<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.cf390c6bfbe7555f.css">

Carleton University
Institutional Repository

The Carleton University Institutional Repository collects, preserves, and provides access to materials related to research, teaching, and learning at Carleton University.

The CURVE community provides access to open access and creative works by Carleton authors and researchers and is the official repository for Carleton theses and dissertations. Learn more

Browse Communities and Collections

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Archives and Special Collections  48
    Carleton University Library Archives & Special Collections (ASC)
  • CURVE  18166
    Research and creative works by Carleton authors and researchers and the official repository for Carleton theses and dissertations
  • Digital Collections  3294
    Digital collections maintained by Carleton University Library for research, teaching, and learning

Recent Submissions

  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    Preserving the nuclear imbalance : arms controlling, minimum deterrence, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
    (Carleton University, 1998) Finlay-Dick, Brian Derek
    This paper is the initial product of a research project examining the post-Cold War international security architecture and how the conclusion of a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing represents the first decisive step towards nuclear deterrence at vastly reduced levels — so-called finite or minimum nuclear deterrence. The paper examines the factors contributing to the tense period of nuclear weapons build-up during the Cold War and considers how the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), while no longer promising the sweeping disarmament benefits it once did, today represents an opportunity to reevaluate traditional deterrence postures and usher in a new era of deterrence at vastly reduced levels, hence enhancing international confidence and, in turn, global security. By prohibiting the nuclear powers from developing new and advanced weapons, drawing into question existing stockpiles both from a technical and moral standpoint, and ensuring the international community that no new nuclear power will emerge with stockpiles capable of threatening the present nuclear imbalance, the CTBT sets the stage for further reductions in tactical and strategic stockpiles of nuclear weapons, for mutual no-first use pledges, for a move towards counterpower targeting, and for a ban on the production of weapons-grade fissile material — all in a new atmosphere of international trust and co-operation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    Sustainability for whom? Power, risk, and ESG investing in rental housing
    (Carleton University, 2026) Parish, Jessica; Bloom, Aretousa; Nguyen, Camellia
    Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing is increasingly shaping how housing and real estate are financed, developed, and governed. This report examines the emergence of ESG in rental housing, asking how ESG reshapes relationships between financial markets, governments, housing providers, and tenants, and what this means for social and environmental justice. Drawing on a narrative synthesis of 56 academic articles and a comparative review of ESG regulatory frameworks in Canada, the European Union, and the United States, the report situates ESG within broader processes of housing financialization and assetization. We argue that ESG is not an alternative to financialization, but a socio-technical infrastructure through which environmental and social concerns are translated into metrics of financial value and risk. The review identifies several intersecting logics, including carbon and social logics, short- and long-term investment horizons, and firm- and system-level approaches to risk. While ESG may encourage investment in energy efficiency, climate resilience, and social value, it can also narrow sustainability to what is measurable and financially material. In rental housing, this creates risks of social washing, tenant exclusion, and tensions between decarbonization, affordability, and housing rights. The report concludes by highlighting the need to examine ESG as a form of governance and to strengthen public accountability, tenant participation, and social justice within sustainable finance and housing policy.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    International Day of Permafrost 2023
    (NSERC PermafrostNet, 2023-03-15) MacLean, Tristan
    NSERC PermafrostNet invited the permafrost community to an online day of presentations and discussions highlighting the many organizations and projects around the world studying, monitoring, and addressing permafrost issues. The International Day of Permafrost built on the session “Making new connections: International Partners” held during our 2020 AGM.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type:Item, Access status: Open Access ,
    Foundations of Whatifiness: Asking Counterfactual What if? Questions through Quantum Principles for Adaptive Decision-making
    (Carleton University, 2026) Singer, Justin Matthias
    The experiment presented here serves as the proof of concept for a reinforcement learning algorithm that is capable of adapting to environmental conditions outside the scope of the scenario in which it is trained. In order to evaluate this property, we train all of our control and experimental models on a preset environmental configuration based on the Minigrid package. This training process is followed by a testing stage, in which each model is deployed on a collection of Minigrid environment configurations that differ from that of the training scenario. The adaptability of the models evaluated in our experiment is measured according to the reward scores received over several episodes on each test grid. In this investigation, we introduce a novel classical-quantum hybrid reinforcement learning method that exploits decoherence effects in simulated quantum states as a principle of counterfactual sampling. Our technique employs an on-policy actor-critic model in which the quantum layer of the actor network is based on a tree tensor network circuit, while the critic network is constructed according to a classical-quantum hybrid transformer model with quantum self-attention layers. Counterfactual samples are generated through random bit flip operations in the quantum layers of the critic network. Each sampling produces a corresponding value function estimate from the critic network, after which these estimates, along with the value function estimate corresponding to the base inputs, are used to calculate a refined value function estimate for the optimization of the actor network. Our transformer critic architecture diverges from more traditional critic network structures by using the most recent policy representation array from the actor network in addition to the observation data received from the environment.