Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected organizations as they have been forced to move their operations from a physical space to a fully remote work environment. This rapid and forced digitalization puts pressure on organizations and their leaders to guide them through these uncertain times. Middle-managers have been seen as a vital link between the top and lower level of the organization, and through utilizing transformational leadership, adaptations to rapid changes might be less disruptive for followers and the organization. However, COVID-19 has resulted in an unprecedented situation which has caught the middle-manager in the middle of turbulent organizational change. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to interpret middle-managers’ adaptation to the forced change from a physical working environment towards a fully remote one from a managerial perspective with the transformational leadership dimension. Method: To address the purpose of this study, a qualitative research design was used, and data was collected through three semi-structured interviews. Conclusion: This study found that three major adaptations were made by middle-managers in response to the forced relocation to remote. These three adaptations influenced three dimensions of transformational leadership who has received increased attention following forced remote which puts pressure on the middle-manager to address these dimensions while adhering to the new contextual circumstances.

This research explores the world of material belongings of Muslim Syrian newcomer/refugee families as they establish themselves in Canada since 2015. The study centers the cultural and emotional meanings of the material belongings by looking at both those that are brought with the newcomers and those that are left behind. It aims to shed light on how these objects hold memories and connect refugees to their cultural and personal histories while also examining the role of displacement in this context. Additionally, it investigates the different perspectives between generations by looking into how the value and meaning of belongings may alter between older and younger family members. The key questions of the study develop at the intersection of material culture and forced migration. It first examines whether material belongings hold a significant place in the everyday lives of refugees and how this reflects on their memories. Secondly, it considers if migration and the experience that comes with it alters refugees’ attachments to their material belongings and leads to changing their sentimental value over time. Thirdly, it evaluates whether the decision-making process behind what refugees choose to bring with them and what they decide to leave behind is affected under distressing circumstances. Methodologically, the study offers an alternative ethnographic approach by braiding migrant narratives with object biographies, shifting the subject of the narrative toward a demonstration of the interrelationships of persons and things. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>According to the latest refugee statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2011), the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide has reached 43.7 million, the highest number in 15 years. Roughly 80% of this population are women and children. Afghanistan continues to be the place of origin for the largest number of refugees under UNHCR responsibility across the globe. From 1979 to 1990, the largest and most enduring forced migration in human history occurred when 6.2 million Afghans were displaced and fled their homeland to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran.</p> <p>During the processes of conflict, upheaval, exile, and resettlement, refugee women face numerous traumatic events and are exposed to various challenges at every stage of their refugee journey. Very little scholarly research has examined their strengths and resiliency during this time.</p> <p>The primary purpose of this study is to provide insight into the challenges that Afghan refugee women have faced during pre-migration, exile, and resettlement. Specifically, this inquiry using feminist theory and method examines (a) their experiences in all three contexts in which they have lived and managed, (b) the significant roles that they have played, and (c) the coping mechanisms that they have used to overcome the problems in these situations.</p> <p>The sample for this interpretive qualitative research was drawn from Afghan refugee women in the city of Hamilton and the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. The study was conducted with six in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The results provide contextually laden detail of the Afghan refugee women’s unique lived experiences. The results revealed Afghan refugee women as resilient and as strong leaders. The dominant discourse that portrays Afghan women as weak and oppressed should be challenged. Implications for social work practice, education and policy are identified, and recommendations for improved services are outlined.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

<p>Safe nursing care of patients with cardiovascular disease requires specialized knowledge and skill. However, education for such specialty practice has little empirical basis. Research has suggested that novices perceive primarily surface aspects of a domain while experts perceive primarily its deep principles. Insight into such perceptual differences may help inform future pedagogical strategies. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not such differences are found in the domain of cardiovascular nursing.</p> <p>A forced choice triad task was developed to test the study hypothesis. Each triad trial consisted of a target item and two referent items. Referent items were designed to be similar to target items based on surface features (S) such as patient age or sex, deep features (D) such as the goal of therapy, or both surface and deep features (S/SD). Participants were asked to choose the referent item that they believed was more similar to the target item and to provide a rationale for their choice. The instrument was completed by n=17 nurses in two practice cohorts: a novice/less experienced cohort with less than three years of experience in cardiovascular nursing and an experienced/competent cohort of Nurse Practitioners with at least ten years of experience in the specialty.</p> <p>Statistically non-significant differences in scores between study cohorts occurred in the hypothesized direction. However, due to the small final sample size, no definitive conclusions could be made based on this study's findings.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

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Forced marriage is generally viewed as a clash between culture and gender and the fact that men are also victims, in a small number of cases, escapes attention of policy makers and activists. While the overall approach to forced marriage has helped men as well they, however, have remained below the radar of public concern. A problem particular to men is their unwillingness to articulate in public forums their predicament as questions of masculinity are then raised. Ultimately men will have to break the silence, organize and mobilize collectively if they wish to see specific policies that target men.

Nematic liquid crystals possess large optical nonlinearities owing to their large refractive index anisotropy coupled with the collective molecular reorientation. Doping absorbing dyes into liquid crystals increases their optical responses significantly due to increased absorption in the visible region, absorption-induced intermolecular torque, cis-trans photoisomerization, and other guest-host effects. The guest-host mixtures can be employed in display applications, optical storage devices, and others. In this dissertation, nonlinear optical studies were carried out on dye-doped nematic liquid crystal cells. The main objectives of the studies were to distinguish and characterize the several processes that can lead to the formation of dynamic gratings of different types in the samples, and to study the photorefractive and the orientational responses of these samples. Furthermore, we tried to explain and model the dynamical behaviors of the observed grating formations. The experimental techniques employed in this study include asymmetric two-beam coupling, forced light scattering, and polarization holographic method. The asymmetric two-beam coupling experiments revealed that the induced grating was a photorefractive phase grating created by the nematic director reorientation within the plane of incidence. The dynamics of the beam coupling showed that two different mechanisms with different temporal responses were involved. The grating translation technique identified both gratings as pure photorefractive index gratings with phase shifts of ~ p/2 between the grating and the interference pattern. In addition, the dynamical behavior of the grating formation, obtained from forced light scattering experiments, also exhibited a two-time constant response. The dynamical behaviors of the build-up and decay of the photocurrent were investigated. The two dynamics exhibited both a two-time constant behavior, suggesting that the origin of the two-time constant dynamics observed in the two-beam coupling and the forced light scattering experiments resides in the process of photo-charge generation. The photorefractive gain coefficients were found to be in the range of 100 – 400 cm-1. The values of the nonlinear optical Kerr index (~ 0.08 cm2/W) measured in samples with certain dye/liquid crystal combinations are higher than what has been observed in other dye-doped nematics and other liquid crystal/polymer systems. All the samples showed a threshold behavior with respect to the magnitude of the applied electric field. This threshold behavior was observed both in forced light scattering experiments and polarization holographic experiments. We believe that the origin of this threshold lies in the process of photogeneration, which was found to exhibit the same threshold behavior at the same value of the applied voltage. An asymmetry of the photorefractive gain with respect to the direction of the applied electric field was observed in samples with high dye concentration. This was attributed to the beam fanning effect, which has also been observed in other high-gain photorefractive materials. Polarization holographic measurements showed that the dye enhancement effect is primarily due to the intermolecular interaction between the dye molecules and the liquid crystal host, and that the trans-cis photoisomerization plays a lesser role. The photoinduced orientational response was also studied using polarization holographic experiments. A number of observations confirmed that the birefringent grating is due to the nematic director reorientation within the plane of incidence, under the combined effect of the applied electric field and the optical field. The diffraction efficiency was found to depend linearly on the writing beam power, while the dependence of the self-diffraction efficiency on the writing beam power roughly assumes a cubic relationship. The dynamical behavior of the birefringent grating formation was investigated. The build-up dynamics was found to be best modeled as a double-time constant response, while the decay is best fitted by a single exponential. The response of the samples to an oscillating electric field was studied as a function of the modulation frequency. Very interesting and reproducible dynamics was observed, revealing the complex dynamical response of the liquid crystal director to the magnitude and rate of change of an applied electric field. The small signal response was also measured, but did not reveal any sign of a resonance behavior. The conductivity and the photoconductivity of the samples were measured. The relationship between the measured current and the applied voltage was found to be cubic at low applied voltage, and to become linear at higher applied voltage. We could explain this behavior using a double-charge-injection-in-a-weak-electrolyte model, but this is only one of the possible mechanisms that could explain this behavior. The photocurrent was found to increase linearly with the illumination power, which indicates that the charge carrier recombination rate is proportional to the carrier density. The measured electrical conductivity was found to be proportional to the square root of the dye concentration, confirming the validity of the proposed charge-injection model. / Ph. D.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) currently requires that all persons seeking a commercial driver's license for interstate commerce possess a certain minimal level of hearing. After an extensive literature review on topics related to hearing and driving, a human factors engineering approach was used to evaluate the appropriateness of this hearing requirement, the methods currently specified to test drivers' hearing, and the appropriate hearing levels required. Task analysis, audiometry, dosimetry, in-cab noise measurements, and analytical prediction of both speech intelligibility and masked thresholds were all used in performing the evaluation. One of the methods currently used to test truck driver hearing, the forced-whisper test, was also evaluated in a laboratory experiment in order to compare its effectiveness to that of standard pure-tone audiometry. Results indicated that there are truck driving tasks which require the use of hearing, that truck drivers may be suffering permanent hearing loss as a result of driving, that team drivers may be approaching a 100% OSHA noise dose over 24 hours, and that truck-cab noise severely compromises the intelligibility of live and CB speech, as well as the audibility of most internal and external warning signals. The forced whisper experiment demonstrated that there is significant variability in the sound pressure level of whispers produced using this technique (in the words, word types, and trials main effects). The test was found to be repeatable for a group of listeners with good hearing, but was found to have only a weak relationship to the results of pure-tone audiometry for a group of 21 subjects with hearing levels ranging from good to very poor. Several truck cab and warning signal design changes, as well as regulatory changes, were recommended based on the overall results of this evaluation. / Ph. D.

The main contributor to the high-cycle fatigue of compressor blades is the response to aerodynamic forcing functions generated by an upstream row of stators or inlet guide vanes. Resonant response to engine order excitation at certain rotor speeds is especially damaging. Studies have shown that flow control by trailing edge blowing (TEB) can reduce stator wake strength and the amplitude of the downstream rotor blade vibrations generated by the unsteady stator-rotor interaction. In the present study, the effectiveness of TEB to reduce forced blade vibrations was evaluated in a modern single-stage transonic compressor rig. A row of wake generator (WG) vanes with TEB capability was installed upstream of the fan blisk, the blades of which were instrumented with strain gages. Data was collected for varied TEB conditions over a range of rotor speed which included one fundamental and multiple harmonic resonance crossings. Sensitivity of resonant response amplitude to full-span TEB flowrate, as well as optimal TEB flowrates, are documented for multiple modes. Resonant response sensitivity was generally characterized by a robust region of substantial attenuation, such that less-than-optimal TEB flowrates could prove to be an appropriate design tradeoff. The fundamental crossing amplitude of the first torsion mode was reduced by as much as 85% with full-span TEB at 1.1% of the total rig inlet flow. Similar reductions were achieved for the various harmonic crossings, including as much as 94% reduction of the second leading edge bending mode resonant response using 0.74% of the rig flow for full-span TEB. At least 32% reduction was achieved for all modal crossings over the broad flow range of 0.5 to 0.9% of the rig flow. Thus the results demonstrate the modal- and flowrate-robustness of full-span TEB for reducing forced response in a modern, closely-spaced transonic compressor. Reduced spanwise TEB coverage was generally found to provide less peak reduction. Widely varying sensitivities of the vibration modes to the spanwise TEB distribution were also noted. While the second chordwise mode experienced roughly the same maximum response reduction of 80% for all of the spanwise TEB configurations, some other modes were amplified from the baseline case under part-span TEB conditions. Part-span TEB was thus found to be less modally-robust than full-span TEB. / Ph. D.

Future generations of unmanned spacecraft, aircraft, ground, and submersible vehicles will require precise relative navigation capabilities to accomplish missions such as formation operations and autonomous rendezvous and docking. The development of relative navigation sensing and control techniques is quite challenging, in part because of the difficulty of accurately simulating the physical relative navigation problems in which the control systems are designed to operate. A hardware testbed that can simulate the complex relative motion of many different relative navigation problems is being developed. This testbed simulates near-planar relative motion by using software to prescribe the motion of an unmanned ground vehicle and provides the attached sensor packages with realistic relative motion. This testbed is designed to operate over a wide variety of conditions in both indoor and outdoor environments, at short and long ranges, and its modular design allows it to easily test many different sensing and control technologies. / Master of Science