Surveillance wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are highly vulnerable to the failure of the base station (BS) because attackers can easily render the network useless for relatively long periods of time by only destroying the BS. The time and effort needed to destroy the BS is much less than that needed to destroy the numerous sensing nodes. Previous works have tackled BS failure by deploying a mobile BS or by using multiple BSs, which requires extra cost. Moreover, despite using the best electronic countermeasures, intrusion tolerance systems and anti-traffic analysis strategies to protect the BSs, an adversary can still destroy them. The new BS cannot trust the deployed sensor nodes. Also, previous works lack both the procedures to ensure network reliability and security during BS failure such as storing then sending reports concerning security threats against nodes to the new BS and the procedures to verify the trustworthiness of the deployed sensing nodes. Otherwise, a new WSN must be re-deployed which involves a high cost and requires time for the deployment and setup of the new WSN. In this thesis, we address the problem of reliable recovery from a BS failure by proposing a new security architecture called Surveillance Security (SurvSec). SurvSec continuously monitors the network for security threats and stores data related to node security, detects and authenticates the new BS, and recovers the stored data at the new BS. SurvSec includes encryption for security-related information using an efficient dynamic secret sharing algorithm, where previous work has high computations for dynamic secret sharing. SurvSec includes compromised nodes detection protocol against collaborative work of attackers working at the same time where previous works have been inefficient against collaborative work of attackers working at the same time. SurvSec includes a key management scheme for homogenous WSN, where previous works assume heterogeneous WSN using High-end Sensor Nodes (HSN) which are the best target for the attackers. SurvSec includes efficient encryption architecture against quantum computers with a low time delay for encryption and decryption, where previous works have had high time delay to encrypt and decrypt large data size, where AES-256 has 14 rounds and high delay. SurvSec consists of five components, which are: 1. A Hierarchical Data Storage and Data Recovery System. 2. Security for the Stored Data using a new dynamic secret sharing algorithm. 3. A Compromised-Nodes Detection Algorithm at the first stage. 4. A Hybrid and Dynamic Key Management scheme for homogenous network. 5. Powerful Encryption Architecture for post-quantum computers with low time delay. In this thesis, we introduce six new contributions which are the followings: 1. The development of the new security architecture called Surveillance Security (SurvSec) based on distributed Security Managers (SMs) to enable distributed network security and distributed secure storage. 2. The design of a new dynamic secret sharing algorithm to secure the stored data by using distributed users tables. 3. A new algorithm to detect compromised nodes at the first stage, when a group of attackers capture many legitimate nodes after the base station destruction. This algorithm is designed to be resistant against a group of attackers working at the same time to compromise many legitimate nodes during the base station failure. 4. A hybrid and dynamic key management scheme for homogenous network which is called certificates shared verification key management. 5. A new encryption architecture which is called the spread spectrum encryption architecture SSEA to resist quantum-computers attacks. 6. Hardware implementation of reliable network recovery from BS failure. The description of the new security architecture SurvSec components is done followed by a simulation and analytical study of the proposed solutions to show its performance.

This thesis analyses thirteen key literary texts taken from the last century of Canadian English-language publishing to assess how each text reveals, reinforces, and /or resists narratives of natural-aging, decline, progress and positive-aging. When considered together, these texts illustrate overall patterns in the evolution of age-related beliefs and behaviours. Stories have a potential emotional impact that scholarly readings do not, and thus the reading and study of these texts can serve to promote conscious intellectual consideration of the issues surrounding age and aging. My analysis focuses on how our Canadian literature envisages aging into old age, primarily addressing stories set in late-life-care facilities and comprising what I am naming our ‘nursing-home-narrative genre.’ Although my chapters follow a chronological progression, beginning with Catharine Parr Traill’s 1894 Pearls and Pebbles and concluding with Janet Hepburn’s 2013 Flee, Fly, Flown, I am not arguing that each age-related belief is replaced by a succeeding one. I would assert instead that over time Canadians have accumulated an assortment of age ideologies, some of which mesh and some of which duplicate or even contradict others. For example, although many people have embraced new positive-aging ideologies, aging-as-decline narratives still circulate strongly. Using social and literary theory as support, I argue that the selected literary texts of my analysis (Traill, Wilson, Laurence, Shields, Wright, Barfoot, Munro, Tostevin, Gruen, Hepburn, King) reveal a genre that is evolving quickly in both form and content. The nursing-home-narrative genre begins with gothic stories of fear of the nursing home, of aging and of death, expands to include darkly humorous stories featuring increasingly empowered residents successfully living within care homes, and is introducing, during the twenty-first century, fantastical stories of escape from the home and of return to youthful behaviours and preferable habitats. This most recent narrative joins the earlier ones to create a new master narrative in which aging people can overcome fear with agency and thus ultimately reject the nursing home and old age itself. However, in the most compelling of the new agency and escape narratives, authors lay a thin icing of entertainment over a dark undercurrent of reality.

This study investigates variable positioning of adverbs in compound verb tenses in vernacular Quebec French using the sociolinguistic framework of Variation Theory (Weinreich et al. 1968; Labov 1969). While variable adverb placement is addressed in both the prescriptive and linguistic literature, whether their explanations for it hold in practice remains to be determined; quantitative research of this phenomenon in usage-based corpora is limited, and rare in French. The research objectives are therefore to determine the productivity of variable adverb placement in French in these verbal contexts, to uncover the linguistic and/or social factors which constrain it, and to evaluate the extent to which current treatments of this variable in the literature accurately reflect what occurs in speech. Data is thus extracted from a corpus of spontaneous discourse, is coded for several linguistic and social factors, and is quantitatively analysed using standard variationist methodology (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001). Overall rates of variant use suggest that variable adverb placement is robust, with adverbs occurring just slightly more frequently after the past participle than between the auxiliary and the participle; placement at the beginning of the sentence is rare. The results of the distributional and multivariate analyses largely confirm the purported conditioning effects of the tested linguistic factors, suggesting that prescriptive and theoretical linguistic approaches are generally correct in their accounts of this phenomenon. However, closer investigation reveals these effects to be sensitive to the lexical identity of the adverb, namely, their particular placement preferences; once these positioning predilections are taken into consideration, the conditioning effects of the linguistic factors essentially disappear. Sociodemographic factors are also found to be mildly implicated in variable adverb placement, and these too are sensitive to the influence of the lexical identity of the adverb. Ultimately, it is argued that this variable is primarily lexically-constrained, a finding which can be only minimally and indirectly inferred from the relevant literature. Taken together, the results of this study provide new and vital insight into the mechanisms underlying variable adverb placement in French, and also highlight the importance of quantitatively investigating such variable language phenomena in corpora of vernacular speech.

OPA1 regulates cristae structure and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) maintenance. Recently, our lab identified ATAD3A and SLC25 proteins as OPA1 interactors. After validating these interactions by co-immunoprecipitation, the role of these proteins in OPA1 function was examined. Previously, ATAD3A was implicated in mtDNA maintenance. However, no change in mtDNA content or nucleoid number was observed in my studies following long-term and short-term ATAD3A knockdown suggesting that OPA1 maintains mtDNA independently of ATAD3A. Previous data from our lab demonstrates that OPA1 oligomerization and cristae structure is altered by nutrients. SLC25 proteins transport nutrients into mitochondria. Therefore, OPA1 oligomerization and cristae structure was analyzed following SLC25 protein inhibition and knockdown. Decreased OPA1 oligomerization and cristae remodeling was observed following SLC25 protein inhibition and OGC knockdown. In addition these changes correlate with decreased ATP synthase monomers and oligomers suggesting that cristae remodeling may affect metabolism. Overall, these studies enhance our understanding of OPA1 function.

Respiratory viral testing in hospitalized patients is thought to improve quality of care by reducing the use of diagnostic tests, guiding infection control precautions, and rationalizing antimicrobial therapies. Few small published studies have tested these assumptions, and have demonstrated conflicting results. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 24,567 hospitalizations using administrative data to determine the associations between viral testing, patient outcomes, and process of care. Viral testing was not associated with improved mortality or length of stay in hospital, and resulted in more resource utilization. The test result did not influence the duration of isolation precautions. This implies that health care providers may not use the results of testing in making management decisions, or in guiding the use of isolation precautions. This study provides the foundation for further scientific evaluation and reform of our current respiratory infection control policy.

This thesis explores the variable behavior of bare nouns in Persian. Bare singular nouns realize different grammatical functions, including subject, object and indirect object. They receive different interpretations, including generic, definite and existential readings. However, the task of understanding the reasons for, and limits on, this variation cannot be achieved without understanding a number of pivotal features of Persian sentential architecture, including Information Structure, prosody, word order, and the functions of various morphological markers in Persian. After a brief introduction, chapters 2-3 deal with bare noun objects, firstly comparing them with nominals marked with indefinite morpheme -i suffixed to the noun, and the determiner yek. A bare noun object differs from morphologically marked nominals as it shows properties associated with noun incorporation in the literature (chapter 2). Of particular interest are the discourse properties of these ‘quasi-incorporated’ nominals. With respect to the discourse transparency of Incorporated Nominals, Persian belongs to the class of discourse opaque languages within Mithun’s classification (1984). However, under certain circumstances, Persian bare nouns show discourse transparency. These circumstances are examined in chapter 3, and it is proposed that bare nouns do introduce a number neutral discourse referent. There are no overt anaphoric expressions that could match such number-neutral antecedents in Persian. But covert anaphora lack number features, and hence can serve as means to pick up a number-neutral discourse referent. Also, in case world knowledge tells us that the number-neutral discourse referent is anchored to an atomic entity or to a collection, then an overt singular pronoun or an overt plural pronoun might fit the combined linguistic and conceptual requirements, and may be used to pick up the number-neutral discourse referent. This proposal is phrased within Discourse Representation Theory. In the second half of the dissertation, the interpretation of bare nouns in different positions and with different grammatical functions are discussed. Under the independently supported hypothesis of position>interpretation mapping developed by Diesing (1992), we will see the role of the suffix -ra in indicating that an object has been moved out of VP. Following Diesing, I assume that VP-internal variables are subject to an operation of Existential Closure. In many cases, VP-external –ra-marked objects have a different interpretation to their VP-internal, non-ra-marked, counterparts, because of escaping Existential Closure. For subjects, there is no morphological marking corresponding to –ra on objects, and we have to rely on prosody and word order to determine how a VP is interpreted using theories of the interaction of accent and syntactic structure. We assume that VP-internal subjects exist, under two independent but converging assumptions. The first is prosodic in nature: Subjects can be accented without being narrowly focused; theories of Persian prosody predict then that there is a maximal constituent that contains both the subject and the verb as its head. The second is semantic in nature: Bare nouns require an external existential closure operation to be interpreted existentially, and we have to assume existential closure over the VP for our analysis of the interpretation of objects. So, this existential closure would provide the necessary quantificational force for bare noun subjects as well. It is proposed that both subject and object originate within the VP, and can move out to the VP-external domain. The motivation for these movements are informational-structural in nature, relating in particular to the distinctions between given and new information, and default and non-default information structure.

The topic of this thesis is black virus disinfection using mobile agents. The black virus is a faulty node that destroys any visiting agent without leaving a trace; moreover, once the black virus is triggered by an agent, it clones itself and spreads to neighbouring nodes. These viruses can only be destroyed if they move to nodes that have been occupied by agents. In this thesis, we consider the black virus disinfection problem in chordal rings. Initially, the system contains a single black virus that resides at an unknown location. We propose a solution that involves deploying a team of mobile agents to locate the original black virus and to prevent further damage once it has been triggered. Our protocol is divided into two phases: 1) searching the graph until the black virus is found and triggered and 2) sending agents to occupy the neighbouring nodes of the black virus in order to trigger and destroy all the black viruses at once. Our solutions are monotone, meaning that once a node has been explored it is protected from re-infection. In order to measure the efficiency of our protocol we consider the total number of agents required for disinfection, the overall number of black viruses and the number of moves required by the agents. We then analyze the cost of all our solutions, providing optimal bounds for some classes of chordal rings.

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are envisioned to provide many road and safety applications that will improve drivers' awareness and enhance the driving experience. Many of proposed applications are location-based that depend on sharing the location information of vehicles and events among neighboring nodes. The location-based applications should provide vehicle operators with knowledge of the current surrounding conditions to help them make appropriate traveling decisions, such as avoiding traffic congestion. Drivers expect to receive accurate and reliable information from other vehicles. Therefore, securing localization service integrity is important to support a VANET's overall system reliability. In this thesis, we study the exchanged location information in VANETs and designed a framework to prevent potential security threats that will violate users' privacy and overcome limitations that can impact the exchanged data integrity and reliability. The solution developed a secure neighborhood awareness service and shared localization information management protocol in a VANET. The proposed framework is constructed through several components: (i) a location verification protocol that will secure location information by providing a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) verification protocol to overcome moving obstacle effects; (ii) privacy-preserving location information management to detect data inconsistency and provide a recovery process while preventing attackers from tracking individual vehicles; (iii) a trust model evaluation mechanism based on neighborhood awareness; (iv) an adaptive beacon protocol that will reduce the number of messages and provide quality of service(QoS) control for network managers and authorities. We also propose a security evaluation model that quantifies the security attributes for the localization service in a VANET. The model will help evaluate an integrated security measures that are provided by different components of the network services.

Structural wood design standards recognize lateral torsional buckling as an important failure mode, which tends to govern the capacity of long span laterally unsupported beams. A survey of the literature indicates that only a few experimental programs have been conducted on the lateral torsional buckling of wooden beams. Within this context, the present study reports an experimental and computational study on the elastic lateral torsional buckling resistance of wooden beams. The experimental program consists of conducting material tests to determine the longitudinal modulus of elasticity and rigidity modulus followed by a series of 18 full-scale tests. The buckling loads and mode shapes are documented. The numerical component of the study captures the orthotropic constitutive properties of wood and involves a sensitivity analysis on various orthotropic material constants, models for simulating the full-scale tests conducted, a comparison with experimental results, and a parametric study to expand the experimental database. Based on the comparison between the experimental program, classical solution and FEA models, it can be concluded that the classical solution is able to predict the critical moment of wood beams. By performing the parametric analysis using the FEA models, it was observed that loads applied on the top and bottom face of a beam decrease and increase its critical moment,respectively. The critical moment is not greatly influenced by moving the supports from mid-span to the bottom of the end cross-section.

Stereoselective hydroaminations of unactivated alkenes are rare as this represents a very challenging synthetic transformation. The most efficient examples occur in biased intramolecular systems and highly enantioselective intermolecular examples are rare, which is consistent with the forcing conditions required to catalyze the reactions. This limited reactivity also accounts for the lack of highly diastereoselective hydroamination variants. Recently our group has shown that intermolecular Cope-Type hydroamination of unactivated alkenes can be achieved using simple aldehydes as catalysts. The aldehyde promotes pre-association of the two reaction partners, inducing temporary intramolecularity resulting in a remarkably facile hydroamination event. This thesis will present the development of two reactions: intermolecular enantioselective Cope-type hydroamination and intermolecular diastereoselective Cope-type hydroamination of allylic amines.