Digital Commons Network^™

Cellax Nanoparticles: Taxane Nanoformulations For Solid Tumor Targeting, Lobat Tayebi, Mehran Alavi

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Nanoparticles (NPs), specifically polymer-modified NPs, have illustrated unique therapeutic advantages compared to bulk materials. Cellax NPs have provided a promising approach to cancer therapy by improving drug delivery, targeting the tumor microenvironment, and potentially overcoming drug resistance, all while reducing overall toxicity compared to traditional taxane treatment. By the flash nanoprecipitation (FNP) method, docetaxel and cabazitaxel have been formulated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) modified-acetylated carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) polymer to increase biocompatibility, bioavailability, specific targeting, and modulate the tumor microenvironment. However, there are some challenges and clinical limitations related to this formulation, encompassing optimum targeted delivery to tumors, overcoming biological barriers, such …

An Overview Of Video Game Biometrics Collection And Considerations For Cyberbiosecurity, Lucas Potter, Christen Westberry, Xavier-Lewis Palmer

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Over the past fifty years, the global cost of consumer electronics has significantly decreased, leading to greater accessibility to both biosensing systems and interactive entertainment platforms. This increased access has naturally resulted in higher usage of medical and entertainment electronics. However, the intersection of these technologies, combined with invasive data harvesting practices, has raised concerns about the potential misuse of biological signals to manipulate individuals' behavior both within and beyond the video game environment. Currently, biometric data in video games are employed in various ways, such as using Heart Rate Variability (HRV) as a performance metric and integrating eye tracking …

“People [Are] Not Dying Because Officers Aren't Following Their Training. ‘It's Because They Are.”: The Construction Of Police De-Escalation Of Individuals In Mental Health Crises In Canadian Media, Renée Haddock

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Police are often assumed to be the "de facto" response to people in mental health crises. Contact between police and Canadians with mental illness and in crisis is routine and on the rise (Livingston, 2016). Police responses to these incidences have been criticized after several, highly publicized and tragic encounters between police and people in mental health crisis and the overrepresentation of people of colour in these instances. Media outlets determine which stories are prioritized, how they are framed, and which information to include or omit (Fawzi, 2018). Notably, public knowledge of police activities greatly impacts community perceptions of police …

Evaluation Of The Dnazyme Gr5 For The Determination Of Lead Speciation In Natural Waters, Gaganprit Gill

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis explores the development and application of a DNAzyme-based biosensor designed to detect labile metal species in environmental samples. Real time and on-site monitoring of labile metal fractions would make a valuable contribution to environmental management, as these fractions are the most bioavailable and pose significant toxicity risks to aquatic organisms. Conventional methods for detecting labile metals, while effective, are often burdened by high costs, complexity, and lengthy processing times, making them less ideal for rapid and widespread environmental assessments.

The first manuscript of this thesis (chapter 2) establishes the fundamental capabilities of the Pb²⁺-specific DNAzyme GR5 …

Environmental, Governance, And Bibliometric Research On Corporate Tax Avoidance, Harjot S. Mehmi

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation is composed of a literature review and three essays positioned in the corporate tax avoidance (CTA) space. The literature review summarizes the relationship between CTA and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Although there are mixed findings within each of the E-S-G categories in the CTA literature, in general, better environmental circumstances are negatively associated with CTA, social performance displays an inverse relationship with CTA, and governance factors also display an inverse relationship with CTA. The first essay is an empirical archival investigation of the relationship between CTA and an environmental factor – the risk of environmental hazards …

Grief On The Margins: The Death Of A Family Member To Substance Use, Adair Shaw

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Despite Canada's high death rates from substance use, there is limited research on the sociopsychological impact on families, who often face stigma and disenfranchised grief. This study explores how family members make meaning of a substance-related death. Through qualitative inquiry, eleven family members were interviewed on their experience of grief from substance death. The imprint of losing a family member to mental illness and substance use is fraught with intergenerational grief, ambiguity, prolonged mental-emotional distress, and relationship challenges. Substance death was also associated with stigma, social withdrawal, and shame for many participants. However, grievers reconstructed the socially prescribed negative perceptions …

Lichen It: Optimizing Post-Fire Caribou Lichen Transplantation And Assessment, Elise Brown-Dussault

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Caribou lichen species are common in mid- to late-seral boreal forests, serving as an important winter diet staple for boreal woodland caribou. However, as climate change causes boreal wildfires to increase in size, severity, and frequency, available tracts of mature forest are decreasing, diminishing the extent of mature caribou lichen stands. Caribou lichens reproduce vegetatively, so bigger and more severe fires could exacerbate their dispersal limitations, potentially extending the timeline for caribou lichen stand recovery beyond 80 years. Trials have shown that “transplanting” caribou lichen fragments into disturbed areas can lead to the establishment of caribou lichen mats; as such, …

Exploring Canadian Social Work Students' Aphobic Attitudes: The Role Of Knowledge About Asexuality And Asexual People, Brianna V. Azzoparde

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Aphobic attitudes are negative biases and prejudices against asexual individuals that can contribute to aphobic discrimination. While the Canadian Social Work Code of Ethics states that social workers should not discriminate and should provide culturally responsive services to marginalized populations, individually held aphobic attitudes have the potential to diminish one’s ability to provide culturally responsive services to asexual people. This national study examined aphobic attitudes among 326 Canadian social work students, exploring the relationship between knowledge about asexuality and aphobic attitudes, including controlling for demographic factors, social contact with asexuals, and social attitudes that previous research has identified as being …

A Pilot Study Examining Children’S Evaluations And Reasoning About Concealment And Instrumental Forms Of Antisocial Lying, Noah Battaglia

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Children as young as 4 years of age judge self-benefitting lies (i.e., antisocial lying) as wrong. Although this has traditionally been interpreted as evidence that young children view honesty as a moral obligation, contemporary moral development theory and research suggests that right/wrong judgments fail to capture important aspects of children’s social cognition. Research from a perspective known as social domain theory (Smetana et al., 2014; Turiel, 1983) has shown that children’s understanding of morality (i.e., norms concerning others’ rights and wellbeing) is distinct from their understanding of other types of socially unacceptable behaviour. While children judge many social events as …

Re-Imagining Care For Aging Disabled Adults, Caitlin L. Tizzard

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In Ontario, the landscape of aging is shaped by ageist and ableist ideologies that view older disabled adults through the lens of decline and dependency. Much of the current discourse on aging focuses on reforming long-term care (LTC), reinforcing institutional and carceral responses both within policy and academic imagination. This qualitative study takes a different approach by asking participants how care for aging disabled adults can be reimagined beyond institutionalization. Grounded in intersectional feminist, disability justice and abolitionist praxis, and using a critical transformative paradigm, this research employed Appreciative Inquiry across three focus groups with four participants engaged in aging-related …

Limiting H1n1 Replication Via The Dsrnai Pathway Using Sequence-Specific Ldsrna, Shawn Marie Sharon Carr, Stephanie Dewitte-Orr

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The seasonal influenza virus causes a common respiratory illness that can be life threatening to the immunocompromised, the very young, and the elderly. The current strategies for avoiding a serious influenza virus infection are good hygiene practices and the annual influenza vaccine. Unfortunately, last year’s influenza virus vaccine effectiveness ranged between 32-60% for children and adolescents and 46-54% for adults. These low efficacy rates are due to the vaccine often targeting hemagglutinin, a highly variable surface protein. This thesis seeks to create a prophylactic treatment via the RNA interference (RNAi) response that targets the virus’s conserved genes that are integral …

Problem-Based Learning And Artificial Intelligence, Varna Taranikanti, Srineil Vuthaluru

Books and Book Chapters

In the current digital era, significant advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have influenced various fields worldwide, particularly within the health professional education sector. This progress has also percolated into the medical education system, where Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is routinely used as a key pedagogical strategy. In PBL, students are able to fully exert their exploratory skills by solve problems through a student-centered learning approach. PBL also fosters critical thinking and encourages self-directed learning through the inquiry of clinical case scenarios. This chapter investigates the integration of AI, specifically tools like ChatGPT, into PBL frameworks to enhance learning outcomes for medical …

How To Approach Medical Education Research, Stefanie Attardi, Jeff Cross, Sarah Lerchenfeldt

Books and Book Chapters

Medical education research blends two of the core functions of academic medicine: teaching and scholarship. Its value is increasingly recognized in promotion and tenure decisions, and in the number of funding sources available. Similar to other types of research, it starts with a well-crafted question and a thorough review of the literature. For a successful project, it is critical to select the research design that can best answer the research question, keeping in mind its advantages and limitations. Because the research design must also adhere to ethical principles, working closely with the local Institutional Review Board prior to starting the …

An Antiviral Response Induced By Dsrna Against Vesicular Stomatitis Virus And Bovine Respiratory Syncytial Virus In Bovine Turbinate Cells, Carly Au

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Canada is one of the largest beef exporters in the world. Viruses like vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) and bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) can negatively impact the cattle industry, and a prophylactic treatment is needed to protect against these viruses. Viruses produce long (L)dsRNA (>30-40bp) during replication that is not found in healthy cells. As such, the innate antiviral immune response, including the RNA interference (dsRNAi) pathway, are stimulated by viral LdsRNA. When low concentrations of LdsRNA are present, the RNAi pathway is triggered resulting in the degradation of viral mRNA of matching sequence, halting specific viral protein production. …

Evaluating The Credibility Of Online Websites: A Digital Information Literacy Program, Emily C. Wood, Kim P. Roberts

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The plethora of information currently available via the internet is greater than ever before. Given this, finding credible information is an exceedingly complex task for any information consumer, but especially so for children. Research shows that children have difficulty evaluating the credibility of online information and are more susceptible to believing misinformation compared to adolescents. While a growing body of research addresses children’s internet use, most research focuses on technology safety rather than the evaluation of online information. Several studies have found digital information literacy (DIL) interventions to be successful at increasing critical thinking and awareness of the criteria to …

The Echoes Of Heartbreak: Shaping Confidence In Future Relationships Through Metaperceptions Of The Past, Anika P. Patychuk

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Romantic relationship dissolution can be deeply destabilizing. Existing research has documented the emotional and psychological consequences of breakups but has rarely examined how these experiences shape subsequent relationship functioning. While breakups often trigger self-protective responses that can inhibit future relationship formation, individuals may also derive valuable relational insights from these experiences. The present research examined whether perceiving past romantic relationships as valuable sources of relational knowledge (epistemically valuable) enhances confidence in future romantic pursuits. I propose that perceiving past relationships as high (vs. low) in epistemic value encourages confidence in future romantic pursuits. I tested this hypothesis in three experimental …

Exploring The Reassessment Of Palliative Home Care Clients: A Mixed Methods Study, Maya Canham

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Introduction: The timely reassessment of clients receiving palliative home care (HC) is critical for supporting clinicians with care planning and service delivery. However, there is little information on the frequency of reassessments and factors driving reassessment in palliative HC clients.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to: (i) determine the proportion of palliative HC clients reassessed with the interRAI Palliative Care (interRAI PC) instrument, (ii) calculate the average interRAI PC reassessment interval, (iii) identify the key factors driving interRAI PC reassessment at various intervals, and (iv) explore the factors that influence palliative HC clinicians to reassess their clients in …

Exploring The Experiences Of Racialized Immigrant Mothers In Contributing To Patterns Of Community Life In The Victoria Hills Neighbourhood, Carmel Tatiana Mahdi Miss

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The experiences of racialized immigrant mothers are complex, nuanced, and beautiful. Oftentimes, their stories are described in a way that frames women as helpless victims, merely writing about their challenges in the absence of their protagonism. The stories in this thesis suggest that, against the obstacles unique to racialization, motherhood and immigration, mothers are often the primary caretakers of their families and play a significant role in the development of children, while creatively exploring and responding to questions pertinent to community development. They navigate community life in a place different from the one they grew up in – addressing questions …

Nature For All? Assessing Equitable Public Access To National Urban Parks In Canada: A Comparative Analysis, Andrew Tenute

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The number of health challenges is rising both globally and in Canada. Research consistently shows that time spent in nature can mitigate some of these health challenges, offering significant mental, physical, and well-being benefits. Parks and protected areas in Canada, including the expansion of the National Urban Park (NUP) program by Parks Canada, provide valuable opportunities for nature-based engagement. However, access to these spaces is unjust, as many individuals face structural, intrapersonal, and interpersonal constraints. While prior studies have explored the motivations and well-being outcomes of women and Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) individuals, there remains a limited …

Geographies Of Trauma And Healing: Resistance, Resilience, ‘Ustawi Wa’, And The Lived Experiences Of African Women Refugees From The Ehagl Region In Canada, Rosemary Njeri Kimani-Dupuis Dr., Rosemary Kimani-Dupuis

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation explores the lived experiences of African women refugees from the East and Horn of Africa and Great Lakes (EHAGL) region resettled in Ontario, Canada, with particular focus on the complex intersections of trauma, resilience, and healing within global refugee governance. It asks: How do the gendered and spatial dynamics of refugee protection and Canadian settlement systems sustain structural violence against African women refugees, and how do their transnational experiences challenge and reshape dominant frameworks of care, well-being, and institutional response?

Through a multi-scalar analysis—macro (legal governance frameworks), meso (institutional actors), and micro (women’s narratives)—the study explores how trauma …

Dwelling Deeply With Less: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Ipa) Of Urban Minimalism, Joyce Y. Li

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This qualitative study explores the lived experiences of minimalists residing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, focusing on their motivations, lifestyle practices, and perceived impacts on wellbeing and human flourishing. In response to the growing popularity of minimalism and the limited research in the Canadian context, this research addresses the question: What are the lived experiences of minimalists residing in Toronto and how they make sense of it? Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with nine highly educated participants of diverse gender identities and ethnic backgrounds. Findings reveal that participants were initially motivated by practical concerns …

The Experiences Of Mothering With An Intimate Partner Violence-Related Brain Injury, Emily L. Sebben Miss

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

One in three Canadian women will experience intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetime, and 75% of them have a probable brain injury (BI) (Haag et al., 2022). Despite the recent growth of IPV-BI research, many survivors remain undiagnosed and many aspects remain unexplored. The experiences of being a mother with an IPV-related BI has been left untold. These gaps leave frontline workers with little guidance in supporting survivors who are specifically mothers. This research reports on a qualitative study exploring the lived experiences of mothering with an IPV-BI. The study uses a constructivist worldview and hermeneutic phenomenology to amplify …

The Progressive Potential Of The Horror Arg: A Digital Ethnographic Analysis Of Instagram Account Sabrinamiller230, Matthew N. Wiebe

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Alternate reality games (ARGs) are transmedia games that exist and operate utilizing a number of digital communication platforms. These games see players employing their digital literacy skills in order to solve narrative puzzles and craft theories with other ARG players – through engaging with the alternate reality fiction presented to them. sabrinamiller230 is a horror themed ARG that takes the appearance of an Instagram profile and presents players with a speculative alternate reality world featuring an alien who critiques humanity’s many injustices. This research paper seeks to address a key problem regarding the lack of digital ethnographic studies of ARG …

Drone-Based Medication Delivery For Rural, Flood-Prone Coastal Cities, Yin-Hsuen Chen, Amro M. El-Adle, Kevin J. O'Brien, Taylor Wentworth, Heather G. Richter

Center for Geospatial Science, Education & Analytics Faculty Publications

Access to healthcare remains a critical challenge for rural populations, particularly in flood-prone coastal communities where transportation barriers limit access to essential medical services. This study evaluates the effectiveness of drone-based medication delivery in improving healthcare accessibility for vulnerable populations on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Compared to traditional personal vehicle travel, drone delivery reduced trip times from up to 50 minutes to under 10 minutes for more than 80% of the population, including elderly patients. Using publicly available datasets, we developed two transportation vulnerability indices that incorporate age, travel time, and flood risk to prioritize patients for drone-based pharmaceutical delivery. These …

A Spine-Specific Lexicon For The Sentiment Analysis Of Interviews With Adult Spinal Deformity Patients Correlate With Sf-36, Sf-36, And Odi Scores: A Pilot Study Of 25 Patients, Ross Gore, Michael M. Safaee, Christopher J. Lynch, Christopher P. Ames

VMASC Publications

Classic health-related quality of life (HRQOL) metrics are cumbersome, time-intensive, and subject to biases based on the patient’s native language, educational level, and cultural values. Natural language processing (NLP) converts text into quantitative metrics. Sentiment analysis enables subject matter experts to construct domain-specific lexicons that assign a value of either negative (−1) or positive (1) to certain words. The growth of telehealth provides opportunities to apply sentiment analysis to transcripts of adult spinal deformity patients’ visits to derive a novel and less biased HRQOL metric. In this study, we demonstrate the feasibility of constructing a spine-specific lexicon for sentiment analysis …

From Cyclones To Cybersecurity: A Call For Convergence In Risk And Crisis Communications Research, Ann Marie Reinhold, Ross J. Gore, Barry Ezell, Clemente I. Izurieta, Elizabeth A. Shanahan

VMASC Publications

Effective risk and crisis communication can improve health and safety and reduce harmful effects of hazards and disasters. A robust body of literature investigates mechanisms for improving risk and crisis communication. While effective risk and crisis communication strategies are equally desired across different hazard types (e.g., natural hazards, cyber security), the extent to which risk and crisis communication experts utilize the “lessons learned” from scientific domains outside their own is suspect. Therefore, we hypothesized that risk and crisis communication research is siloed according to academic disciplines at the detriment to the advancement of the field of risk communications research writ …

Quantum-Augmented Ai/Ml For O-Ran: Hierarchical Threat Detection For Synergistic Intelligence And Interpretability, Tan Le, Vanessa Le, Sachin Shetty

VMASC Publications

Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) enhance modularity and telemetry granularity but also widen the cybersecurity attack surface across disaggregated control, user and management planes. We propose a hierarchical defense framework with three coordinated layers—anomaly detection, intrusion confirmation, and multiattack classification—each aligned with O-RAN’s telemetry stack. Our approach integrates hybrid quantum computing and machine learning, leveraging amplitude- and entanglement-based feature encodings with deep and ensemble classifiers. We conduct extensive benchmarking across synthetic and real-world telemetry, evaluating encoding depth, architectural variants, and diagnostic fidelity. The framework consistently achieves near-perfect accuracy, high recall, and strong class separability. Multi-faceted evaluation across decision boundaries, probabilistic …

Assessing Local Public Officials' Roles, Challenges, And Opportunities Encountered When Integrating Newcomers: A Case Study To Evaluate The Cities Of Rochester And Worthington., John Dassou

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Immigrants’ integration plays an important part in policy concerns and goals in many local governments since it is a major issue for local officials to integrate immigrants and incorporate them into the host community successfully. Concurrently, it is important to know the roles of local public officials, host communities, and immigrants in the process. The purpose of this study is to assess the challenges that local officials face, and how they handle these encounters effectively and efficiently. Greater collaboration between all stakeholders, social cohesion, and collective efforts implies the idea that immigrants’ integration depends on many players and factors. It …

The Rise And Fall Of Religion: An Agent-Based Model Of Secularisation, Security And Prosociality, Ivan Puga-Gonzalez, F. Leron Shults, Ross Gore, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski

Center for Secure and Intelligent Critical Systems (CSICS) Publications

The relationship between religion, society, and individual behaviour has been a subject of extensive inquiry, drawing upon a rich collection of historical and contemporary perspectives. The scientific study of religion at the social level has often found its roots in the foundational work of Durkheim (Durkheim, 1912), who posited that religion serves as a catalyst for social order and the promotion of prosocial behaviour. At the same time, Malinowski’s observations regarding the connection between ritual and anxiety have led to a number of lines of inquiry that have come to extend to other aspects of religion. Yet, taken together, these …

A Trust-By-Learning Framework For Secure 6g Wireless Networks Under Native Generative Ai Attacks, Md Shirajum Munir, Sravanthi Proddatoori, Manjushree Muralidhara, Trinidad Mario Dena, Walid Saad, Zhu Han, Sachin Shetty

Center for Secure and Intelligent Critical Systems (CSICS) Publications

Sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks will become vulnerable due to native generative AI (GenAI)-driven intelligent poisoning attacks in both the radio unit and the core network. In particular, network parameters and metrics in cross-layer design pose fundamentally uncertain conditions and can be compromised through the native GenAI mechanism, which leverages data augmentation and reconstruction capabilities. This work investigates the capabilities of native GenAI to create novel poisoning attacks in wireless networks, while investigating their impact through uncertainty-informed root analysis. Then, detected attacks are mitigated by developing a trustworthy service aggregation in the wireless network. First, a joint decision problem is formulated …