21793 research outputs found
Sort by
What drives the young generation to swap clothes? The moderating role of culture
Get PDFAs the new generation’s interest in collaborative fashion is rising, the purpose of this study is to explore the motivations that influence their swapping behavior of clothes. The study focuses on self-oriented motives including economic and hedonic factors as well as other-oriented motives including environmental and activist factors. Additionally, Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions are examined as moderators. A quantitative approach was adopted in the research and the data were collected from a worldwide sample through an online questionnaire. Findings reveal that the economic, hedonic, environmental, and activist motivations have a positive relationship with the young generation’s swapping behavior. As for the culture’s role, the results showed that the effect of the economic motivation on the swapping behavior is stronger in masculine cultures, while the relationship between the hedonic motivation and the swapping behavior is stronger in collectivist cultures. Individuals in collectivist, low power distance, and indulgent cultures are more driven by environmental motives to swap clothes. Finally, the effect of the activist motivation is stronger in collectivist, feminine, low power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, and indulgent cultures. Accordingly, managerial and theoretical implications are discussed
Symplectic aspects of Gaudin integrable systems and Szegö kernel variational method
Get PDFIn this thesis, we will study the symplectic aspects of classical Gaudin systems, an important type of integrable dynamical systems at both classical and quantum levels. After a review of integrability and the Lax representation of integrable dynamical systems, we will investigate the analytical properties of Gaudin model via its spectral curve. The main focus is to reconstruct the Lax matrix using the analytical information of the system and subsequently, provide a symplectic structure for the phase space. We will also calculate the symplectic potential in terms of action-angle coordinates using Szegö kernel variational method. A brief look into the spectral transform aspect as well as the study of variational properties of vector of Riemann constants will also follow
Enseignement de la prononciation dans le cadre du Programme d’intégration linguistique des immigrants : la perspective des immigrants adultes quant à leurs besoins et leur autonomie
Get PDFSi l’acquisition de la prononciation d’une langue seconde implique des défis propres aux apprenants adultes (DeKeyser, 2012), chez les personnes immigrantes, les enjeux liés à la prononciation dépassent largement la salle de classe et touchent leur intégration sociale, économique et culturelle (Simpson et Whiteside, 2015). Au Québec, le Programme d’intégration linguistique des immigrants (PILI) vise à fournir aux personnes immigrantes non francophones les moyens d’acquérir, entre autres, les compétences langagières nécessaires à l'obtention d'un emploi ou à la poursuite des études (MIFI, 2022), mais c’est une large majorité d’apprenants qui s’arrêtent en cours de programme (Vérificateur général du Québec, 2017).
Cette étude à méthodes mixtes s’intéresse à la perspective des apprenants du PILI. Elle a pour but d’examiner l’adéquation entre (1) les enseignements reçus en matière de prononciation, (2) leurs besoins dans ce domaine après la francisation et (3) leur capacité à poursuivre ces apprentissages de manière autonome. Les participants (N=68) ont répondu à un sondage conçu sur mesure et participé à des entrevues semi-dirigées, lesquelles ont permis d’explorer davantage leur perspective. Les résultats corroborent ceux de Beaulieu et al. (2021), en montrant un certain écart entre les enseignements et les besoins dans la vie réelle, puisque la plupart des apprenants ressentent le besoin d’améliorer leur prononciation après la francisation. Ils révèlent également une corrélation positive entre la variété des enseignements reçus en prononciation et l’autonomie exercée après le programme. La nécessité pour ces personnes de continuer leurs apprentissages de la prononciation de manière autodidacte milite en faveur d’enseignements qui cultivent explicitement leur autonomie à cet égard
Do Countries that Show Better Preparedness for Natural Disasters Exhibit Reduced Exchange Rate Volatility?
Get PDFThis study investigates the relationship between a country's preparedness for natural disasters and its exchange rate valuation and volatility. Using data on 473 natural disaster events from 13 countries from 2000 to 2019, we examine whether countries that exhibit better preparedness for natural disasters also experience better currency valuation and reduced exchange rate volatility. Our results show that all else being equal, countries with higher scores on the Environmental, Social, and Governance Index (ESG score) tend to have higher currency valuation and lower exchange rate volatility. This suggests that the more prepared a country is for climate risk events, the more stable its exchange rate will likely follow a natural disaster. Our study contributes to understanding the factors that influence exchange rate volatility and provides insights for policymakers on how to mitigate the impact of natural disasters on their country's exchange rates
Evaluating Amazon EC2 Spot Price Prediction Models Using Regression Error Characteristic Curve
Get PDFAmazon EC2 offers inactive virtual machines (VM) as spot instances at up to 90% discount. In return, the least expensive option requires the customers' usage to be tolerated with a low availability level agreement. Thus, many studies proposed forecasting and prediction mechanisms to assess finding the best set of maximum prices.
In this research, we study the model's efficiency in predicting spot EC2 prices by assessing the performance of forecasting algorithms: RFR, XGBoost, k-NNR, and SVR. We evaluate the models using six metrics, including MAPE, RMSE, MAE, and MSE, commonly used in related work, as well as the Regression Error Characteristics (REC) curve and the Area under the curve (AUC-REC). Our experiments consider dataset time per year, training window (1-day, 1-week, and 1-month ahead), and instance location.
The REC curve and AUC-REC are superior performance measurements for evaluating models over different accuracy-loss thresholds. Our findings suggest that the cross-validation technique is unnecessary to improve the models' accuracy, except for the SVR model. Our study highlights the limitations of using threshold-based metrics, which can be misleading, and the importance of using representative metrics such as AUC-REC to evaluate machine learning models.
Our study has limitations, including the choice of algorithms, which may impact the results. Additionally, our experiments are limited to AWS cloud services, and our results may not be generalizable to other cloud providers. In future work, we plan to evaluate other forecasting methods, including deep learning and statistical methods, and investigate the results of other regions and training windows
Crisis in Christendom? Heresy, Dissent, and Crusade in 12th and 13th century Languedoc
Get PDFMedieval ecclesiastics in the 12th and 13th centuries considered the evolution of heresy throughout Christian history as being a continuous, unbroken line from the earliest days of Christianity until their time, displaying notions of intolerance and prejudice when confronted with divergent beliefs, far removed from the openness and pluralism of thought and expression that some early Christian writers possessed. The so-called “Cathar” heresy possessed possible historical links with past heresies, mainly Manichaeism and Bogomilism; however, tracing these links is a task that has eluded many modern historians, mainly because of the lack of textual evidence on the part of the heretical party that can identify these links, as well as the time-gap that is prevalent between the appearances of these sects. The political and religious climate of the 12th century spurred anti-clerical movements within parts of the laity that stressed the return to a purer faith, identifying the simplicity of the vita apostolica as the ideal model for Christian life. These anti-clerical movements accentuated a fear in the ecclesiastical class, and its members perceived these movements as revivals of ancient heresies, whereupon the polemical literature that was produced by ecclesiastics in response to these movements “amplified” the existence of heresy within Christendom, especially that of “Catharism” in the Languedoc. The Church, needing to eradicate the spread of this “poison” used tools like preaching, crusade, and inquisition, the latter being the most successful. Inquisitorial sources, just like the medieval polemical literature that preceded them, did not display a lived reality of heresy due to the lack of evidence on the part of the heretical party
Cultural Identity, Continuity, and Wellbeing: Exploring the Sociocultural Significance of Traditional Foods for Northern Indigenous Food Security
Get PDFFood insecurity is one of the most pressing and challenging issues facing northern Indigenous populations in Canada. Widespread lack of adequate, affordable, and accessible food is, in part, attributed to the displacement of land-based traditional foods which represent a key component of Indigenous diets and nutrition. Unlike store-bought market foods, traditional foods are intimately connected to place, while practices associated with their use reflect, reinforce, and reproduce Indigenous knowledge and cultural values, (re)asserting Indigenous food sovereignty. However, participation in harvesting and consumption of traditional foods is in decline, with negative implications for individual and community health and wellbeing. In this thesis, I explore the role and contribution of traditional foods in supporting northern Indigenous food security and food sovereignty, focusing in particular on sociocultural elements embedded within traditional food systems. The first manuscript presents the results of a scoping review of literature located at the intersection of traditional foods and northern Indigenous food security, with a focus on studies that address the sociocultural dimensions of food. A total of 22 articles were selected for review, coded thematically, and analyzed to identify trends, emphases, and gaps in this body of literature. The second manuscript emerged from a community-based partnered research project with Waskaganish Cree First Nation, where local fishing practices have been disrupted due to hydroelectric projects diverting key waterways, and socioeconomic and cultural lifestyle changes. I conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with 23 elders and knowledge holders to better understand the significance of fish for Waskaganish Crees, and how community members have adapted to continue accessing fish in the context of change. Collectively, this thesis establishes the need to support Indigenous-centered approaches for sustainable access to traditional foods in order to address northern Indigenous food crises and uphold Indigenous food sovereignty
A Data Driven Urban Building Energy Model for High Density Urban Communities in Hot and Arid Climates
No full textThe development of district-level cooling energy profiles is important for the design, sizing, and
operation of district cooling plants. This task is often challenging due to the lack of building stock
data, input uncertainties, modeling strategies, and the time and space resolutions needed from the
cooling demand profiles. The work presented in this thesis attempts to address these challenges by
leveraging a data-driven methodology to produce monthly cooling demand profiles at the district
level for a hot and arid climate region. The methodology used in this work is comprised of two
main phases. The first conducts a comparative analysis to identify the optimal building archetype
development methodology suited for the studied climate zone. The second phase utilizes the
obtained results to develop an archetype library for the district’s building stock. This library is then
used to generate synthetic data for the training and testing of machine learning models’ districtscale energy prediction. The results obtained in this work indicate that for the building archetypes
studied, ML models can accurately predict profiles generated by physics-based models all while
reducing the computational time involved. The results also indicate that the uncertainty in
predicted cooling demand profiles remains considerable in the absence of realistic input
distributions. Ultimately, this study contributes to the current body of work by introducing a BA
library for high-rise buildings in hot and climate areas and by proposing an entire pipeline for data
generation, ML model training and testing, and data aggregation
Power Hardware-In-The-Loop Emulation of a Brushless DC Motor
Get PDFPower Hardware-In-The-Loop Emulation of a Brushless DC Motor
Tshamala Kalonji Gael, MASc.
Concordia University, 2023.
The current awareness towards global warming, green energy and energy saving is the driving force behind the development of power electronics. Power electronics plays a significant role in many industrial, commercial and military applications such as electric vehicles (EVs), photovoltaic (PV) inverters, transportation, distribution, home appliances, electric drive systems, etc. Many of the technological advancements recorded nowadays are made possible because of the rapid development in the field of power electronics over the last few decades. Therefore, more energy-savvy, reliable, intelligent, and efficient devices are currently being developed and deployed because of the rapid development of power electronics. Hence power electronics is, to a great extent, one of the biggest enablers of environmental clean energy.
Electric motors are the workhorse of the industry and it is estimated that 90 % of industrial electricity consumption is used to power electric drive systems. Electric drive systems are made up of various parts among which the most important are the electric motor, the drive inverter, the load and the drive controller. In conventional electric motor testing, the electric motor of the drive system to be tested is mounted on a test bench and coupled to a dynamometer for testing the drive system for various speeds and loading conditions. However, the conventional dynamometer-based drive testing method has many limitations., An alternative solution which is currently gaining popularity in the industry is the use of power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) emulation for performing electric machine testing.
In this research work, a PHIL emulation of a brushless DC (BLDC) motor for a BLDC drive utilizing sensored trapezoidal control is presented. First, an improved BLDC model is used for simulating the drive. Then a BLDC drive setup is built and tested. The simulation results obtained are validated using the results from this physical BLDC motor drive. Next, the simulations of PHIL emulators for permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) and BLDC are performed. Then the emulator hardware for BLDC emulation is built and tested. Open-loop emulator control is employed for emulating the BLDC motor. The results from the emulator are validated for steady-state and transient operations using results from the physical BLDC motor drive
Civil reawakening in the post-disaster: the re-emergence of housing struggles after the 2010 earthquake in Concepción, Chile
Get PDFOn February 27th, 2010, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded, struck Southern Chile. This earthquake, known as 27F by the locals, disrupted not only the physical structures of Chile, but also its social structures. The failure of the government to adequately respond the immediate aftermath and later the reconstruction, highlighted key structural failures in Chile’s socioeconomic fabric. Specifically, 27F exposed public disappointment with Chile’s post-dictatorship government and rekindled neglected and nearly forgotten social struggles. I analyze the post-disaster as a moment of resilience through a historical lens. My research explores how 27F brought back actors and struggles of past social movements giving continuity to their memory and practices, eventually linking the weaknesses of the post-disaster response with foundational structural failures in Chilean policymaking.
Specifically, this thesis explores the historical conditions of post-disaster gentrification and housing activism in neighborhoods of Ribera Norte, in Greater Concepción. Drawing on grey literature, archival documents and semi-structured interviews with activists and members of civil society who were affected by 27F, I show how the shortcomings of the re-construction and the post-disaster housing mobilizations were in some respects a continuation of Chile’s contested 20th century housing policies. Furthermore, my research shows that the legacies of past social movements brought critical experience and leadership to the movement for reconstruction that followed 27F