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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Type d'Item : Item , The Role of Higher Education Pathways in the International Protection Regime for Forced Migrants(Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2026-07-17) Azari, Parisa; Velloso, João; Clark-Kazak, Christina R.This thesis explores the meaning of "protection" in international refugee law and examines how higher education initiatives can contribute to rethinking the concept. It responds to gaps in the existing literature concerning the relationship between protection and higher education. The thesis uses a doctrinal and qualitative case study approach as its methodology. It draws on legal analysis of international refugee law and human rights law, combined with empirical data from semi-structured interviews with key informants involved in two higher education initiatives in Canada: the World University Service of Canada's Student Refugee Program (WUSC's SRP) and the Scholars at Risk (SAR) network. These cases are examined as pathways through which higher education functions not only as a human right but also as a means of accessing other human rights. The findings demonstrate that protection is a positive concept that extends beyond the absence of serious harm; it requires conditions in which forced migrants are able to access fundamental human rights. This is reflected in both cases, where protection is not limited to safety but is realized through higher education opportunities, academic participation, and forms of institutional support that enable beneficiaries to utilize resources in practice. Across both cases, protection is delivered through partnerships among multiple actors, particularly post-secondary institutions, and is sustained through integration support tailored to the needs of beneficiaries. While WUSC's SRP provides resettlement alongside higher education, SAR offers temporary protection through academic placements. They operate through different legal and institutional arrangements, with each initiative responding to protection needs within the scope of its objectives and capacities. Together, they highlight that protection is an ongoing process rather than a fixed legal outcome.Type d'Item : Item , Using Gene Knockouts to Identify the Roles of dlx Paralogs(Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2026-07-17) Overman, Rainer; Ekker, MarcThe dlx gene family plays a critical role in the development of GABAergic interneurons and is uniquely organized into conserved bigene clusters regulated by shared intergenic enhancers. Although the dlx genes have been extensively studied, the functional significance of this genomic organization and the individual contributions of specific paralogs to interneuron subtype specification remain incompletely understood. This study investigated the effects of dlx gene deletions on GABAergic interneuron populations in the zebrafish brain and developed optimized quantitative PCR (qPCR) primers to facilitate future transcriptional analyses of this gene family. Immunohistochemical analyses were performed to evaluate the effects of dlx deletions on parvalbumin (PV)-, somatostatin (SST)-, and calretinin (CR)-expressing interneuron populations. In parallel, qPCR primers were designed and optimized for the highly conserved dlx gene family to support future studies of gene expression and regulatory interactions. PV immunostaining exhibited substantial variability, preventing reliable quantitative analysis. In contrast, consistent results were obtained for SST and CR populations. Deletion of dlx1a and dlx5a resulted in marked reductions in SST-expressing neurons, indicating that these genes play key roles in SST interneuron development. Similarly, dlx2a and dlx5a were found to contribute significantly to the development of CR-expressing neurons. The optimized qPCR primers provide a robust methodological resource for future investigations of transcriptional regulation within dlx gene clusters. These findings demonstrate distinct roles for individual dlx paralogs in the specification of GABAergic interneuron subtypes while providing new molecular tools for studying dlx gene regulation. By integrating histological and molecular approaches, this work advances our understanding of the regulatory architecture and functional significance of dlx gene organization and establishes a foundation for future investigations into the mechanisms underlying GABAergic brain development.Type d'Item : Item , Access Site in Coronary Angiography and Percutaneous Coronary Intervention(Université d'Ottawa | University of Ottawa, 2026-07-16) Di Santo, Pietro Hector; Wells, GeorgeCoronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) are cornerstone procedures in the diagnosis and management of coronary artery disease, traditionally performed via transfemoral access (TFA). Over the past two decades, transradial access (TRA) has emerged as an alternative approach, supported by evidence demonstrating reduction in bleeding, vascular access complications, and even mortality, particularly in patients with acute coronary syndromes. Despite widespread adoption, important gaps remain regarding the comparative safety, assessment and management of complications, and cost effectiveness of TRA vs TFA across diverse clinical settings. This Doctorate in Philosophy thesis evaluates vascular access strategies for coronary angiography and PCI through a comprehensive program of epidemiologic research integrating a systematic review and meta-analysis, observational studies, a prospective diagnostic evaluation study, economic modeling, and randomized clinical trial development. First, a systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes randomized evidence comparing TRA and TFA in patients undergoing PCI for ST-elevation myocardial infarction, with a focus on short term mortality. Second, a large retrospective cohort study examines the incidence and predictors of catheter-induced coronary artery dissection (a rare but potentially catastrophic complication) by comparing TRA and TFA in a real-world practice. Third, a prospective cohort study evaluates the diagnostic accuracy of bedside point-of-care ultrasound for detecting access site complications which addresses an important gap in post-procedural management of patients. Fourth, a cost effectiveness analysis assesses TRA versus TFA in acute myocardial infarction from the perspective of the Canadian publicly funded healthcare system by incorporating clinical outcomes, cost, and quality-adjusted life-years. Finally, the thesis includes the design and statistical analysis plan of a multicentre randomized clinical trial evaluating post-procedural anticoagulation for the prevention of radial artery occlusion (i.e. the most common complication following TRA). Collectively, this thesis applies rigorous epidemiological and health economic methods to evaluate clinically relevant questions in interventional cardiology thereby generating evidence to inform procedural practice, optimize patient outcomes, and guide future clinical trials and health system decision making.Type d'Item : Item , Towards an AI-Enabled Metaverse: Architecture, Resource Allocation, and Multimodal Benchmarking(Université d'Ottawa | University of Ottawa, 2026-07-16) Long, Zijian; El Saddik, Abdulmotaleb; Dong, HaiweiThe metaverse, envisioned as a paradigm for next-generation digital environments, remains fundamentally constrained by isolated, pre-defined, and reactive virtual systems. Artificial intelligence (AI) provides a conceptual and technical foundation for overcoming these limitations by enabling persistent perception, autonomous decision-making, and adaptive coordination. This thesis investigates how AI can be systematically embedded into metaverse systems from a system-level perspective. It begins with a comprehensive analysis of metaverse network traffic characteristics, examining the necessity, performance implications, and trade-offs between remote rendering and local rendering. Building on these empirical insights, the thesis proposes a unified thing–edge–cloud architecture that coordinates heterogeneous intelligent agents operating across network layers. Within this architecture, the thesis addresses two core challenges in AI-enabled metaverse systems: adaptive resource allocation and cognitive scene understanding. At the edge layer, adaptive bandwidth allocation for immersive streaming is formulated as a cooperative multi-agent decision-making problem under dynamic network conditions. A Multi-Agent Soft Actor Critic (MASAC)–based strategy is developed and yields consistent improvements in user Quality of Experience (QoE) of at least 14\% compared with representative streaming baselines. At the cloud layer, the thesis introduces a metaverse-oriented benchmarking framework for evaluating the scene understanding capabilities of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs). Thirteen representative MLLMs are assessed through a pairwise comparison protocol under an MLLM-as-a-judge paradigm guided by metaverse-specific semantic criteria. Human expert validation confirms the robustness of the proposed benchmark, achieving an agreement rate of 87.6\% with human consensus. Overall, this thesis establishes an integrated methodological and architectural foundation for the design, optimization, and evaluation of AI-enabled metaverse systems.Type d'Item : Item , The Rest-Task Relationship of Intrinsic Neural Timescales(Université d'Ottawa | University of Ottawa, 2026-07-16) Çatal, Yasir; Northoff, GeorgThe human brain processes information across multiple temporal scales simultaneously. Understanding how the brain integrate information across diverse timescales is a recent problem in neuroscience. In order to address this problem, the concept of intrinsic neural timescales (INTs) was developed and defined as the time window during which prior information can influence the processing of new stimuli. The aim of our thesis is to investigate the rest-task relationship of INTs. We address three specific aims: First, we examine whether INTs are modulated by continuous behavioral tasks. We analyze wide-field calcium imaging in mice during spontaneous locomotion and EEG data from humans performing self-evaluation tasks. We demonstrate that behavioral states can be accurately classified from INT topographies, and active states show prolonged INTs compared to rest. Computational modeling reveals that these changes can depend on the strength of recurrent neural connections. Second, we investigate how resting-state INTs relate to event-related brain activity in discontinuous tasks. To address this question, we use magnetoencephalogram (MEG) data of an emotional face recognition paradigm and resting state scan obtained from humans. Drawing on the fluctuation-dissipation theorem from statistical physics, we predict and confirm a positive correlation between resting-state INTs and the magnitude of event-related fields. Neurobiological modeling using the Jansen-Rit framework suggests that the empirically observed relationship may be mediated by intracolumnar connection strengths. Third, we present IntrinsicTimescales.jl, an open-source Julia software package implementing established and novel methods for INT estimation and is designed to handle the complexity of modern neuroimaging datasets with high performance and accuracy. Our findings provide converging evidence that resting-state and task-state brain dynamics are fundamentally interconnected, with INTs serving as a bridge between spontaneous neural fluctuations and task-evoked responses. This work advances our understanding of how the brain's intrinsic dynamics relate to the information processing across behavioral states.