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Magical Musicking: Musical Communication in Contemporary Fantasy Literature
No full textThis dissertation considers the role of magical music in contemporary fantasy novels through a thematic comparative study of nine texts. It slots into a gap in the literature regarding the intermedial, ekphrastic depiction of music in the written word, as previous studies have largely focused on realist texts and ignored speculative fiction, as well as looking at a more diverse selection of texts than has been standard in the field of fantasy literature studies. I coin the term ‘magical musicking’, extending Christopher Small’s (2012) concept of musicking, denoting music as an active human encounter that confirms and affirms the relationships of the living world, to the magic-enhanced forging of connections in fantasy literature. Drawing on musicological theory, I consider research questions of how different fantasy texts portray the magic of music and why music is particularly suited for inclusion in the fantasy genre, how and why musical communication fails or succeeds in these texts, and why music is an effective tool to show both authorial and in-text diversity. Despite the profoundly communicative agency inherent in magical musicking found in these texts, I also conclude that any intimation of a romanticised universality of music is limited by listeners’ individual wills and agencies as well as the magic systems in place. The fantasy genre is a space where beliefs in the power of music can be explored and defined beyond western scientific theory
Taking into Account Self-Motion in Depth While Assessing External Motion in Depth
No full textDuring sideways movement of an observer, optic flow parsing – in which an object’s speed is extracted from all the other movement present in the scene – has been shown to be incomplete, with an overestimation of self-motion and an underestimation of object speed, especially when target and observer move in opposite directions (Jörges & Harris, 2022). Here I assess the efficiency of optic flow parsing for an object moving in depth while the observer is also moving either towards or away from the object. Participants were asked to compare the speed of a sphere moving towards or away from them relative to a ball moving sideways either while they were stationary or during visually simulated self-motion. The data showed flow parsing in depth to be incomplete. Curiously, the underestimation of object speed was largely irrespective of whether the ball and the observer moved in the same or opposite directions. These findings may be accounted for by a Bayesian model that includes a “Regression to the Mean Speed” prior
Info Sheet 23: Challenges faced by Black mothers of children with developmental disabilities
No full textCaring for children with developmental disabilities (DDs) can be challenging for a number of reasons, including social stigma, financial burdens, insufficient funding and programming, social isolation and limited social support from families and from communities as a whole. However, the challenges of raising children with DDs are even greater and complex if the families are from a racialized background.
Racialized mothers experience even greater stress. The stress of caring for a child with DDs is amplified as a result of racism, prejudice, stigma, and discrimination experienced by racialized families. We learned from our studies that racialized youth with DDs face barriers in key aspects of their lives, including health, mental health, education, work, and challenges of integration and community participation (Khan et al., 2025; Khanlou et al., 2024). Racialized families’ distress is rooted in historic inequities they experience in healthcare, income, housing, education and social challenges, racism, and discrimination. For example, in Canada, Black families report experiencing higher rates of unemployment and income inequality, compared with the national average (Graham, 2025). They experience discrimination in employment, housing, education, and food insecurity (Graham, 2025).Women’s College Hospital - The 15K Challeng
Patch Histories and Forking Paths: Version Control as Creative Practice in Modular Synthesis
No full textThis dissertation addresses a gap in software for multiplayer modular synthesis, demonstrating how version control systems and web technologies are well-suited to closing it. The rationale rests on two observations. First, a modular synthesizer is, by definition, an interoperable system: individual modules can be recombined, swapped, or even distributed among several performers to create a shared instrument. Yet in practice most hardware and software setups are optimized for a single player, leaving little support for real-time, many-hands interaction. Second, a defining pleasure of modular synthesis is that the instrument can be rewired on the fly, transforming its topology mid-performance. Capturing those evolutions is notoriously difficult. Hardware musicians rely on photographs or handwritten patch notes, which rarely recreate a state with fidelity. Software modular synthesizers make it possible to save entire patches, but they record only the endpoints--full snapshots--without the in-between: the granular sequence of cable changes, button presses, and knob turns that give a performance its arc. As these incremental transformations are vital to how the instrument can be played, analyzed, and studied, the field needs tooling that treats patch histories as first-class data, editable and shareable across multiple players in real time.
Drawing on the three established generations of version control systems, this dissertation also posits a fourth generation, defined by the emergence of platform-based social coding and real-time protocols that support live co-editing of documents. A new musical instrument named Forking Paths is introduced to address this gap: a system that integrates software version control architecture into a virtual modular synthesizer to document the entire process of patching--creating patch histories. This capability facilitates new techniques in digital music performance, such as analyzing differences between knob turns across histories, merging gestures, isolating and looping segments of history, and branching from specific points for further exploration. Moreover, a real-time version control system enables the instrument to support multiple players from the ground up, facilitating participatory and collective patching of a shared modular system
René Highway’s Dance Legacy Through a Decolonial Lens
No full textThis paper examines René Highway’s "Prism, Mirror, Lens" (1989) through an evolving creative process that shifted from plans for live, land-based choreography to an archival, layered, and speculative practice. Highway’s choreography troubles dominant readings of queerness not through overt representation, but through abstraction, fractured narrative, and refusal of easy interpretation. Working with degraded VHS footage, phytograms, and experimental layering, the project reframed editing as choreography, composing rhythm, dissonance, and layered perception from archival materials. Interviews with Highway’s collaborators activated memory as embodied knowledge, extending the work beyond the stage. Engaging with absence, distortion, and fragmented archives revealed that knowledge can emerge from flicker, multiplicity, and refusal of singular meaning. In this way, "Prism, Mirror, Lens" and the resulting film insist on queerness as method—holding space for speculative survival and positioning Indigenous performance as a site of both cultural continuity and futurist possibility
Selective Cloud Offloading for Accurate and Efficient Object Detection
No full textHigh-accuracy object detection on resource-constrained devices is essential for many applications including autonomous systems, agriculture, and mobile computing. However, deploying high-performance object detection models on these devices is impractical due to computational limitations, and transmitting and processing all data on a much more powerful remote server running significantly more complex and accurate models, known as full cloud offloading, incurs high latency and cost.
This thesis proposes a selective cloud offloading framework that balances prediction accuracy and processing cost. A lightweight edge model makes initial predictions using conformal prediction to quantify uncertainty. Only high-uncertainty regions are offloaded to the cloud for refinement by more powerful models. To further optimize efficiency, multiple uncertain regions are merged into a single image before offloading, reducing transmission and processing costs. The system is evaluated on real datasets, demonstrating substantial accuracy improvements with minimal additional overhead
Fully Distributed Event-Triggered Robust Cooperative Control for Multi-Agent Systems
No full textCooperative control of multi-agent systems (MASs) is essential in applications such as surveillance, formation flying, and load transportation, offering improved functionality and robustness compared to single-agent configurations. However, many existing control protocols rely on global network information, limiting their applicability to varying communication topologies. This thesis addresses the challenge of achieving fully distributed cooperative control under limited communication, computation, and energy resources. A systematic design methodology for event-triggered control schemes is proposed, enabling protocols to depend solely on local information. First, an adaptive sliding-mode-based event-triggered formation control framework is developed for leader-follower MASs with disturbances, ensuring finite-time sliding-surface reachability and Zeno-freeness. Second, an adaptive dynamic event-triggered approach with integral sliding surfaces and variable triggering intervals is designed to enhance resource efficiency. Third, for networked Euler–Lagrange systems with uncertainties, a nested adaptive sliding-mode estimator and robust event-based control strategy are introduced to compensate for nonlinearities and disturbances. Fourth, a fully distributed adaptive dynamic event-based control scheme addresses time-varying formations under switching topologies, input saturation, and unreliable communication. All proposed strategies are theoretically validated using Lyapunov methods, ensuring stability and convergence, and experimentally verified with multiple quadrotors, demonstrating effective consensus, formation maintenance, and communication efficiency. The results highlight the theoretical significance and practical applicability of fully distributed event-triggered cooperative control for MASs in dynamic and resource-constrained environments
Signal timing for LCV trucks on a road network using reinforcement learning
No full textFreight activity in urban networks is rising, and jurisdictions such as Ontario are encouraging the use of Long Combination Vehicles (LCVs) to consolidate freight loads. This thesis quantifies the delays and queueing on 16 intersections in the Region of Peel and introduces an adaptive signal-control strategy. Tested scenarios include (1) existing signal timing plans without LCVs and (2) with LCVs, (3) a single-intersection double deep q-network (DDQN) controller without LCVs and (4) with LCVs.
Introducing LCVs under existing signal timings raised network-wide delay by 14 % for all vehicles and 22 % for trucks when LCVs comprised just 1.7 % of traffic. The proposed DDQN was found to reduce average delays for all vehicles and trucks based on various conditions. Future work should extend the single intersection approach to a multi-agent framework and explore continuous-time action spaces for even finer control
Burden, Mood States, Social Support and Proactive Coping in Caregivers of Elderly Adults
No full textThis study examined the relationships among caregiver burden, proactive coping, social support, and mood states in 154 female family caregivers from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Participants completed standardized measures of caregiver burden, proactive coping, multidimensional social support, and mood states, as well as open-ended questions about their stress experience. Higher burden was associated with greater negative mood indicators, including anger, confusion, depression, fatigue, and tension, and with lower emotional and practical support. Proactive coping was not significantly related to burden, though it was associated with lower depression. Spousal caregivers reported greater burden than non-spousal caregivers, and caring for cognitively confused elders was linked to higher time, developmental, and physical burden than caring for more lucid elders. Qualitative responses emphasized stress stemming from relatives’ physical or mental decline, feelings of guilt, changes in the caregiver–recipient relationship, and the constant demands of caregiving. Collectively, the results illuminate the challenges inherent in the caregiver role and provide insights into which caregivers are more likely to experience burden and the nature of this burden. The implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed
Microplastics Transport in Turbulent Flow: Investigating the Effects of Physical Characteristics and Flow Dynamics
No full textThe surge in global plastic production has led to increasing plastic pollution in aquatic environments, where plastic debris fragments into microplastics (MPs), particles smaller than 5 mm, through weathering processes. MPs are transported by ambient flow across different aquatic compartments, posing ubiquitous risks to the ecosystem health. Effective mitigation of MPs' risks requires a comprehensive understanding of MPs' transport and mobility. Turbulence and the natural settling or rising movements of MPs are fundamental transport mechanisms, yet many aspects of how MPs' diverse physical properties affect these processes remain underexplored. Density, size, and shape are amongst critical physical properties of MPs that shape their transport and affect flow interactions. This PhD dissertation investigates the effects of MPs’ physical properties on their transport and mixing in turbulent flows using numerical and experimental approaches. The findings of this research elucidate how density, size, and shape affect the behaviour of MPs, providing explanations for their selective abundance and distribution in aquatic environments. Results of this PhD dissertation illustrate that lower marginal densities relative to the ambient fluid, smaller sizes, and non-spherical shapes make MPs more susceptible to the transient dynamics of the ambient flow as such MPs deviate significantly from their terminal behaviours. The findings explain the distant transport of smaller non-spherical MPs and the absence of smaller MPs of common polymers in offshore surface layers, as such particles are more likely transported to deeper water columns by in-depth currents. This research also explores the advantages of dynamic Lagrangian modelling over commonly used kinematic approaches, emphasizing the importance of particle acceleration for MPs with higher mixing levels, particularly those with smaller sizes, lower marginal densities, and non-spherical shapes. These findings contribute to understanding MPs' transport and distribution based on their physical properties and flow dynamics and offer a foundation for developing effective strategies to mitigate the ecological impacts of MPs