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Consent is a low bar: Building a pleasure-centred practice for violence prevention
Full text linkIndigenous resistance to colonial gender-based violence, Black feminism, and the broader anti-violence movement have brought issues of sexual harassment and assault into mainstream discourse. This advocacy has led to the creation of violence prevention programs, typically led by non-profit organizations, which advocate for educational workshops as a method for preventing sexual assault. Through my own experiences working in anti-violence education, I have come to question the ways that such prevention efforts can rely solely on teaching consent and reduce conversations about sex to the avoidance of assault.
In this research, I sought to understand how youth education could be expanded to better resist oppression and account for pleasure. To do so, I asked eight community-based educators what they have come to understand as core principles of sex positive, queer, feminist, decolonial, and anti-racist education about sex and relationships. My research emphasizes the necessity of using a structural analysis of power dynamics, ensuring that education represents the youth that it seeks to serve, and using de-stigmatized and contextually relevant information. By synthesizing academic and community perspectives, this research then articulates strategies for enacting consent education that is informed by Black feminism, Indigenous resurgence, and queer theories. This research offers a vision of sex-positive violence prevention education framework which raises the bar far above consent.Graduat
Toyhood
No full textFor my honours thesis in Gender Studies, I’m writing, directing, and editing Toyhood. This six-episode web series follows the protagonist pretending to be male to sneak into an all-boys college - only to learn this is an all-trans-boys college. Instead of the traditional rectangle design, I decided to make this poster on a three-dimensional sphere to more accurately depict how the methodological, theoretical, and practical elements of my project converge. I decided on a mixed media approach to reflect my Fan Studies methodology, which Naomi Jacobs argues is an inherently interdisciplinary bricolage approach that scavenges tools from a variety of different frameworks. Toyhood is a feminist film project, meaning that it’s a highly collaborative, community-based, and intersectional form of art. Thus, I chose a sphere shape to reflect the embodied, affective, and circulatory forms of my feminist filmmaking practice. On my poster, there are sections dedicated to my Fan Studies methodology, my practice-based engagements with mise-en-scène and choreography, and my theoretical inspirations around transnormativity, hegemonic (trans)masculinity, and death. My hope is that the audience who engages with this project can be inspired to think of new connections, tensions, and questions between each of these subjects.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
Climate variability leads to multiple oxygenation episodes across the Great Oxidation Event
No full textThe temporal relationship between global glaciations and the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) suggests that climate change played an important role in Earth's oxygenation. The potential role of temperature is captured by the stratigraphic proximity between glacial deposits and sediments containing mass-independent fractionation of sulfur isotopes (MIF-S). We use a time-dependent one-dimensional photochemical model to investigate whether temperature changes associated with global glaciations can drive oscillations in atmospheric O2 levels and MIF-S production across the GOE. We find that extreme climate change can cause atmospheric O2 to oscillate between pre (10−5 PAL) levels. Post-glacial hot-moist greenhouse climates lead to post-GOE O2 levels because the abundant H2O vapor and oxidizing radicals drive the depletion of reduced species. This pattern is generally consistent with the MIF-S signal observed in the sedimentary record, suggesting a link between global glaciations and O2 oscillations across the GOE.Primary financial support came from Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants to Colin Goldblatt (RGPIN-2018-05929) and Anne-Sofie Ahm (RGPIN-2022-03912). High-performance computing facilities were provided via a NSERC Research Tools and Infrastructure Grant (RTI-2020-00277).FacultyReviewe
From competition to cooperation : reworking care relations in eldercare
Full text linkIn this dissertation, I argue for a transnational relational approach to eldercare that prioritizes its affective and emotional dimensions as resources for social transformation. I suggest that the changing and dynamic nature of what it means to age and grow ‘old’ in industrialized societies, as people encounter and make sense of the aging body in modern life, is a fruitful arena from which to reframe economic constructs of eldercare’s value. The Introduction chapter starts with the research context of eldercare policy in Singapore and Taiwan, both ‘Asian Tiger’ states that achieved rapid post-war industrial success. Here, I provide a relational account of eldercare planning in a transnational political economy of care where gendered and racialized ideologies prevail, manifest most acutely in the regional presence of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) – known as migrant care workers (MCWs) at a global scale. I then outline the central research questions, which are informed by the frameworks of feminist political economy (FPE) in care work and global racial capitalism:
1. How is eldercare treated differently from childcare? By what means do Singapore and Taiwan contrast in their eldercare regime management?
2. In what ways do FDWs in Singapore and Taiwan experience and make sense of eldercare? How do their narratives complicate popular economic justifications of care work, and what are some conundrums of ‘care’ that emerge?
3. What do my interviews indicate about the potential of resisting exploitative care relations through cooperative agendas that centre the emotional aspects of care and vulnerability?
I construct an overarching transnational relational approach to eldercare from the answers I received during the research interviews. Between May 2021 and July 2022, I conducted a total of 67 Zoom/WhatsApp interviews with the various actors implicated in eldercare provision: FDWs (live-in caregivers), domestic employers, family caregivers, nursing home managers, and NGO workers. Taken together, these conversations reveal the importance of accounting for unequal power relations in the broader imperial legacies of gendered and racialized care work. On that note, Chapters One and Two point to race and gender as structuring principles of care labour migration, but also contrasts the different experiences of colonial and state formation that result in significant variations of eldercare policy. Thereafter, Chapters Three to Five delve into some instances of lived experience in eldercare regimes, which people approach from different vantage points and positions of power (e.g. domestic employers and citizen activists vis-à-vis FDWs). From their words and my observations, I construct accounts of normalized ageism in households struggling to care adequately for their young and old, which I narrate through Chapter Three’s framework of “reproductive ageism”. Thereafter, Chapters Four and Five delve into stories of FDWs and ordinary citizens who resist the pressures of marketized care, namely the migrant-in-the-family (‘foreign maid’) model. Last but not least, the Conclusion chapter revisits some interview encounters and reflects on how cooperative understandings about care, as a necessary (rather than negative per se) state of dependence in each and every human being’s life course, can be achieved.Graduat
Ambient Air Pressure Effects on Droplet Descent and Dry Surface Impact Dynamics
Full text linkDroplet impact and the affect of ambient pressure on the droplet impact dynamics are of interest in many applications. These include applications in the industrial, biomedical, environmental and academic fields. When a droplet descends, prior to impact, the ambient pressure, air density and drag forces affect how the droplet behaves in this multi-phase flow. It has been shown that, by reducing ambient pressure, droplet splash can be removed completely [1]. The aim of this study is to perform experiments to further the understanding of that multi-phase flow and gain clarity on how ambient pressure may influence the droplet shape and in-turn, potentially influence the onset of prompt splash upon droplet impact on a dry surface. Instead of reducing ambient pressure to remove splash, this study attempts to increase ambient pressure to induce splash and investigate and compare the droplet dynamics in the pressurized and non-pressurized scenarios using high speed imaging. Conventionally, studies have investigated the droplet upon impact, mostly ignoring the droplet’s descent dynamics prior to contacting the dry surface [1] [2] [3] [4]. This study focuses on those pre-impact droplet dynamics by investigating how droplet shapes differ between the pressurized and non-pressurized scenarios. By imaging the droplet descent in a pressurized chamber, a significant difference in the droplet aspect ratio (width-to-height) could be witnessed in the pressurized scenario, compared to the non-pressurized one. The average aspect ratio for droplets descending in an environment with 4atm pressure tended to be greater than 1, deforming droplets to an oblate or elliptical shape. Under standard 1atm pressure, however, droplets under the same velocity conditions tended towards an aspect ratio of 1 (or a spherical shape). Additionally, the amplitude of droplet aspect ratio changes (from oblate to prolate) was higher in the 4atm condition, compared to the 1atm one. As such, it was concluded that when ambient pressure is increased to the point where prompt splash is witnessed, droplet aspect ratio is affected. This may be something to consider when developing a full understanding of the dynamics that affect droplet splash on impact with a dry surface.Graduat
Log Message Anomaly Detection using Positive and Unlabeled Learning
Full text linkLog messages are widely used in cloud servers and software systems. Anomaly
detection of log messages is important as millions of logs are generated each day.
However, besides having a complex and unstructured form, log messages are large
unlabeled datasets which makes classification very difficult. In this thesis, a log
message anomaly detection technique is proposed which employs Positive and Unlabeled Learning (PU Learning) to detect anomalies. Aggregated reliable negative
logs are selected using the Isolation Forest, PU Learning, and Random Forest algorithms. Then, anomaly detection is conducted using deep learning Long Short-Term
Memory (LSTM) network. The proposed model is evaluated using the commonly employed Openstack, BGL, and Thunderbird datasets and the results obtained indicate
that the proposed model performs better than several well-known approaches in the
literature.Graduat
Predictive modeling of future full-ocean depth SSPs utilizing hierarchical long short-term memory neural networks
No full textThe spatial-temporal distribution of underwater sound speed plays a critical role in determining the propagation mode of underwater acoustic signals. Therefore, rapid estimation and prediction of sound speed distribution are imperative for facilitating underwater positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services. While sound speed profile (SSP) inversion methods offer quicker response times compared to direct measurement methods, these methods often focus on constructing spatial sound velocity fields and heavily rely on sonar observation data, thus imposing stringent requirements on data sources. To delve into the temporal distribution pattern of sound speed and achieve SSP prediction without relying on sonar observation data, we introduce the hierarchical long short-term memory (H-LSTM) neural network for SSP prediction. Our method enables the estimation of sound speed distribution without the need for on-site data measurement, significantly enhancing time efficiency. Compared to other state-of-the-art approaches, the H-LSTM model achieves a root mean square error (RMSE) of less than 1 m/s in predicting monthly average sound speed distribution. Its prediction accuracy has improved several-fold over alternative methods, which validates the robust capability of our proposed model in predicting SSP.This research was funded by Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2023QF128), Laoshan Laboratory (LSKJ202205104), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022M722990), Qingdao Postdoctoral Science Foundation (QDBSH20220202061), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC:62271459), National Defense Science and Technology Innovation Special Zone Project: Marine Science and Technology Collaborative Innovation Center (22-05-CXZX-04-01-02), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Ocean University of China (202313036).FacultyReviewe
A Study of the Hegemonic Potentials of Iranian Teachers’ Collective Activism (1920-2023)
Full text linkThe Iranian Teachers’ Movement (ITM) is socially and politically one of most important groups and professional associations in contemporary Iran, having its roots in the foundation of modern education originating under the Pahlavi Dynasty (1925-1979). Under severe suppression by both monarchial and Islamic regimes, it has nonetheless grown into a formidable social and political force. The movement was born out of a teachers’ protest in 1961 before slipping into a hiatus, until its revival with rich political imagination, as an independent association following the 1979 Revolution. The radical ideas of the first generation of teachers’ organic intellectuals, however, could not be realized due to the severe crackdown on all opposition in the1980s. The movement gradually and incrementally grew back in the 1990s but in a rather fragmented way. The idea of an independent teachers’ association or union was revived at this time by the second generation of teachers’ organic intellectuals of the early 2000s, known as the “Chalk-holding Teachers” and by establishing the teachers’ “guild centers” in various cities. In 2010, the third generation of the teachers’ organic intellectuals, called the “Justice-seeking Teachers”, turned the ITM into a formidable hegemonic power by restructuring the teachers’ discourse based on free education and children’s rights in the context of neoliberal cutbacks to public education. The revolutionary uprising of “Woman, Life, Freedom” in 2022 compelled the ITM to confront a historic question, “What is the moral and historical responsibility of teachers in response to this popular uprising?” and “how can the ITM make the diverse demands of participants in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement its own?” This thesis explores hegemonic potentials of ITM through historical and empirical research that is analytically enriched through the theory of hegemony by Antonio Gramsci.Graduate2024-12-1
Efficiency of a new iterative algorithm using fixed-point approach in the settings of uniformly convex Banach spaces
Full text linkIn the presence of Banach spaces, a novel iterative algorithm is presented in this study using the Chatterjea–Suzuki–C (CSC) condition, and the convergence theorems are established. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm is discussed analytically and numerically. We explain the solution of the Caputo fractional differential problem using our main result and then provide the numerical simulation to validate the results. Moreover, we use MATLAB R (2021a) to compare the obtained numerical results using the new iterative algorithm with some efficient existing algorithms. The work seems to contribute to the current advancement of fixed-point approximation iterative techniques in Banach spaces.FacultyReviewe
Ring-Expansion and Ring-Opening of Phosphorus-Containing Heterocycles
Full text linkThis thesis describes the synthesis of phosphorus-rich heterocyclic frameworks through the ring-expansion of cyclic phosphanes, which we demonstrate as a method to access structure-colour correlation and switchability as well as newly accessible P3C and P3CO frameworks. Investigations into the synthesis of and physical properties of hybrid phosphonate-siloxane heterocycles for the design of new P-O-Si-O polymers through ROP are also described, alongside investigations into the electronic and steric stabilization of phosphonate moieties with the goal of minimizing dynamic covalent behaviour in phosphonate-containing rings and polymers.
Chapter 1 gives an overview of silicon and phosphorus chemistry from elements to heterocycles, covering ring expansions and ring-opening polymerizations of silicon and phosphorus heterocycles, and reviewing strategies to accessing new main group polymers.
Chapter 2 describes the acid-mediated ring-expansion of sterically encumbered cyclic phosphanes with nitriles, the structural characterization of the bent rings, and the change of the electronic structure induced by the ring-bending which allows for a charge transfer to occur.
Chapter 3 describes the investigation into the substrate scope of acid-mediated ring-expansion of (tBuP)3, which was found to be limited to substrates which bear an exocyclic nitrogen which acts as a Lewis base to activate substrates upon protonation. Structural characterization of cationic and neutral cycloaddition products of xylyl isonirile and tert-butyl isocyanate, the latter of which forms a novel P3CO framework, are described, as are electronic effects on substrate specificity and a discussion of substrates which did not provide selective addition.
Chapter 4 describes the synthesis and characterization of hybrid phosphonate-siloxane heterocycles, and their physical characterization as relevant to accessing the ability of the rings to undergo thermal ROP. Rings lacking kinetic stabilization are found to be dynamic in solution. The least sterically hindered of these rings were found to form polymeric material upon heating, while more sterically hindered derivatives did not undergo ROP. Our preliminary studies into preventing observed dynamic behaviour through electronic and steric modification of phosphonate moieties are also described.
Chapter 5 provides an outlook for the work in this thesis, with an overview of potential routes for future studies.Graduate2025-05-0