With increasing awareness of climate change, governments and organizations have made it their mission to see a greener future. Countries like Norway, South Korea, and Canada have promised to ban internal combustion engines (ICE) by 2025-2035. Growing demand for cleaner modes of travel have taken over the market, causing everyone to look at electric vehicles for the solution. Tesla’s revenue has tripled in the past five years, 15 new electric car manufacturer shave joined, and almost all big-name ICE companies have started producing electric/hybrid cars. As the number of electric vehicles increases, a solution to long charging times will be needed to keep up with the high-power-density fuel used in ICE. Charging stations are increasing in power ratings as Tesla introduces their 250-kW supercharger and EVBox with their 350-kW Ultronig stations. These stations are comprised of power modules that stack together to reach the desired power rating. Designing, testing, and implementing power modules for electric vehicles can be a complex process due to thermal efficiency and packaging challenges. To address these issues, it is essential to establish a design methodology for power modules that takes into account validation and packaging considerations. This thesis presents a design methodology for heat exchangers that allows for rapid prototyping with sufficient accuracy, approximately below 10%. The study includes numerical simulations, reduced modeling, and experimental validation, which can increase confidence during the design phase and reduce design times. Using reduced models for quick calculations instead of relying solely on numerical models can further expedite the process. A reliable and adaptable analytical methodology for heat exchanger design is crucial for successful optimization setup. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

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<p>Objective: We compared the performance of PLUS to that ofthe Cochrane Trial Registry (CCTR), Medline and EMBASE for locating studies added during an update of Cochrane Systematic reviews. We investigated the effect of excluding studies not found in PLUS on meta-analysis results.</p> <p>Study Design and Setting: A sample of new studies in updated Cochrane Systematic Reviews was used to establish a reference standard. Searches were performed for each study in PLUS, CCTR, Medline and EMBASE. Where a primary study was not indexed in PLUS, we examined the effect on the review of excluding the study. We compared the result of each selected meta-analysis including only new studies obtained in PLUS to the result using only those not found in PLUS (non-PLUS) via ratio of odds ratios (ROR). The sensitivity of Hedges filters for randomized trials was measured.</p> <p>Results: Ninety-eight updated reviews were identified and 87 included a meta-analysis suitable for calculation of RORs. The relative recall rates for PLUS, CCTR, Medline and EMBASE were 23%, 95%, 90% and 86%, respectively. PLUS contained all new studies for 13 of74 reviews. No statistically significant difference between PLUS and non-PLUS new studies was found when RORs were pooled across 39 reviews (ROR 0.929; 95% CI, 0.79-1.093). Nineteen updated reviews had no new studies indexed in PLUS. Hedges filters for Medline demonstrated 99.4% sensitivity to detect new trials.</p> <p>Conclusions: PLUS included less than a quarter of the new studies in Cochrane Review updates but the majority of reviews in our sample appeared unaffected by the use of PLUS as a sole source of literature. This may be because PLUS captures the most important studies although no predictors of PLUS retrieval performance were found. Reviewers should consider adopting PLUS and Hedges filters to keep their reviews up to date.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>This thesis is based on 32 semi-structured phenomenological interviews conducted at a large Canadian ambulatory cancer centre serving 2.3 million people in Ontario. The primary objective of this program of study was to explore cancer care employees' perceptions of a Quality of Work-Life (QWL) Project where they were the subjects of research and their perceptions of clinical research where patients were the subjects of research. Three secondary objectives were to explore: (a) perceptions of the participatory approach to research from the perspective of employees on the steering committee of the QWL Project; (b) perceptions of the QWL Survey from the perspective of employees who completed the survey; and (c) perceptions of clinical trials from the perspective of nurses and radiation therapists who treated trial patients Findings had important implications for the conduct of workplace and clinical research in a cancer care environment. Some of the main findings included: (a) It may be difficult to conduct participatory research in a work environment given that power and a hierarchy of relationships interfere with employees being considered equal; (b) Many QWL issues presented by employees were not captured in the QWL Survey. QWL researchers need to ensure that QWL measures are pertinent to a particular worksite and encompass all meaningful QWL issues of a given work environment; (c) Ethical concerns associated with clinical trials suggested that the clinical trials department should review trial procedures; (d) Workload concerns associated with clinical trials implied that employees should be credited for their present involvement in trials; and (e) Clinical research was perceived to be more important than the QWL Project, party due to the perception that patient interests outweighed those of employees. In general, employees' perceptions of clinical and workplace research suggested that identification with the cancer centre as a clinical research organization contributed significantly to employees' QWL.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>Hydrocephalus is a common condition of childhood. Attempts to measure the health status of children with hydrocephalus have traditionally relied on surgical outcomes, non-specific generic health outcomes, or very specific neuropsychological measures. This work describes the development of a new disease-specific health status outcome measure for children with hydrocephalus--called the Hydrocephalus Outcome Questionnaire (HOQ). This work begins with a discussion of several methodological issues relevant to health status measurement, highlighting certain points of controversy. This is followed by a review of the methodology and the results of various stages of development of this new health status measure. This includes the stages of concept development, item generation, item reduction, reliability testing, and validity testing. The final section describes the use of some different approaches to providing interpretability to the new outcome measure. This work was approved by the Research Ethics Board at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. The result of this work was the 60-item Hydrocephalus Outcome Questionnaire. It demonstrated very good psychometric properties and was well received by the parents of children with hydrocephalus, who are the primary respondents. It is hoped that this will serve a useful role as a much-needed outcome measure for pediatric hydrocephalus.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)