Scholarship@Western

Balmes, Jay Mark M

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
Growing Digital Equity Through Accessible Blockchain 
Applications to Grow Low-Tech Spaces 
Jay Mark M. Balmes 
Western University, mbalmes.mba2023@ivey.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Balmes, Jay Mark M., "Growing Digital Equity Through Accessible Blockchain Applications to Grow Low-
Tech Spaces" (2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship 
and Creative Activity. 307. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/307 
Mateo Balmes | MBA 
Entry:  
My venture team uses the power of blockchain to empower the real-world economy by 
leveraging the digital potential of commonly low-tech spaces such as social services, civic 
engagement, and small-business creation. We do this by creating low-cost mechanisms 
to generate, promote and sell virtual assets that could serve as records, contracts, or 
simply signed media. As a social business and laboratory, the team is entering the space 
and its complementary niches to further the lowering of barriers to understanding 
cryptocurrency—causing synergies with even more untapped industries in the endeavor 
of organizational growth in the physical and digital worlds. 
 


English

Growing Digital Equity Through Accessible Blockchain Applications to Grow Low-Tech Spaces

Tuffaha, Marwa

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
Are Mutational Biases Causing Cancer? 
Marwa Tuffaha 
Western University, mtuffaha@uwo.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Tuffaha, Marwa, "Are Mutational Biases Causing Cancer?" (2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. 308. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/308 
Are Mutational Biases Causing Cancer? 
 
Cancer is one of the leading causes of human death. Understanding the 
development of this disease is fundamental to improving prevention and 
treatment. Our research studies differences in mutational patterns between 
cancerous and normal cells, as mutations are known to be critical to cancer 
development. Mutations can be classified as either transitions or transversions, 
and the transition:transversion bias is an important characteristic of new 
mutations. Unicellular organisms have been previously shown to access more 
beneficial mutations, and hence grow faster, if this bias is reversed. By analyzing 
existing data from human cells, we found that this bias is typically reversed in 
cancer compared to normal tissues.  This is interesting because cancer cells have a 
selective advantage and outgrow normal cells as cancer develops. More data 
analysis will examine detailed mutational patterns in cancer cells, and the impacts 
of bias reversal in cancer are being investigated through simulations. 
 
 
Marwa Tuffaha 
PhD Candidate 
Western University 
mtuffaha@uwo.ca 


Are Mutational Biases Causing Cancer?

Voll, Meghan E

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
Value and Values in Mobile Dating Apps 
Meghan E. Voll 
mvoll@uwo.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Voll, Meghan E., "Value and Values in Mobile Dating Apps" (2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. 317. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/317 
Meghan Voll 
 
Value and Values in Mobile Dating Applications 
 
 
Today, an app exists for everything, from delivering relevant news headlines, to 
finding you your most compatible partner. Mobile dating applications are platforms 
that act as intermediaries, instituting our world and realities, according to certain ways 
of being. In common to these platforms is their notions of value, such as accessibility, 
ease of use, and privacy. Widely popular intermediaries like these structure public 
discourse, conflating private interests with public ones. 
 
 My research considers “value” and “values” in the mobile dating industry, via 
applications like Tinder and Hinge. I examine how public values like accessibility and 
privacy merge to support private economic interests. By emphasizing importance on 
public values but distorting their application to benefit private or corporate interests, 
confuses and reshapes public understandings of these values. Doing so has certain 
implications for a democratic society, but also, notions of visibility, where some content 
is made visible, while others rendered invisible.  
 


Value and Values in Mobile Dating Apps

Wahba, Yasmen M

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
Happy Customers: Automatic Classification of IT Customer 
Support Tickets 
Yasmen M. Wahba 
science western university, YWAHBA2@uwo.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Wahba, Yasmen M., "Happy Customers: Automatic Classification of IT Customer Support Tickets" (2022). 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. 
318. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/318 
Yasmen Wahba – Inspiring Minds 2022 
 
Title:  Happy Customers: Automatic Classification of IT Customer Support Tickets 
Unhappy customers are inevitable. According to a recent study, 96% of unhappy customers don’t 
complain, and 91% of those will simply leave and never come back. The ‘silent’ type of customers is 
what companies fear the most. In the IT business, when customers have problems, they open a 
support ticket. A ‘Ticketing System’ is the term used to describe the way customers interact with the 
support agents to get their issues ironed out. For large IT firms, support agents deal with a tremendous 
volume of tickets daily. Handling these tickets manually is almost impossible, and so the need to 
automate the process of classifying/organizing these tickets into different categories becomes crucial. 
My research is about using Artificial Intelligence and specifically Natural Language Processing to design 
a machine learning model that takes an incoming ticket, analyze it, classify it and send it to the right 
support agent. 
 
146 words 
 
 
 
 
  
 


Happy Customers: Automatic Classification of IT Customer Support Tickets

Ppasiou, Mary

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
The Liability of Persons in the Chain of Carriage 
Mary Ppasiou 
The University of Western Ontario, mppasiou@uwo.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Ppasiou, Mary, "The Liability of Persons in the Chain of Carriage" (2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital 
Collection of Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. 326. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/326 
Research Statement 
Mary Ppasiou 
 
Shipping is a huge part of our lives today. Millions of tons of products are shipped from 
every corner of the world to our doorstep every day. The laptop that I am writing this statement on 
has probably been carried from a warehouse in mainland China to the port in Shanghai via rail, 
from Shanghai to the port in Vancouver via sea, from Vancouver to Toronto via air, and from 
Toronto to London via road. If the laptop was lost or damaged in transit, the question would be: 
who is responsible?  
My research revolves around the legal liability of persons involved in the chain of carriage. 
The carrier’s employees, agents or contractors can exclude their liability for loss or damage to 
cargo by virtue of broad exemption clauses in the contract of carriage. As a result, in most cases, 
the cargo owner is left empty-handed. In my work, I seek to find ways in which the law can 
maintain a balance between the interests of cargo owners and carriers in the context of carriage of 
goods by sea.    


The Liability of Persons in the Chain of Carriage

Martinez Loyola, Gabriela

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
An Examination of the Perceptions of Cuban and Peninsular 
Spanish Varieties by Native, L2 Learners of Spanish, and 
Monolingual English Speakers 
Gabriela Martinez Loyola 
Western University, gmarti49@uwo.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Martinez Loyola, Gabriela, "An Examination of the Perceptions of Cuban and Peninsular Spanish Varieties 
by Native, L2 Learners of Spanish, and Monolingual English Speakers" (2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital 
Collection of Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. 329. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/329 
Western Inspiring Minds 
Gabriela Martinez Loyola 
Hispanic Studies - MA Student  
June 3, 2022 
 
An Examination of the Perceptions of Cuban and Peninsular Spanish Varieties by Native, 
L2 Learners of Spanish, and Monolingual English Speakers 
 
An accent can tell a lot about a person, such as where they are from, but they can also allow others 
to form unconscious perceptions, judgments, and even stereotypes simply based on that way of 
speech. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the attitudes of a variety of individuals 
such as native Spanish speakers, those learning Spanish as a second language, and even 
monolingual English speakers towards Cuban and Peninsular varieties of Spanish. Specifically, I 
look to analyze the rate at which this cohort of individuals is able to correctly recognize the Cuban 
and Peninsular Spanish varieties and whether the perceptions of these speakers differ. After careful 
consideration, I chose these accents as they are quite distinct from one another, especially in the 
Spanish speaking world. Ultimately, this research aims to determine if there is a predominant 
stigma or notion of prestige attributed to either accent.  
 
Word count: 148 


An Examination of the Perceptions of Cuban and Peninsular Spanish Varieties by Native, L2 Learners of Spanish, and Monolingual English Speakers

McIntyre, Kevin

Martin, Janet

Stranges, Saverio

Lizotte, Daniel

Choi, Yun-Hee

John-Baptiste, Ava A

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
An Examination of Global Perioperative Mortality 
Kevin McIntyre 
Western University - Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, kmcint67@uwo.ca 
Janet Martin 
University of Western Ontario, jmarti83@uwo.ca 
Saverio Stranges 
Western University 
Daniel Lizotte 
Western University 
Yun-Hee Choi 
Western University 
See next page for additional authors 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
McIntyre, Kevin; Martin, Janet; Stranges, Saverio; Lizotte, Daniel; Choi, Yun-Hee; and John-Baptiste, Ava A., 
"An Examination of Global Perioperative Mortality" (2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. 343. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/343 
Authors 
Kevin McIntyre, Janet Martin, Saverio Stranges, Daniel Lizotte, Yun-Hee Choi, and Ava A. John-Baptiste 
This article is available at Scholarship@Western: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/343 
My research is focused on investigating death in the period surrounding surgery. I am collecting studies 
from all over the world published after 2014, extracting their data and running statistical models that 
account for similarities between patients imposed by clustering (e.g. patients operated on in the same 
country are more likely to have similar outcomes). The goal of this phase is to assess time trends in 
perioperative mortality; examining if surgery is getting safer. 
The results will then be used as prior information to inform a second set of analyses using data from the 
COVIDSurg international study. The goal of this phase of the project is to assess the current risk of 
perioperative mortality and causes of death globally. 
Finally, a third phase will again use the COVIDSurg data to assess the effect that experiencing a 
postoperative complication has on the risk of perioperative death using advanced causal inference 
techniques. 


An Examination of Global Perioperative Mortality

Parahoo, Rosheeka

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
Unraveling Authentic Representation: Equity, Identity and Race in 
Popular Music 
Rosheeka Parahoo 
Western University, rparahoo@uwo.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Parahoo, Rosheeka, "Unraveling Authentic Representation: Equity, Identity and Race in Popular Music" 
(2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and Creative 
Activity. 357. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/357 
Unraveling Authentic Representation: Equity, Identity and Race in Popular Music  
 
My research explores the barriers to authentic representation and formulates solutions to 
achieve equitable depictions of minority communities in popular music. At the core of my 
research are questions such as; who representation is truly for, why authentic and non-tokenized 
representation matters, what is authentic representation, and why is popular music the ideal 
medium to achieve such representations.  
This research has two primary objectives; firstly, to analyze and define authentic 
representation and performance while considering a diverse range of artists and secondly, to 
introduce a new framework that a broad range of scholars can use to examine the relationship 
between representation, equity, and intersectionality in popular music. 
 


Unraveling Authentic Representation: Equity, Identity and Race in Popular Music

Choi, Cho-E

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
Creative biomaterials for tissue regeneration 
Cho-E Choi 
cchoi222@uwo.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Choi, Cho-E, "Creative biomaterials for tissue regeneration" (2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection 
of Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. 358. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/358 
Inspiring Minds – Cho-E Choi, PhD, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering 
Title: Creative biomaterials for tissue regeneration 
Biomaterials are cell-friendly substances that can interact with biological systems for a 
medical purpose and therapeutic applications. It is so exciting to be able to create new 
biomaterials-based therapeutic platforms taking inspiration from different areas of 
expertise, including chemistry, physics, and biology for applications in medicine, 
pharmacy, and all other fields to which biomaterials can be applied. Biomaterial science 
research allows us to test new strategies to produce materials with customized and 
improved properties to enhance therapeutic treatments. Indeed, engineered 
biomaterials play an increasingly important role as biomedical therapeutics in clinical 
applications. To this, I am working on developing novel designs of drug-loaded nano-
biomaterials for tissue regeneration such as biomimetic nano-materials to allow for 
controlled drug release and spatial targeting so that this advance in biomaterial 
technology reaches patients. 
 
 


Creative biomaterials for tissue regeneration

Yeasmin, Sadia

Haque, Anwar

Western University 
Scholarship@Western 
Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of 
Western’s Graduate Research, Scholarship and 
Creative Activity 
Inspiring Minds 
November 2022 
A Novel and Failsafe Blockchain Framework for Secure OTA 
Updates in Connected Autonomous Vehicles 
Sadia Yeasmin 
Western University, syeasmin@uwo.ca 
Anwar Haque 
Western Unuversity, ahaque32@uwo.ca 
Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds 
Citation of this paper: 
Yeasmin, Sadia and Haque, Anwar, "A Novel and Failsafe Blockchain Framework for Secure OTA Updates 
in Connected Autonomous Vehicles" (2022). Inspiring Minds – A Digital Collection of Western’s Graduate 
Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity. 361. 
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/inspiringminds/361 
Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are becoming data centers on wheels, amassing petabytes of data, as they 
require a combination of software and hardware systems and sub-systems in order to operate reliably and simply in 
real-time. This project proposes a secure and scalable software updates framework in a distributed manner for the 
CAVs, leveraging Blockchain (BC) with smart contract technology. The framework is able to overcome slow 
processing speed which is one of the major limitations of BC with a high level of security against possible cyber-
attacks. We use a salting-based hashing scheme over the traditional Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Key to ensure 
multi-factor authenticated protection from any malicious transaction while downloading and installing any new feature 
update in CAVs. Moreover, by using Hyperledger BC, our framework ensures immutability, load-management 
capability and cost-free transactions while successfully upgrading and deploying Over-The-Air (OTA) software 
patches in any system of CAVs. 
 
 


Western University

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