About MacSphere

MacSphere is McMaster University's Institutional Repository. MacSphere brings together the institution's scholarly works under one umbrella to preserve and provide ongoing open access to them. MacSphere works have been selected and deposited by members of the McMaster community as part of our collective committment to sharing our knowledge with the world.

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Students wishing to deposit their PhD or Masters thesis, please follow the instructions outlined by the School of Graduate Studies.

Communities in MacSphere

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 6

Recent Submissions

Examining the evidence landscape for the socio-economic and environmental effects of deep-sea mining
(2024-12) Waddell K; Mansilla C; Wu N; Lavis JN; Wilson MG
An overview of the best available research evidence from around the world (i.e., evidence syntheses) and local research evidence (i.e., single studies) and may include a scan of experiences from other countries and from Canadian provinces and territories, about the evidence landscape for the socio-economic and environmental effects of deep-sea mining in response to a decision-maker’s request.
Rapid evidence profile #85: Processes and mechanisms for enabling evidenceinformed decision-making in pandemic planning and response
(2024-12) Waddell K; Bhuiya AR; Chen K; Alam S; Wu N; Bain T; Lavis JN; Wilson MG
An overview of the best available research evidence from around the world (i.e., evidence syntheses) and local research evidence (i.e., single studies) and may include a scan of experiences from other countries and from Canadian provinces and territories, about processes and mechanisms for enabling evidence-informed decision-making in pandemic planning and response in response to a decision-maker’s request.
Rapid evidence profile #84: Reviewing the landscape of literature on solar radiation modification
(2024-11) Waddell K; Wu N; Mansilla C; Bain T; Wilson MG; Lavis JN
An overview of the best available research evidence from around the world (i.e., evidence syntheses) and local research evidence (i.e., single studies) and may include a scan of experiences from other countries and from Canadian provinces and territories, about the landscape of literature on solar radiation modification in response to a decision-maker’s request.
Narrow-Beam Scheduling for Multitarget Tracking in High-Precision Phased Array Radar Systems
(Guang Honghao, 2026) Guang Honghao; Kirubarajan, Thiagalingam; Electrical and Computer Engineering
The capability of electronic beam steering enables phased array radar (PAR) technology to play a central role in modern multifunction radar (MFR) systems, which typically perform target search and tracking. In scenarios involving multiple targets, the available radar beam resources must be appropriately allocated to achieve the optimal multitarget tracking (MTT) performance. Classical strategies in radar beam resource scheduling for MTT have been extensively investigated, under the assumption that the radar beam is sufficiently broad to ensure target illumination. Since the angular accuracy is inversely proportional to radar beamwidth, reduced beamwidths have been increasingly demanded in high-precision radar systems. However, when narrow beams are employed, targets are more likely to be missed from beam scans since their uncertainty regions may not be effectively encompassed by the beams. This effect challenges the classical beam scheduling methods, as it violates the key assumption underlying the beam-pointing control strategies and tracking performance metrics. This dissertation focuses on developing the narrow-beam scheduling (NBS) strategies to facilitate MTT under different PAR system frameworks. The study progresses from a single multibeam PAR to PAR networks, and finally to a dual-PAR network enabling cooperative narrow-beam sensing. Noting that a missed illumination under narrow-beam sensing implies that the target is more likely located outside the beam-scanned region, filtering methods have been developed to refine the posterior knowledge of the target location. Based on the proposed filters, narrow-beam steering strategies are formulated to specify the beam-pointing angles that ensure target illumination as rapidly as possible. To quantify the expected tracking performance obtained from narrow-beam sensing, performance metrics are derived along with efficient evaluation methods. By exploiting the corresponding performance metrics as objective functions, the NBS problems under different sensing frameworks are formulated as mathematical optimizations. Owing to the complexity of obtaining optimal solutions, practical methods for determining suboptimal solutions with satisfactory performance are developed. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed beam schedulers in different narrow-beam MTT scenarios.
Target Enrichment Transcriptomics of the Chemical Defensome of Zebrafish (Danio rerio)
(2026) Mellissa Easwaramoorthy; Wilson, Joanna; Biology
Toxicokinetics describes the movement of foreign chemicals through the body via absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion, processes that are mediated by an integrated network of genes collectively referred to as the chemical defensome. While the gene families that comprise the chemical defensome are well defined, the specific genes, their tissue-specific patterns of gene expression, and regulation remain poorly understood in fish. This thesis first examined publicly available RNA-seq datasets from adult zebrafish to assess basal chemical defensome gene expression across tissues and between sexes under unexposed conditions. These analyses provided evidence of tissue- and sex-specific defensome expression where data were available, but also highlighted substantial gaps in existing datasets, particularly in tissues relevant to toxicokinetics and consistent inclusion of both sexes. In this study, a bait target enrichment transcriptomics approach was developed to selectively quantify 595 chemical defensome genes in zebrafish. The approach was validated by direct comparison to unenriched whole transcriptomics using multiple read-mapping and quantification pipelines. Enriched and unenriched datasets were strongly correlated for gene abundance and differential expression, while enriched libraries improved detection of lowly expressed genes and reduced sequencing depth requirements. Enriched basal chemical defensome expression was quantified in the gill, intestine, liver, and kidney of adult male and female zebrafish. Defensome expression patterns were driven primarily by tissue type, with distinct tissue-specific expression patterns reflecting physiological roles in chemical uptake (gills, intestine), metabolism (liver), and excretion (kidney, intestine). Sex-specific differences were observed across all tissues and were pronounced in the liver, including strongly female-biased expression of cyp2k6 and multiple nuclear receptors. Taken together, these findings define tissue- and sex-specific features of basal chemical defensome expression and provide a validated, cost-effective approach for further investigating the coordinated regulation of chemical defense pathways in zebrafish.

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