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Recherche uO, le dépôt numérique de l'Université d'Ottawa, réunit le matériel de recherche et d'enseignement créé par notre communauté universitaire et nos partenaires. Le savoir de l'Université est ainsi disponible à long terme et en accès libre, ce qui lui procure de la visibilité et facilite sa diffusion.

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AI-Assisted Super-Resolution and Resource Optimization in Cloud Gaming
(Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2026-06-29) Ur Rehman, Haseeb; Shirmohammadi, Shervin
Cloud gaming (CG) has transformed the gaming industry by enabling users to remotely access resource-intensive games on lightweight devices. However, delivering a seamless gaming experience remains challenging due to stringent bandwidth requirements, at least 25 Mbps for 1080p streaming, and strict latency tolerances that depend on game genre, approximately 80 ms for fast-paced first-person games and 100-150 ms for slower third-person and story-driven titles. This thesis addresses these challenges through the systematic development of deep learning-based super-resolution (SR) solutions integrated within the CG pipeline to reduce bandwidth consumption while preserving visual quality and interactivity. We present four interconnected contributions. First, we propose GameSR, a lightweight neural super-resolution model that operates directly on encoded game frames without requiring game engine integration or source code access. By combining reparameterized convolutional blocks with a lightweight ConvLSTM for temporal learning, GameSR achieves real-time performance of up to 240 FPS on a GPU-accelerated client at comparable perceptual quality to native streaming. Second, we develop ARCADE, an adaptive cloud gaming framework that jointly optimizes rendering resolution, encoding bitrate, and client-side super-resolution through offline reinforcement learning. By rendering at a lower resolution when scene complexity permits, ARCADE saves server-side resources on two fronts simultaneously: it reduces the GPU cost of rendering the frame and the cost of compressing (encoding) it, while the lower bitrate cuts transmission bandwidth. This yields reductions in server CPU and GPU utilization of up to 62% and 41% respectively, alongside up to 50% bandwidth savings compared to standard WebRTC streaming at equivalent or higher visual quality. Third, we extend our approach to immersive virtual reality cloud gaming. We demonstrate that transmitting one color view and one monochrome view reduces VR streaming bandwidth by up to 56% (iSR), and address the resulting sequential pipeline bottleneck by developing GameSRVR, a unified model that jointly performs stereo-aware colorization and super-resolution in a single forward pass. GameSRVR reduces inference from 73.61 ms to approximately 11 ms per stereo pair at 4× scaling, a 6.7× speedup. Deployed on a cloud gaming testbed, GameSRVR achieves over 33% bandwidth savings and an end-to-end latency of approximately 20 ms, meeting the VR motion-to-photon budget. Fourth, to enable reproducible AI-driven cloud gaming research, we introduce GameLab, an open-source, AI-enabled cloud gaming testbed built on WebRTC. GameLab provides programmable server-side and client-side hook points for integrating machine learning modules, along with a novel QR-based frame identity mechanism enabling reliable full-reference quality evaluation under real network conditions. Extensive objective evaluations on popular games including Counter-Strike 2, Overwatch 2, Team Fortress 2, and FIFA 24, as well as VR titles Beat Saber, Pavlov VR, and VRChat, alongside subjective user studies, validate that our solutions deliver high perceptual quality while meeting real-time constraints. This thesis demonstrates that effective cloud-gaming neural upsampling can be achieved without proprietary game engine integration, offering practical solutions deployable across both legacy and modern game titles.
When Editors Revolt: Characterizing Journal Declarations of Independence
(2026-06-29) van Walsum, Saskia; Matthias, Lisa; Alperin, Juan Pablo; Haustein, Stefanie
When editorial boards resign from their journals and publishers and declare their independence, two competing journals can result: the original journal under a new editorial board (a ‘zombie’ journal), and a new journal established by the departing editors (a ‘breakaway’). The bibliometric community saw such an event when the board of Journal of Informetrics left Elsevier to found Quantitative Science Studies. We analyzed 39 breakaway-zombie journal pairs that have formed since 1989 and their declarations of independence to understand why and how they happen. Results show that declarations of independence were motivated by concerns related to governance and business model and overwhelmingly happened at journals owned by the Big Five publishers. Breakaway editors tended to found new journals at smaller publishers and adopt diamond publishing models. These findings suggest that dissatisfaction with commercial publishing models is growing, and that community-led alternatives can motivate change.
Understanding Trajectories of Youth Volunteering: Pandemic Dilemmas, Volunteer Persistence, Institutional Transitions, and Moral Domain Reasoning
(Université d'Ottawa | University of Ottawa, 2026-06-25) Grant, Emma; Hammond, Stuart Ian
Although past research has examined patterns of volunteering over the life course, little research has examined trajectories of youth volunteering, notably how youth volunteer behaviour may change over time, why some youth persist as volunteers, and the role of moral and other judgments in youths’ real-life decisions about volunteer engagement. To examine patterns of youth volunteering, this thesis developed a novel volunteer trajectory model (Chapter 2) and applied the model to examine trajectories of youth volunteering following a disruptive event (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic; Chapters 3 and 5) and institutional transitions (i.e., high school to university; Chapters 4 and 5). To further understand volunteering trajectories, this thesis also integrated and applied ideas from moral developmental theory to examine how youth justify their real-life decisions about volunteering over time (Chapters 3 and 4). This dissertation is structured in six chapters. The general introduction (Chapter 1) situates the research in the youth volunteering and moral development literatures. Chapter 2 presents the volunteer trajectory model. Chapter 3 is a mixed method study that examined trajectories of youth volunteering and volunteer decisions during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Chapter 4 is a qualitative interview study that explored the persistence of youth volunteering from a moral developmental perspective. Chapter 5 is a mixed method study that examined youths’ volunteering trajectories through institutional transitions, their experiences with compulsory community service, and the impact of the pandemic on youth volunteering. Together, these studies contribute a novel approach to understanding youth volunteering by examining real-world trajectories of volunteering and volunteering decisions from a moral developmental perspective (discussed in Chapter 6).
Inclusive Heathenry: The Use of German Pagan Rhetoric in the Construction of a Progressive Contemporary Religion
(Université d'Ottawa | University of Ottawa, 2026-06-25) O'Reilly, David Gerald Joseph; Goldenberg, Naomi
Germanic Paganism, or Heathenry, is a New Religious Movement (NRM) which first started in the late 1960s and has developed through the following years. Early research focused on the Heathen movement in its violent and racial forms, resulting in an anchoring bias which subsequent scholars of Heathenry are working to move past. In the current moment, Heathenry’s dominant form in Canada is “Inclusive Heathenry” which actively embraces and celebrates diversity in participants’ race, gender, and sexual orientation. This thesis analyzes the use of rhetoric in the development of Inclusive Heathenry in a North American, but predominantly Canadian, context. Recent scholarship on Heathenry has aimed to focus on tensions surrounding racism and anti-racist efforts. I discuss three such tensions faced by Inclusive practitioners as the movement matures. The first are the ways Inclusive practitioners are forced to navigate the legacy of racism as they construct their practice as a legitimate movement in the category of “religion.” The second is how understandings of masculinity are inherent to Heathenry’s beginning and ongoing development as practitioners create and enact male-coded “Heathen acts.” Now, some Inclusive Heathens are critically analyzing the legacy of gendered ideals as they “queer” the movement into what I suggest is its own unique form of “Queer” Heathenry. The third is the relationship that Heathens, like other contemporary pagans, develop with locations as a “sense of place.” I posit that Heathens are encouraged to develop both a “lived-in” and “mythic” sense of place which overlap and merge through Heathen practice. Inclusive Heathenry now shows signs of moving away from the Heathen movement to fall more in line with the progressive politics seen in other forms of contemporary paganism.
Embodied Experiences, Workplace Support, and Daily Work Outcomes: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Menstruation at Work
(Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2026-06-24) Ortynsky, Mikaila; Dimoff, Jennifer K.
Background and Purpose: The menstrual cycle (i.e., an approximately 28-day cycle governed by sex hormones) is an important and underexamined dimension of health within the management literature. Although women constitute approximately half of the global workforce, health experiences unique to female biology remain largely absent from the management literature. Using a three-study mixed-methods approach focused on menstruation, this dissertation provides an evidence-based foundation for scholars and practitioners to investigate the intersection between women's health and work. Study 1: A qualitative interview study was conducted using grounded theory methodology, focusing on the experiences of women (N = 28) who menstruate and work in in-person roles. The study was guided by two research questions: How does menstruation and the menstrual cycle interact with work? And what types of supports, if any, are needed for menstruating individuals? Findings suggest that four organizational indicators influence women's decisions to embrace menstruation and embodiment (i.e., having a female body with bodily functions) at work: (1) organizational resources (e.g., menstrual product availability); (2) work environment (e.g., bodily autonomy and breaks); (3) social support; and (4) overall culture of health at work. These indicators influenced the extent to which women were required to engage in 'organizational body work' - cognitive, emotional, and physical labour (e.g., concealment; control) to appear sexless. Study 2: Given the salient role of organizational-level facilitators in affecting participants' experiences in Study 1, a scale development study was conducted to develop a measure of Perceived Organizational Support for Health-Menstruation (POSH-M). Using Hinkin's (1998) multi-phased approach, a 14-item, four-factor scale was developed - a departure from the hypothesized seven-factor structure. The four factors comprising the POSH-M are: (1) autonomy (2) products and facilities; (3) benefits; and (4) normalization. Study 3: To explore the daily interactions between menstruation, organizational indicators (e.g., POSH-M) and work outcomes, a 40-day experience sampling methodology (ESM) was used. Specific relationships between 'menstrual symptom burden' (i.e., a composite measure of menstrual symptom severity), self-control depletion, presenteeism, cognitive functioning, and POSH-M were examined. Results indicate that the menstrual symptom burden is associated with (a) increased presenteeism via self-control depletion, and (b) decreased cognitive functioning via self-control depletion. POSH-M did not significantly moderate these relationships. Exploratory analyses further compared the experiences of women and men. Mixed model regressions revealed that when men and women experience equivalent health symptom burden, men experience poorer outcomes specific to self-control depletion and cognitive functioning. General Conclusions: Together, the studies from this dissertation yield three notable insights: (1) women experience a dual burden of managing physical symptoms and social visibility surrounding menstruation; (2) symptom severity undermines work productivity and performance, regardless of workplace support, and (3) the symptom-burden gap of women's health remains underrepresented in management research.