we facilitate journalists' work by recommending high-quality headlines for their articles. To accomplish this, we propose a headline generative model that learns to generate headlines using Reinforcement Learning (RL). Our model can be optimized not only with respect to a non-differentiable metric but also based on a combination of two different metrics simultaneously. Additionally, we enhance headline generation in terms of both training speed and the quality of the generated headlines by proposing a novel architecture utilizing state-of-the-art transformer models. In our architecture, after generating candidate headlines using state-of-the-art models, we select the most popular headline using our headline popularity prediction model. Moreover, we establish a popularity benchmark for evaluating headline generation models based on their ability to generate popular headlines. Lastly, we forecast changes in how people consume news articles, envisioning a shift towards interacting with agents instead of navigating news portals. To address existing challenges and enable this transition, we introduce Semantic In-Context Learning (S-ICL), an innovative approach enabling Large Language Models (LLMs) to deliver updated news in a conversational format, enhancing user engagement and comprehension for news media.
Access status: Open Access ,
Classification in textual conversations: A study of emotion prediction and derailment forecasting
(2025-07-23) Enas Khaled Ahm AlTarawneh; Michael R Jenkin
Emotion is fundamental to human communication, shaping not just the content but the very essence of our interactions with others. In the realm of Natural Language Processing (NLP), particularly for applications that bridge human-machine communication such as health-care, education, and social networks, understanding and emulating emotional nuances becomes paramount. While it may be straightforward for humans to perceive and reason about the feelings of others in conversations, it is a challenge for machines, mainly due to context. Conversation models in the literature that incorporate context vary in the type of contextual information they incorporate (e.g., temporal structure, speaker identification, commonsense knowledge). However, studies to date have not explicitly quantified the impact of the type(s) of information incorporated within the critical conversation classification tasks of future emotion prediction and emotional derailment forecasting, nor the structure of the model architectures and encoding structures used for these tasks. These issues are addressed in this work. This thesis approaches this problem by developing AI models that can capture different design choices for these tasks. Critically, the models developed here are designed to capture three properties inherently connected to the emotional predictive problem in dialogues; sequence modeling, self-dependency modeling, and recency. These modeling dimensions are then incorporated into one of two deep neural network architectures, a sequence model and a graph convolutional network model. The former is designed to capture the sequence of utterances in a dialogue, while the latter captures the sequence of utterances and the formation of multi-party dialogues. Through an empirical evaluation of these model architectures, data type and data encoding choices, this work demonstrates (i) the importance of the self- dependency and recency model dimensions for the prediction tasks, (ii) the effectiveness of graph neural models in improving the predictions obtained by sequence-only models, (iii) the impact of fusing multi-source information of each utterance into utterance capsules, specifically emotion labels and common sense knowledge and, (iv) that using a transformer- based forecaster for the conversation predictive task also improves performance. Optimal design choices within these structures provides near best in class performance for next emotion prediction in conversations and best in class performance for conversation derailment prediction. This thesis also shows that simple fine-tuning of large language models is not an effective classification method for these tasks. Evaluations are performed using standard conversational datasets and current state of the art network models. Results from this work will help inform future dataset structure and the development of advanced sentiment analysis systems.
Access status: Open Access ,
Realizing Reconciliation: Analyzing Resource Revenue Sharing Agreements And Indigenous-Settler Relations In Ontario's Mining Industry
(2025-07-23) Montevirgen, Mathew Joseph; David Szablowski
In 2018, the Government of Ontario and the Grand Council Treaty #3, the Mushkegowuk Council and the Wabun Tribal Council announced that they had entered into three resource revenue sharing agreements. These new agreements were publicly celebrated as an example of reconciliation with First Nations in Ontario. This dissertation critically studies the development of these new agreements, from their conceptual origins in reconciliation to how they reshape Indigenous-settler relations in Ontario. Relying on settler colonial studies, governmentality, and Mills’ legality tree as theoretical frameworks, and through archival research, textual analysis and the principles of Indigenous research methodologies, this dissertation paints a complex picture of reconciliation, resource revenue sharing and settler colonialism in Ontario. I begin by theorizing the lifeworld of liberalism, noting how Christian creationism influenced liberal philosophy, settler colonialism, and reconciliation discourses. I argue that Christian theology is anthropocentric, which is reflected by how state actors use reconciliation discourses, and that this contrasts with Indigenous worldviews. Despite the narrower conception of reconciliation, I contend that reconciliation, as a political rationality, was heavily influenced by Indigenous peoples seeking to remake their relationship with the state in the 1990s. I explicate that resource revenue sharing emerged as a new governmental concept for repairing Indigenous-settler relations. Next, I trace the development of reconciliation as a new political rationality in Ontario. I then examine the decade and a half long story of how resource revenue sharing went from a divisive concept to one that was widely accepted by a diverse assemblage of Indigenous, state, extractive and market actors in Ontario, and how it was developed into a reconciliatory technology. With humility, I also consider how these new agreements can affect Indigenous-settler relations in Ontario. I reason that while reconciliation produces concessions for Indigenous peoples from settlers, it may still leave in place asymmetrical power relations, as settlers seek to govern Indigenous peoples in accordance with their own settler colonial interests regarding resource extraction. However, rather than concluding that reconciliation is an ideology that only shields settler colonial relations, I argue that since reconciliation has a concessionary logic, reconciliation discourses have the potential to affect the actions of settler actors, even if it does not end settler colonialism. This is further explored by how the Progressive Conservative government eschewed reconciliation to de-Indigenize resource revenue sharing, and how there are fierce discursive struggles to define reconciliation and influence the scope of its concessions. Finally, I assert that reconciliation produces messy alliances, technologies and outcomes, and that future scholarship requires a careful and contextual analysis of reconciliation.
Access status: Open Access ,
Perception Of Materials In Virtual Reality Based On Their Audiovisual Properties
(2025-07-23) Koppisetty, Harshitha; Robert S Allison
This study examined the effects of cue conflicts between auditory and visual material information in a virtual environment. All combinations of impact sounds and visual textures for four materials were paired, creating sixteen conditions. Participants, wearing a VR headset, viewed the rendered target object and heard the paired sound when it was struck with a virtual metal rod. To study the effect of agency, half the trials involved an agent striking the target (agent-interaction), while in the other half, participants struck it themselves (self-interaction). Once they classified the material of the target object, their responses and response times were recorded. Results show that participants relied largely on auditory properties when classifying materials, no significant difference was found between agent-interaction and self-interaction modes, and in four conditions, potential audiovisual illusions were observed. These findings underscore the importance of high-quality auditory cues in VR, as discordant signals can distort perceived material properties.

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