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Seeking Vocal Alignment
Get PDFAnalyzing his own research-creation over the years, the author uses a framework around a heuristic notion of alignment to analyze the quest for coherence between his sense of self and his artistic practice. Although this quest has characterized his personal and artistic trajectory, the model offers a distinct potential to help other research-creation artists locate and address areas of misalignment (friction points between their art and their self), prompting or framing their own processes of seeking alignment. Seeking alignment is both a process of self-reflection and a research-creation method that leads to discernible shifts in an artist’s life and practice.
The author has evolved this notion of alignment from the more specific term vocal alignment, commonly used in vocal technique and pedagogy. His conception of vocal alignment includes and goes beyond the physiological alignment of different body systems designed to optimize the production of vocal sound, giving equal importance to both semantic interpretations of the word voice. It asks: how can an artist align the vocal sounds their body produces with their artistic, personal, social, and political voice?
This thesis investigates the author’s process of seeking vocal alignment through his voice-based artistic work. Each of the three core chapters is preceded and followed by sections called “Alignments,” in which self-reflexive and auto-ethnographic writing provides insight into his research-creation process. The reader is invited to engage with these artistic works through sections called “Exhibits” (Lip Service, Anthropologies imaginaires, and Bijuriya).
Chapter 1 investigates the author’s critical stance on musical, social, theoretical, and practical aspects of musical life in the Canadian new music scene, highlighting the colonialist assumptions, cultural prejudices, and power imbalances that impact it.
Chapter 2 is an analysis of the author’s project Anthropologies imaginaires (2014). He analyzes how his use of voice, body, satire, deception, humour, and laughter formulates a critique of coloniality.
Chapter 3 focuses on the author’s solo interdisciplinary drag performance Bijuriya (2021-22). He analyzes the different musical, vocal, and performative strategies that coexist in the piece, and his exploration of different relations to the body and the voice, in line with the concept of vocal alignment
Indirect Dimethyl Ether Production from Methanol Dehydration Reaction Using RHO and KFI-type Zeolites
Get PDFThe growing concern about environmental pollution necessitates the development of renewable and eco-friendly energy sources. Dimethyl ether (DME) has emerged as a promising alternative to diesel and LPG fuels and as a hydrogen carrier due to its favorable characteristics, such as high cetane number, oxygen content, absence of C-C bonds, and low CO and NOx emissions during combustion. Industrial DME production involves methanol dehydration, which requires a solid acid catalyst.
Common catalysts used in this process include γ-Al2O3 and ZSM-5 zeolite. However, γ-Al2O3 exhibits limited activity at lower temperatures, while ZSM-5 suffers from rapid deactivation and coke formation. Heteropoly acids have also been investigated as solid acid catalysts, but their low surface area limits their activity. Therefore, catalysts with increased acidity and improved selectivity towards DME are sought to enhance conversion efficiency and stability.
In this study, the use of alternative zeolites including KFI and RHO with varying crystallization times and template amounts was explored for methanol dehydration compared against commercial ZSM-5 and alumina catalysts. Steady-state methanol conversion experiments were carried out at 130 - 220°C using 30% methanol in an Ar balance. Long-term stability tests lasting 100 h were performed, and the catalysts were analyzed using SEM, EDS, XRD, BET, NH3-TPD, and TGA techniques.
The KFI and RHO zeolites exhibited equilibrium conversion (>90%) at lower temperatures (180-200°C) and demonstrated stability for more than 100 and 60 h, respectively. These outcomes can be attributed to high crystallinity, optimized crystal size, and large surface area resulting from the optimized synthesis process
Conceptual access of compound and pseudocompound “constituents”: Evidence from dichoptic presentation
Get PDFHow are (pseudo)complex words recognized? The present study investigates the nature of the visual word recognition system by employing a word-picture relatedness task with brief exposure to target stimuli. Participants were dichoptically presented word-picture pairs (133 ms and backward masked) and were instructed to judge whether the stimuli were related to each other. The main manipulation consisted of presenting a target compound (e.g., bedroom, seatbelt) or pseudocompound (e.g., fanfare, shamrock) word and a picture representing either the first or second “constituent” (e.g., BED, BELT, FAN, and ROCK, respectively). If the word recognition system decomposes letter sequences with knowledge of morpho-orthographic regularities but is blind to semantics, we predicted that the “constituents” of both compounds and pseudocompounds would be semantically accessed. On the other hand, if the word recognition system is morpho-semantically informed, only compound constituents would be accessed. Accuracy and response times to relatedness judgements were analyzed using linear mixed effects models. Results revealed that (a) pseudocompound “constituents” were semantically accessed, but to a lesser degree than compounds—with less accurate and longer response times—and (b) both compounds and pseudocompounds produced a first “constituent” advantage in accuracy, but not in RTs. We interpret these results as supporting a semantically blind morpho-orthographic parser that quickly accesses and composes “constituent” meanings, while suppressing morpho- orthographically legal but semantically anomalous compositions
A data-driven approach to support the automation of thermostats in residential buildings
Get PDFProgrammable thermostats represent a significant advancement in home automation technology, offering the potential for maintaining comfort and energy efficiency. However, the frequent overriding of default schedules indicates the necessity of flexibility to accommodate the dynamic occupant behavior and requirements. This thesis delves into this challenge, leveraging data-driven insights to understand thermostat override behaviors and hence develop supportive automation strategies that minimize human interaction. The introductory focus of this research lies in examining how individual comfort preferences, outdoor conditions, and daily schedules influence thermostat override behaviors. The data set for this exploration comprises thermostat and occupancy data from two residential buildings in Quebec, Canada, equipped with ecobee smart thermostats from the heating and cooling seasons of 2017 to 2019. The research subsequently explores the frequency of override behaviors across different Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) modes, schedules, temperatures, and years.
A key novelty of this research lies in its extensive exploration of occupancy, temperature, and setpoint trends over specific periods, facilitating the identification of patterns in thermostat override cycles and daily adjustments. Machine learning algorithms, such as decision trees and random forests, are employed to ascertain the importance of various features influencing thermostat override behaviors. Association rule mining techniques then reveal the relationship between variables, suggesting adaptive automation strategies based on temperature, occupancy, time, and outdoor conditions.
After conducting a comparative data analysis for two households, we identified significant shifts in occupant behavior and temperature preferences. From these insights, we have derived four various automation strategies: temperature-based, occupancy-based, outdoor temperature-based, and time-of-day and weekday-based. These strategies exemplify the adaptability in occupant behaviors. Recognizing the factors that influence thermostat overrides makes it possible to equip smart thermostats with more intuitive automation strategies. These strategies can proactively adjust settings in line with user behavior and prevailing outdoor conditions, enhancing comfort and energy efficiency. To further fine-tune and widen the applicability of these strategies, it would be beneficial to conduct additional research with more extensive and diverse datasets
Understanding the Complex Dynamics of Friendship Experiences: Implications for Well-being and Adjustment in Early Adolescence
Get PDFAdolescence is considered to be a sensitive time in the lifespan. Social experiences that occur during this time contribute to one’s sense of self and belonging within the peer group, which has important implications for later outcomes. Positive peer interactions can function as an antidote to internalizing symptoms (e.g., anxiety, depressed affect) by providing security- and intimacy-based experiences, whereas negative experiences (e.g., being disliked, excluded) are known to have unfavourable consequences on development. The aim of this project was to investigate the relationship between specific friendship features and experiences that occur across contexts (dyadic, classroom) and emotional adjustment in a sample of adolescents. This was achieved by conducting three longitudinal studies using self-report and sociometric data collected from fifth and sixth grade students in Montréal, Canada and Barranquilla, Colombia. The results of Study 1 provided support for the use of a measurement burst design methodology to account for momentary deviations in self-reported internalizing symptomology. Specifically, the burst design was found to provide a more stable and reliable measure of anxiety compared to traditional single-time longitudinal measurement designs. Study 2 assessed the degree to which perceived friendship quality (security, intimacy) and various classroom-level features (e.g., individualism, collectivism, acceptance/density, SES) minimize the continuity of social anxiety among youth. Support was found for the protective function of friendship security on anxiety, and classroom-levels of individualism and acceptance/density were found to strengthen the negative effect of security across the school year. Intimacy was also found to be an important source of emotion regulation for lower SES groups and groups that are highly individualistic. Study 3 employed the benefits of a burst design to investigate how depressed affect influences accurate awareness of youth’s level of acceptance among their peer group. Findings suggested that higher levels of depressed affect make early adolescents insensitive to actual levels of social acceptance from their peers, despite the fact that it may be objectively higher. Together, these studies improve our understanding of how important features of friendship quality contribute to adolescents’ well-being, as well as how negative peer experiences and depressed affect function together to influence self-perceptions
People do not always know best: Preschoolers’ trust in social robots versus humans
Get PDFThe main goal of my thesis was to investigate how 3- and 5-year-old children learn from robots versus humans using a selective trust paradigm. Children’s conceptualization of robots was also investigated. By using robots, which lack many of the social characteristics human informants possess by default, these studies sought to test young children’s reliance on epistemic characteristics conservatively.
In Study 1, a competent humanoid robot, Nao, and an incompetent human, Ina, were presented to children. Both informants labelled familiar objects, like a ball, with Nao labelling them correctly and Ina labelling them incorrectly. Next, both informants labelled novel items with nonsense labels. Children were then asked what the novel item was called. Children were also asked what should go inside robots, something biological or something mechanical. Study 2 followed the same paradigm as Study 1, with the only change being the robot used, now the non-humanoid Cozmo. Eliminating the human-like appearance of the robot made for an even more conservative test than in Study 1. Both studies 1 and 2 found that 3-year-old children learned novel words equally from the robot and the human, regardless of the robot’s morphology. The 3-year-old children were also confused about both robot’s internal properties, attributing mechanical and biological insides to the robots equally. In contrast, the 5-year-olds in both studies preferred to learn from the accurate robot over the inaccurate human. The 5-year-olds also learned from both robots despite understanding that the robot is different from themselves; they attributed mechanical insides to both Nao and Cozmo over biological insides.
Study 3 further investigated 3-year-olds ambivalence regarding their trust judgements, that is, who they choose to learn from. Instead of word learning, the robot demonstrated competence through pointing. The robot would accurately point at a toy inside a transparent box, and the human would point at an empty box. Next, both informants pointed at opaque boxes and the child was asked where the toy was located. Neither informant demonstrated the ability to speak, as speech is a salient social characteristic. 3-year-olds were still at chance, equally endorsing the robot and the human’s pointing. This suggests that goal-directedness and autonomous movement may be the most important characteristics used to signal agency for young children. The 3-year-olds were also still unsure about the robot’s biology, whereas they correctly identified the human as biological. This suggests that robots are confusing for children due to their dual nature as animate and yet not alive.
This thesis shows that by the age of 5, children are willing and able to learn from a robot. These studies further add to the selective trust literature and have implications for educational settings
Replay Attack Detection in Smart Grids using Switching Multi-sine Watermarking
Get PDFCyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are systems that include physical and computational
components linked by communication channels. In a Smart Grid (SG), the power plants and loads
communicate with supervisors (Central Controllers (CC)) for managing the power demand more
efficiently. As such, a smart grid can be regarded as a CPS. The computational components and
communication links of a CPS can be subject to cyber-attacks. Researchers have been exploring
detection and mitigation strategies for various types of cyber-attacks.
An important type of attack is the replay attack for which various strategies based on
watermarking signals have been proposed. One such scheme is based on switching multi-sine
waves as the watermarking signal. This thesis adapts this scheme and develops a design procedure
for detecting replay attacks for smart grids. Specifically, it examines the places in a grid where the
watermarking signal can be injected and presents guidelines for choosing the amplitude and
frequencies of sine waves that suit smart grids.
One of the drawbacks of using a watermarking signal is the additional control cost (i.e.,
decrease in performance). In the context of smart grids, watermarking results in small fluctuations
in delivered power. This thesis extends the single-input-single-output watermarking to a two-input-two-output watermarking scheme for smart grids in such a way to considerably lower grid power
fluctuations due to watermarking. The proposed method is verified using a simulated grid
connected inverter-based plants. Simulation results show that using the suggested strategy, the
effect of watermarking on the overall grid power reduces significantly
Design and Implementation of an IMU Sensor System to Estimate a Hockey Puck’s Peak Velocity
Get PDFThe rapid advancement in sensor technology can revolutionize how sports dynamics are understood and analyzed. This thesis focuses on designing and implementing an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor system to be deployed within a hockey puck to estimate its peak velocity.
The research involved the intricate design of a sensor system comprising an accelerometer, two gyroscopes, and a magnetometer. Moreover, puck preparation was carried out to secure the sensor and battery within the puck to ensure functionality and durability. Furthermore, a data acquisition system is developed to receive, save, and plot data transmitted via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol.
Three distinct methods for estimating the puck's peak velocity from the sensor data are compared. It is discovered that the method based on an extended Kalman filter and utilizing data from all three sensor types exhibits superior accuracy. This method is subsequently validated under various hockey shot conditions, reinforcing its practical applicability. Moreover, the relationship between velocity estimation error versus true velocity is investigated.
Primarily designed for research studies, this work offers a foundational understanding of hockey puck dynamics, despite the sensor system not being tailored for real-game scenarios. The insights gained have substantial implications for further sports analytics and player training. Furthermore, the results outline a promising pathway for future sports engineering and wearable technology investigations
What makes firms great at digital marketing? A qualitative analysis of firms’ digital marketing capabilities.
Get PDFDigital marketing is a well-researched field and a rapidly transforming function that requires continuous adaption from employees. Extant work on digital marketing identified that new technologies and digitalization are valuable and enable firms to improve their processes to become more efficient. However, previous research focused solely on specific aspects separately, without addressing the lack of a holistic understanding of digital marketing effectiveness, and how to link capabilities, strategy, and practice. To address this gap, I examine how and why firms can be successful at digital marketing at the organizational level. I answer this question by using a qualitative approach, where I collected a combination of archival and interview data with digital marketing experts and executives. My analysis highlights how a culture of optimization, based on six key values, facilitates the integration of digital marketing capabilities into daily processes such as iterative strategizing that adaptable employees, that are responsible learners, can exploit to contribute to digital marketing excellence. This study has several theoretical and managerial implications, which are discussed in turn
A brief Introduction to Kodaira dimension and Iitaka conjecture
Get PDFIn the work A brief introduction to Kodaira dimension and Iitaka Conjecture
by Emanuele Ronda, we define the concept of Kodaira dimension and state
the Iitaka Conjecture Cn,m. We therefore prove some results on the Kodaira
dimension and study, at different levels of detail, three, already known,
instances of the Conjecture; namely:
i Cn,1 for base curves of general type and fibres of positive geometric
genus;
ii C2,1;
iii Cn,m for base spaces of maximal Albanese dimension