21793 research outputs found
Sort by
Applied Intersectionality: Supporting Families of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder from Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Minority Groups
Get PDFHaving a child with special needs may incur a tremendous toll on the family unit, a reality that is significantly more pronounced for members of marginalized (i.e., racial and ethnic minorities) communities. Examples of these disparities include more pronounced barriers to healthcare, delayed diagnoses, and difficulty accessing critical services. The present study had two aims. Firstly, to conduct a needs assessment exploring the types of services ethnically diverse parents rely on to support their children and families, as well as their satisfaction with the quality of these services. Secondly, to test the efficacy of a culturally adapted parent training program, ‘Parents Taking Action (PTA)’, with the goal of: a. Increasing parents’ knowledge of ASD b. Reducing parental stress c. Increasing parents’ perceived competence and self-efficacy beliefs. Five parents (n = 5) were recruited. The findings indicate that parents rely on several services offered by healthcare providers (e.g., pediatricians), education specialists, professionals (e.g., speech pathologists, occupational therapists, ABA therapists) to support their children from both the private and public sector to varying degrees of satisfaction. Several challenges to accessing services emerged: long waitlists, absence of information following a diagnosis, inaccessibility of private care (i.e., financial constraints) and language barriers, and issues within the public sector (e.g., lack of resources, poorly trained specialists, overcrowded services within the child’s school). Furthermore, all parents’ knowledge of ASD increased, half the parents saw a reduction of stress, and half of the parents’ self-efficacy beliefs improved. Taken together, the findings from the present study continue to support a burgeoning literature in support of culturally-adapted materials to support ethnically diverse parents of children with special needs
More Than Meets the Home: Mapping Home Movie Migrations in Recent Preservation and Programming Initiatives
Get PDFIn the popular imaginary, small gauge format home movies have been understood as small, dormant objects whose function and relevance remain fixed to domestic settings and rituals of family reminiscing. However, in the last few decades, scholars, and theorists from a variety of disciplines have introduced new strategies and methodologies of approaching the home movie and have positioned the home movie as a complex archival text that offers rich historical and cultural insights. We can observe these methodologies and practices at work in the various archival institutions and cultural formations which have emerged in response to these new and evolving engagements with home movies. Through a close analysis of the applied methodologies and practices embodied in the working models of two specific home movie preservation initiatives, Home Movie Day (HMD) and Chicago’s South Side Home Movie Project (SSHMP), this thesis aims to identify and demonstrate how, and to what capacity, home movies are transformed and reanimated within these new archival frameworks.
The first chapter maps the interdisciplinary methodologies and archival interventions for approaching home movies that have been emulated through the global HMD model. The second chapter responds to the shortcomings of the HMD model and draws from theories and practices explored in chapter one to critically examine how SSHMP’s archival practices work to reactivate and reanimate black American home movies. This analysis shows that, through these alternative frameworks, we see home movies transform into a series of community engagements, pedagogical tools, artistic exercises, and institutional practices
Borders of Belonging: Situating Bisexual Communities in Toronto’s Queer History, 1980s-2000s
Get PDFScholarship on queer activism and communities has tended to focus mainly on gay and lesbian politics and organizations that began establishing themselves in the mid-twentieth century. As a result of the pervasiveness of the hetero/homosexual binary that insists upon a distinct separation between the gay and straight worlds, bisexual people and their historical contributions to the queer community have remained understudied, especially in a Canadian context. This thesis seeks to illuminate histories of bisexual activism and community organizing in Toronto from the 1980s to the 2000s, in the midst of and following the peak years of Canadian gay liberation. It demonstrates how widespread exclusion of bisexual people from the gay rights movement motivated activists to establish support, discussion and advocacy groups that sought to combat bisexual erasure within queer spaces and foster attitudes of pride within the city’s queer community. Through oral history interviews with bisexual activists and other primary source records, it will become evident that bisexual community organizers in Toronto were concerned with creating safe, affirming spaces for bisexual people where their particular issues and experiences could be discussed, while also publicly engaging in educational advocacy that would enhance their visibility. This thesis directly addresses the lack of bisexual presence within the Canadian queer historical record, inviting historians to challenge still-pervasive binary notions of sexuality and expand ideas of who “belongs” and who might be excluded from dominant historical narratives
Towards Understanding and Expanding Locomotion in Physical and Virtual Realities
Get PDFAmong many virtual reality interactions, the locomotion dilemma remains a significant impediment to achieving an ideal immersive experience. The physical limitations of tracked space make it impossible to naturally explore theoretically boundless virtual environments with a one-to-one mapping. Synthetic techniques like teleportation and flying often induce simulator sickness and break the sense of presence. Therefore, natural walking is the most favored form of locomotion. Redirected walking offers a more natural and intuitive way for users to navigate vast virtual spaces efficiently. However, existing techniques either lead to simulator sickness due to visual and vestibular mismatch or detract users from the immersive experience that virtual reality aims to provide.
This research presents innovative techniques and applications to enhance the user experience by expanding walkable, physical space in Virtual Reality. The thesis includes three main contributions. The first contribution proposes a mobile application that uses markerless Augmented Reality to allow users to explore a life-sized virtual library through a divide-and-rule approach. The second contribution presents a subtle redirected walking technique based on inattentional blindness, using dynamic foveated rendering and natural visual suppressions like blinks and saccades. Finally, the third contribution introduces a novel redirected walking solution that leverages a deep neural network, to predict saccades in real-time and eliminate the hardware requirements for eye-tracking.
Overall, this thesis offers valuable contributions to human-computer interaction, investigating novel approaches to solving the locomotion dilemma. The proposed solutions were evaluated through extensive user studies, demonstrating their effectiveness and applicability in real-world scenarios like training simulations and entertainment
Déconstruire la rue : imaginer une représentation expérientielle et abstraite de la temporalité
Get PDFCe mémoire examine les méthodes de représentation de l’environnement urbain et de sa temporalité par le dessin. Alors que les logiciels de conception assistée par ordinateur (CAO) permettent aux designers et aux architectes de créer différentes formes de représentations abstraites, celles-ci rendent difficilement compte de la réalité évolutive et mouvante de l’espace urbain (Bafna, 2008; Boffi & Rainisio, 2017; Bosselmann, 2020; Latour & Yaneva, 2008; Luscombe et al., 2019; Neto, 2003). En réponse à cette problématique, la recherche-création explore comment de nouveaux dispositifs de représentation expérientiels (De la Fuente Suárez, 2016) et hybrides (Piga, 2017) peuvent offrir des moyens complémentaires afin de mieux rendre compte de la temporalité de l’espace bâti. Ce questionnement qui touche au potentiel de la représentation de l’expérience par les sens et le corps en mouvement s’incarne dans le projet de création Deconstructing the Street : an Urban Imaginary (2022). Ce livre explore la temporalité de la rue Rachel dans le quartier du Plateau Mont-Royal à Montréal à travers le prisme du transport actif. Il présente des séquences de dessins, des cartes, des axonométries complexes et des dessins techniques décortiquant la rue et ses infrastructures en plusieurs strates de matériaux et d’éléments urbains jugés indésirables (Gissen, 2009). La recherche-création s’appuie sur des méthodes situées liées à l’ethnographie visuelle et sensorielle qui mettent l’accent sur la matérialité de l’espace (Springgay & Truman, 2016, 2018, 2019). Ceci permet d’envisager notre culture matérielle dans sa pluralité d’interactions humaines et plus qu’humaines (ref, year). Complémentant la marche et le vélo, elles incluent la photographie, le croquis et la captation vidéo. Un agencement d’approches théoriques et artistiques en architecture (Bafna, 2008; Bosselmann, 2020; Dahlman, 2010; De la Fuente Suárez, 2016; Devabhaktuni, 2018; Gissen, 2009; Kenniff & Lévesque, 2021; Lockard, 1982; Luscombe et al., 2019; Olin, 2008; Treib, 2008a) et en anthropologie (Anand et al., 2018; Culhane & Elliott, 2017; Ingold, 2007; Lucas, 2019, 2020; Taussig, 2011) soutient cette démarche dédiée aux chercheurs, aux étudiants, et aux praticiens qui souhaiteraient diversifier la manière dont le temps peut-être représenté
Whole Brain Profile of Connector Hub Alteration Patterns in Focal Epilepsy When Compared to Healthy Controls
Get PDFUsing resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rs-fMRI), we can non-invasively measure functional connectivity (FC) between brain regions using the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal which characterizes slow fluctuations of hemodynamic processes.Through various FC analysis techniques, we can extract the resting state networks (RSNs) of the brain, and identify highly connected regions called hubs, which are important for long-range and efficient communication within the brain. In this thesis, we applied, adapted, and carefully investigated the method entitled SParsity-based Analysis of Reliable k-hubness (SPARK),
introduced by our group, to identify and quantify in a reliable manner the reorganization of connector hubs for patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE),
when compared to healthy controls (HC). In this work, we used several metrics to characterize reorganization of connector hubs, aiming at generating whole-brain fingerprint models to
characterize patients with epilepsy. We considered the following metrics, estimated on different parcellations of the brain in either nineteen anatomical regions or eleven functional networks: the
hub disruption index (HDI), the hub emergence index (HEI), the hierarchical segregation index (HSI) and regional k-hubness. Our results are suggesting that we found more significant
reorganization of hubness assessed using HDI and HEI when considering a segmentation in functional networks, as opposed to a segmentation in anatomical regions. We also reported
significant decreases in regional k in epilepsy patients when compared to controls. In addition, we reported a significant decrease in HSI between epilepsy and controls as well. These preliminary results should be confirmed when applied on larger epilepsy cohorts, where we can use our proposed methodology and metrics combined with other non-invasive imaging modalities to
discover potential biomarkers that could predict the postsurgical outcome of these patients
Hearing into Hyperpop: Exploring Production Aesthetics within the Musical Style
Get PDFHyperpop, a microgenre of pop music named and made famous by a Spotify-generated playlist, is a hyper-referential form. Sonically, it borrows elements from a wide variety of musical styles, while lyrically and aesthetically it calls upon various internet cultures and their attendant forms of content. Memes, internet slang, and samples of nineties hits can all exist in one Hyperpop song. As such, the genre is simultaneously capable of being lauded by the music press as the countercultural sound of the decade and praised by Fox News anchors as some of the best new music of the moment. All the while, the musical style is embedded in and shaped by the conditions of the music industry’s ubiquitous platforming. Instead of attempting to litigate which of these sources gets the genre right or trying to uncover some true essence of the musical style, this thesis develops concepts in relation to specific production practices within Hyperpop. Drawing on a methodology of "philosophy through music" put forth by Robin James, this thesis interprets Hyperpop as a speculative form of popular music that both reflects and critiques the conditions from which it emerges (21). It investigates production aesthetics within specific Hyperpop songs, and their attendant media ecologies, such as practices of covering, remixing, sampling, and reference. In relation to these practices, it puts forth the concepts of musical memeing and speculative nostalgia
Kincentric Ecopoetics: Sympoietic Place-Based Ecopoetry in Montreal’s Old Port
Get PDFThis research-creation project considers how the creation of sympoietic place-based ecopoetry can help nurture kincentric relationships with non-human and more-than-human beings in Montreal’s Old Port. The sympoietic place-based ecopoems that I wrote throughout this process—wayward (45.501506, -73.552840), wildfire season (45.511746, -73.546049), and rivered (45.499305, -73.552108 & 45.497048, -73.551593)—call my human relationship with place into question and articulate the loss and destruction of the St. Lawrence waterway and their multispecies relationships. I undertook this research in response to the overwhelming pollution of the St. Lawrence waterway and out of a desire to spend time listening to and being with the waterway. My research-creation process involved taking fieldnotes at four sites within the Old Port and actualizing Robin Wall Kimmerer’s grammar of animacy through their translation/transformation into sympoietic place-based ecopoems
Culture and Monetary Policy Effectiveness
Get PDFMonetary policy, typically set by a nation’s central bank, mainly focuses on managing
price stability and encouraging economic growth. Arguably, this means that in shaping its
monetary policy, a central bank also influences the behavior of its country’s residents. In this
context, we investigate if differing cultural and societal behaviors could make a central bank’s job
easier or more challenging. Specifically, we use five of the six dimensions of national culture from
Geert Hofstede and information on a country’s political, legal, and institutional framework to
examine whether a country’s cultural and/or institutional environment affects the efficiency of its
monetary policy, as reflected in both price stability and economic growth. Our findings suggest
that culture and societal behavior indeed play a role in how effective a country’s monetary policy
can be. For instance, we find that countries with high Power Distance and Individualism tend to
be less efficient, whereas societies with more Indulgence tend to be more efficient. Additionally,
our research supports previous findings regarding the positive effect of inflation-targeting on
monetary policy efficiency
Non-Deterministic Workspace Simulation and Management in Construction
No full textAs design complexity increases and clients demand faster deliveries, multiple activities involving machinery and labor are executed simultaneously, requiring the same space at the same time. This may lead to delays and safety risks. Previously developed models failed to acquire traction due to three gaps: lack of considering spatio-temporal uncertainties; absence of modelling the propagating effects of 4D-clashes on schedule progress; and not accounting for the unpredictability of crews’ decisions for resolving a 4D-clash. Additionally, the recent pandemic exacerbated vulnerabilities with the need to implement physical distancing, which created a new class of soft clashes. They are a result of different crews’ proximity to each other but do indicate a physical obstruction. This has triggered the need to introduce physical distance as a new independent workspace and to redefine the previously implemented clash detection rules.
Addressing the gaps, this thesis develops a framework and tool, adopting open BIM. Contributions are: simulating space as a probabilistic variable; automatically generating physical distance workspaces; smart clash detection identifying soft and operational clashes, while eliminating unrealistic and redundant results; automated clash resolution based on heuristic rules and constructability constraints; and modelling crews’ decision for handling unresolved clashes. The tool utilizes Blender’s GUI, benefiting from its open-source license and IfcOpenShell add-on. Additionally, an application using C# language was developed to specify user thresholds. 60 use-cases were created to test the functionality of the method/software. Comparing to manual calculations / geometrical intersection tests (used in clash detection software) the tool achieved a 99% accuracy in clash detection and volume estimation. The work was validated through two case studies. The first case study focused on labor workspaces for a residential project. The results showed a 50% clash (volume and instances) increase stochastic simulation without physical distances. The second case study simulated the refurbishment of an industrial plant during its shutdown. The solution presented 6,930 project completion possibilities recommending an 8% duration increase to achieve a 75% confidence level. The results were presented to industry experts whom acknowledged the benefits of the research in its current state, highlighting the ability to extend/adapt it to other domains