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Evaluating the effectiveness of France's indoor smoke-free law 1 year and 5 years after implementation: Findings from the ITC France survey
(Public Library of Science, 2013-06-21) Fong, Geoffrey T.; Craig, Lorraine V.; Guignard, Romain; Nagelhout, Gera E.; Tait, Megan K.; Driezen, Pete; Kennedy, Ryan David; Boudreau, Christian; Wilquin, Jean-Louis; Deutsch, Antoine; Beck, Francois
France implemented a comprehensive smoke-free law in two phases: Phase 1 (February 2007) banned smoking in workplaces, shopping centres, airports, train stations, hospitals, and schools; Phase 2 (January 2008) banned smoking in hospitality venues (bars, restaurants, hotels, casinos, nightclubs). This paper evaluates France’s smoke-free law based on the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project in France (the ITC France Project), which conducted a cohort survey of approximately 1,500 smokers and 500 non-smokers before the implementation of the laws (Wave 1) and two waves after the implementation (Waves 2 and 3). Results show that the smoke-free law led to a very significant and near-total elimination of observed smoking in key venues such as bars (from 94–97% to 4%) and restaurants (from 60–71% to 2–3%) at Wave 2, which was sustained four years later (6–8% in bars; 1–2% in restaurants). The reduction in self-reported smoking by smoking respondents was nearly identical to the effects shown in observed smoking. Observed smoking in workplaces declined significantly after the law (from 41–48% to 18–20%), which continued to decline at Wave 3 (to 14–15%). Support for the smoke-free laws increased significantly after their implementation and continued to increase at Wave 3 (p<.001 among smokers for bars and restaurants; p<.001 among smokers and p = .003 for non-smokers for workplaces). The findings demonstrate that smoke-free policies that are implemented in ways consistent with the Guidelines for Article 8 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) lead to substantial and sustained reductions in indoor smoking while also leading to high levels of support by the public. Moreover, contrary to arguments by opponents of smoke-free laws, smoking in the home did not increase after the law was implemented and prevalence of smoke-free homes among smokers increased from 23.2% before the law to 37.2% 5 years after the law.
Representing Sexual Violence and Sexual Violence on Campus: Institutional Constructions, Student and Staff Perceptions, and Their Effects
(University of Waterloo, 2026-06-15) Goodall, Jade
Universities have increasingly been positioned as key sites of sexual violence prevention and response, yet little attention has been paid to how they construct and represent sexual violence through the institutional texts they produce. This study examines how sexual violence and sexual violence prevention are represented within university polices and prevention materials, and how these representations are perceived and understood by students and staff. This qualitative study draws on a textual analysis of 130 institutional documents and semi-structured interviews with 10 students and staff at a Southwestern Ontario university (referred to as Z University). Guided by Bacchi’s (2009) What’s the Problem Represented to Be? approach, and drawing on theoretical insights from Dorothy Smith (2005) and Patirica Hill Collins (2019), the analysis examines how sexual violence is represented, the assumptions that underpin these representations, what is left unspoken, and how these representations are taken up in practice. The findings demonstrate that sexual violence is predominately framed as a matter of legal compliance, public health education, and individual responsibility. Participants describe tensions between institutional representations and lived experience, particularly among those who feel excluded or misrepresented within dominant framings. Rather than producing generalizable claims, this study offers a critical, context-specific analysis of how sexual violence and sexual violence prevention are constructed within institutional settings and how these constructions are perceived and negotiated by students and staff.
On Initializations for NMF
(University of Waterloo, 2026-06-15) Shi, Sammy
In Ward and Kolda (2023) and Xu et al. (2024), the authors proposed a sketching based initialization for unconstrained two block matrix factorization (MF) with provable guarantee. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the limits of extending these two proof frameworks in the context of Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF), as well as its numerical implications. The first chapter deals with fundamentals of NMF: its formulation, the identifiability issue and guarantees, a survey of iterative methods to solve it, and finally some complexity results. In the second chapter, I will quickly go over spectral initialization techniques for matrix optimization problems, and introduce sketching, a family of randomization techniques for numerical linear algebra, with a particular focus on its uses in iterative methods. The core focus of this chapter lies at the intersection of these two topics: a sketching-based initialization for the unconstrained two-block MF problem, using either non-alternating or alternating gradient descent (GD). We will go over the proof frameworks. In the third chapter, I will present my attempts to generalize the proof frameworks to NMF and the conclusions based on the partial progress. The fourth chapter deals with numerics. We will compare the performance of different base methods in different data regimes using all of the initializations mentioned in this thesis.
Recalibrating Reality: Sensory Reweighting and Cybersickness Susceptibility in Virtual Reality
(University of Waterloo, 2026-06-15) Izadi Sokhtabandani, Siyavash
This dissertation investigates how the brain dynamically reweights sensory cues to resolve multisensory conflicts in virtual reality (VR), with a specific focus on the etiology of cybersickness. The research characterises how visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive cues are integrated and recalibrated following VR gameplay while accounting for individual differences in these processes which dictate susceptibility to sickness. Across three experiments, this work challenges the assumption that VR exposure triggers a uniform sensory shift. Experiment 1 utilised the Subjective Visual Vertical (SVV) task, finding that high-intensity exposure shifted participants' perceived upright toward gravitational vertical and away from the body axis. Crucially, individuals who demonstrated greater reweighting reported lower cybersickness, suggesting that rapid sensory adaptation acts as a protective mechanism. Experiment 2 employed the Oriented CHAracter Recognition Test (OCHART) to further tease apart the relative weighting of visual and gravitational cues. While VR exposure did not produce a uniform group-level shift in the Perceptual Upright (PU), exploratory analyses revealed that increased visual weighting post-exposure was associated with higher cybersickness, indicating that a failure to down-weight unreliable visual inputs may be maladaptive. Experiment 3 attempted to manipulate these weights by degrading vestibular reliability through stochastic electrical vestibular stimulation (EVS). Contrary to the hypothesis that reducing vestibular certainty would force a beneficial reweighting, EVS exacerbated cybersickness and increased attrition, while cue-weighting models remained unstable. Altogether, this work demonstrates that cybersickness is not merely a product of sensory conflict, but a failure of the central nervous system to successfully reweight unreliable cues. The results suggest a two-part interpretation: first, that individual differences in sensory plasticity may relate to tolerance, where greater post-VR shifts toward gravitational cues were associated with lower symptom severity in Experiment 1, though this relationship was not consistent across tasks and measures. Second, the results suggest that external disruption of vestibular signals (via EVS) may hinder rather than help adaptation. These findings provide preliminary evidence for a reweighting account of individual differences in cybersickness susceptibility and point toward personalised exposure protocols as a candidate intervention, pending replication with larger and more diverse samples.
Intersectional Incivility in Aviation: Socio-Spatial Relation, Constrained Agency, and Safety Reporting
(University of Waterloo, 2026-06-12) Ram, Angeline
Background: In Canadian air transportation organizations, employee safety reporting programs (ESRPs) are used as formal channels for all workers, including aircraft maintenance engineers and pilots, to raise occupational health and safety and aviation safety management system concerns. However, reportable issues are narrowly defined, so workplace incivility falls outside of sector safety reporting criteria. Although participation in ESRPs is framed as a moral duty within non-punitive, policy-driven safety cultures, policies do not necessarily create environments where workers feel safe to speak up. Instead, workers navigate these environments through constrained agency, intentionally remaining silent. In many cases, workers prioritize coping strategies that support their wellbeing over participation in formal reporting systems. From a labor geography perspective, this gap reflects how socio-spatial relations, shaped by culture, hierarchy, and colonial, imperial, and patriarchal legacies, normalize incivility. Though the Canadian air transportation sector has largely treated workers as a homogeneous group, further investigation is necessary to understand how socio-spatial relations, intersectional identities, and constrained agency shape workplace experiences, wellbeing, and participation in safety reporting. Objectives: Most sector literature examines gender-based incivilities experienced by women pilots through a homogeneous lens, assuming identical experiences regardless of race, occupation, immigration status, or sexual orientation. Workers’ experiences shaped by intersectional identities (race, gender, occupation, occupational status, immigration status, sexual orientation) remain under-examined. Situated within feminist epistemologies, this research asks: How do the lived experiences of air transportation workers in Ontario shape their participation in Employee Safety Reporting (ESR)? Objectives are: 1) explore how occupational identities shape air transportation workers' experiences in the workplace; 2) explore how intersectional identities shape air transportation workers' experiences in the workplace; and 3) investigate how identity-based incivility shapes ESR participation. Methodology: This exploratory qualitative research draws on labor and feminist geographies and Black intersectionality theory to expose power relations and agency. I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers of diverse statuses and identities. Interviews were video- and audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed in NVivo. Analysis used Hollinda et al.’s (2023) blended methods (summative content analysis + thematic analysis) and draws on Nash (2018) to use intersectionality as a methodological tool to generate inter-categorical profiles. Findings and Discussion: Three findings emerged: 1) occupational hierarchies shape incivility and wellbeing; 2) socio-spatial relations through incivility target intersectional identities, and shape wellbeing; and 3) incivility constrains agency, leading to coping over reporting. Workers in the same occupation are not monoliths: interlocking identities shape who is targeted, and incivility shapes how wellbeing is experienced. AMEs reported more identity-based incivility than pilots, and wellbeing impacts increased as occupational status decreased, reflecting power geometries that normalize disrespect toward subordinates. Incivility influenced wellbeing through six connected subthemes: stress and anxiety, frustration and powerlessness, exclusion, obsessing about interactions, self-doubt, and adverse effects on home life. Rather than reporting iv through ESRPs, workers, especially in lower-status roles, used constrained agency to protect wellbeing through overlapping coping strategies of adaptation, tolerance, and withdrawal. These strategies reflect a transaction in which employment security or advancement can outweigh the perceived benefits of reporting, challenging assumptions that policy requirements alone ensure participation. Conclusion: Socio-spatial relations among AMEs and pilots are shaped by hierarchical histories and colonial and patriarchal cultures that normalize identity-based incivility. When workers are targeted because of their intersectional identities, their already constrained agency becomes further limited, and they cope in ways that support their wellbeing rather than participate in safety reporting. Organizations need to integrate psychological safety into Safety Management Systems (SMS) as a foundational aspect of safety across teams and daily operations, and the sector should view workers through an intersectional lens, as occupational status and intersecting identities shape both exposure to incivility and the capacity to raise concerns. Policymakers must address the gap in which normalized incivility continues to cause distress and deter reporting. Recommendations include revising SMS and safety culture requirements to encompass employee wellbeing; training leaders and crews to recognize and address subtle incivility; and linking occupational health reports with safety data to ensure accountability, follow-up, and ongoing evaluation.