Event detection is a critical challenge in many fields like video surveillance, social graph analysis, and multimedia processing. Furthermore, events are “structured” objects involv ing multiple components like the event type, the participants with their roles, and the atomic events in which it decomposes. Therefore, the recognition of an event is not only limited to recognize the type of the event and when it happened, but it involves solving a set of simple tasks. Exploiting background knowledge about events and their relations could then be beneficial for event detection. In the last years, neuro-symbolic integration has been proposed to merge the strengths and overcome the drawbacks of both symbolic and neural worlds. As a consequence, different neuro-symbolic frameworks, which com bine low-level perception of neural networks with a symbolic layer, encoding prior domain knowledge (usually defined in terms of logical rules), have been applied to solve different atemporal tasks. In this thesis, we want to investigate the application of the neuro-symbolic paradigm for event detection. This would also provide a better insight into the strengths and limitations of neuro-symbolic towards tasks involving time.

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<p>In the social sciences, the dominant approach to the study of character—people’s</p> <p>essential interactional dispositions, especially of a moral and durable nature—has been to</p> <p>treat it as a set of objective dispositions lodged within the individual. This dissertation</p> <p>challenges the objectivist orthodoxy in the study of character by examining it from a</p> <p>symbolic interactionist perspective (Mead 1934; Blumer 1969; Strauss 1993). Drawing on</p> <p>14 months of ethnographic research in two Protestant Christian seminaries as an</p> <p>empirical case, I find that character is ultimately a matter of audience definition, a selfother</p> <p>dispositional designation achieved in social interaction. Three empirical papers</p> <p>examine specific aspects of the character-making process. The first paper considers</p> <p>character as a contingency influencing people’s trajectories of involvement in group life.</p> <p>The second paper examines how ministry students define and experience character</p> <p>formation in the seminary. The third paper analyzes how character problems are</p> <p>identified and responded to in the seminary.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p> Many industries have legacy software systems which are definitely important to them but are however, difficult to maintain due to a lack of understanding of those systems. This occurs as a result of inadequate or inconsistent documentation. Although the costs of redesigning the system may be large, some organizations still plan to reverse engineer the software specification documents from the code to alleviate a large burden from such endeavour. This thesis provides an incremental and modular approach to create a process and tools to extract the semantics of legacy assembly code.</p> <p> Our techniques consist of static analysis and symbolic interpretation in order to reverse engineer the semantics of legacy software. We examine the case of IBM-1800 programs in detail. From the abstract model of the operational semantics of IBM-1800, we simultaneously obtain an emulator and a symbolic analysis process. Augmented with control flow information, we can use the symbolic analysis to provide complete semantics for the code sequences of interest. We can also generate Data Flow Graphs to depict the flow of data in those code segments. The whole process of extracting semantic information from the assembler codes is fully automated with only a little human intervention at the initial step.</p> <p> We use Haskell as our implementation language and its important features help us to create modular and well structured software. The literate programming documentation style in this thesis increases the readability and consistency of the implementation's documentation.</p> <p> The process and the associated tools created in this thesis are used in a large reverse engineering project, which has a goal to extract requirements specification from legacy assembly code. This project is funded jointly by Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and CITO (Communications and Information Technology Ontario).</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

<p> We present a symbolic analysis of a class of while loop programs which can automatically derive a closed-form symbolic expression for the input-output relation embodied in that program.</p> <p> We show that this is especially well-suited to analyzing programs from scientific computation, in particular programs which compute special functions (like Bessel functions) from its Taylor series expansion. Other than making heavy use of algebraic manipulations, as available in any computer algebra system, we also require the use of recurrence relations. It is from these recurrence relations that we derive most of our information.</p> <p> It is important to note that we can often get interesting information about a program (like termination) without requiring closed-form solutions to the recurrences.</p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

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A qualitative study, using an oral history method was completed. Seven participants (2 men, 5 women) of Gullah descent from the St. Helena's Island and Charleston, South Carolina area were extensively interviewed. Symbolic interactionism provided the theoretical framework for the study. Findings included the recognition of the Gullah as a unique cultural group and the possible effects of slavery on identity formation for individuals as well as the Gullah community. Striking differences in physical space utilization between Gullah and non-Gullah residents were suggested. The presence of conflict between African and European beliefs and practices were seen in areas such as religious traditions, child rearing, and language. The pervasive effect of racism on identity and its relationship to biculturalism was discussed. Biculturalism appeared to be strongly related to survival as well as being an integral part of the participants' identities. / Ph. D.

Recent racial attitude research has focused on whites' increasing support for the principles of racial equality and lack of support for programs meant to bring about racial equality. As one explanation for this gap some researchers have hypothesized that a new form of symbolic racism with origins in early-learned feelings of individualism and antiblack affect is taking the place of traditional prejudice. According to symbolic racism theory, whites oppose programs such as affirmative action out of moral resentment toward blacks for not living up to traditional protestant values. However, longitudinal studies of racial attitudes continue to focus on whites increased support for the principles of equality. No study has focused on symbolic racism over time. Using data from the American National Election Studies I analyze symbolic racism among whites from the years 1986-2000 by decomposing the time trend into its attitudinal change and cohort replacement components. Results of the analyses support the view that symbolic racism is not decreasing, and has actually increased slightly since 1986. Results of the analysis do not support the view that symbolic racism has origins in early-learned feelings such as antiblack affect. In fact, the effect of antiblack affect on symbolic racism is decreasing over time as symbolic racism is increasing. Based on this finding, an alternative conceptualization of symbolic racism that places the origins of racial prejudice in competition between groups for status and not in feelings and emotions is offered. / Master of Science

When a family member is incarcerated, the task of emotionally and financially supporting the remaining family members and the incarcerated loved one often falls upon women, who are likely to be under-resourced and overwhelmed. Women whose husbands are incarcerated in India are likely to possess multiple marginalized identities, increasing their vulnerability to intersecting forms of oppression. Empirical research is lacking on wives of incarcerated men in India, contributing to their invisibility in policy-making and programmatic interventions. Guided by intersectional feminism and symbolic interactionism, the purpose of this study was to document the stories of women who had experienced spousal incarceration in the Indian context. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 wives of prison inmates who resided in or around the National Capital Territory of Delhi, all of whom either held a lower caste identity or a Muslim religious identity. Transcribed interviews were analyzed following the steps of narrative analysis. Results illustrate the diversity of storied experiences of wives of incarcerated husbands in India. First, by grouping narratives that conveyed the same overall storyline into the same cluster, I identified three story clusters: Ambivalent but Hanging On, Unconditionally Devoted, and Independent and Disillusioned. Second, by attending to how women's day-to-day lives are shaped by intersecting systems of privilege and oppression, particularly those tied to gender and class, I identified three overarching themes that spanned women's narratives: (a) a complicated relationship with patriarchy, (b) the weight of socioeconomic disenfranchisement, and (c) when resilience is not a choice. The results of this study emphasize the need to distinguish between feminist agency and welfare agency, to recognize women's experiences of ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief, and to critique the systemic injustices that forced women to be resilient. Documenting their stories is instrumental in bringing attention to the needs, challenges, and triumphs of this underserved and overlooked population. / Doctor of Philosophy / When a family member is incarcerated, the task of emotionally and financially supporting the remaining family members and the incarcerated loved one often falls upon women, who are likely to be under-resourced and overwhelmed. Women whose husbands are incarcerated in India are likely to possess multiple marginalized identities, increasing their vulnerability to intersecting forms of oppression. Empirical research is lacking on wives of incarcerated men in India, contributing to their invisibility in policy-making and programmatic interventions. The purpose of this study was to document the stories of women who had experienced spousal incarceration in the Indian context. Interviews were conducted with 14 wives of prison inmates who resided in or around the National Capital Territory of Delhi, all of whom either held a lower caste identity or a Muslim religious identity. Results illustrate the diversity of women's stories and experiences with spousal incarceration. First, by grouping narratives that conveyed the same overall storyline into the same cluster, I identified three story clusters: Ambivalent but Hanging On, Unconditionally Devoted, and Independent and Disillusioned. Second, by attending to how women's day-to-day lives are shaped by intersecting systems of privilege and oppression, particularly those tied to gender and class, I identified three overarching themes that characterized women's narratives: (a) a complicated relationship with patriarchy, (b) the weight of socioeconomic disenfranchisement, and (c) when resilience is not a choice. The results of this study emphasize the need to distinguish between feminist agency and welfare agency, to recognize women's experiences of ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief, and to critique the systemic injustices that forced women to be resilient. Documenting their stories is instrumental in bringing attention to the needs, challenges, and triumphs of this underserved and overlooked population.