19614 research outputs found
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Trial in courtroom 12
Get PDFAn award-winning work of fiction with the theme of equity, diversity, and human rights created by undergraduate student Parris Mook-Sang-Forbes, selected by celebrity judge Thembelihle (Thembie) Moyo.2024 On the Verge Writing Contest fiction honorary mentionUndergraduat
Oceanic atoll provides refuge for elasmobranchs amidst global declines and promotes opportunities to finance conservation
Get PDFSharks and rays (elasmobranchs) are charismatic megafauna that support healthy ecosystems and can serve as flagship species for marine conservation. Elasmobranchs tend to be highly mobile, mid- to high trophic level predators, with slow population growth rates that render them vulnerable to overexploitation. While many species have experienced widespread and ongoing population declines, some nations have recognized the value of elasmobranchs to the tourism industry. The Republic of Maldives has protected sharks and rays from exploitation within their national waters since 2014 because of the significant amount of revenue lost from the tourism industry when populations there began to show signs of overexploitation. However, local threats such as bycatch, entanglement in fishing gear, and unregulated tourism may continue to negatively impact populations, highlighting the need for additional conservation measures. Known as ‘Shark Island’, Fuvahmulah Atoll, a recently designated UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, has recently experienced a steep rise in dive tourism due to improved accessibility to, and awareness of, its abundant and diverse shark and ray megafauna. Although a marine protected area (MPA) has been designated at the southern end of the atoll, a management plan has not yet been developed and species-specific information is lacking. Furthermore, it is unclear if dive tourists are willing to contribute financially to help conserve the biodiversity upon which their tourism depends. Here, we sought to inform management plans and policy design by 1) quantifying elasmobranch assemblages on Fuvahmulah Atoll’s reefs and 2) examining tourists’ willingness to pay for increased conservation action on the atoll. In Chapter 2, we deployed remote timelapse cameras at three shallow fore reef sites and collected images on 63 days over a 6-month period. From a total of 1,629,756 images, we calculated the occurrence and relative abundance within days and hours to assess spatial and temporal variations in elasmobranch visitation to the sites. Sharks and rays were captured on 72% of hours and 95% of days, with the highest number of occurrences recorded at the site within an MPA, Farikede, followed by Kedevari and Hudhekede. Both reef sharks and apex sharks were represented, with whitetip reef sharks, pelagic threshers, grey reef sharks, tiger sharks, and silvertip sharks, representing the most frequently observed species. We show that Farikede MPA is a hotspot for reef sharks and tiger sharks. However, Kedevari appears to be an ecologically significant site for pelagic threshers. In Chapter 3, we conducted stated preference surveys with tourists visiting Fuvahmulah to assess tourists’ willingness to pay a one-time “Reserve” entrance fee, the factors that influence the value of the fee, and their preferences for conservation measures proposed by the community. Virtually all (97%) tourists were supportive of paying a one-time reserve entrance fee, with an average fee of US$58 per person. Tourists with more positive environmental attitudes, those more committed to dive tourism (higher skill levels and more frequent trips), and those who encountered specific shark species (tiger sharks or pelagic threshers) in Fuvahmulah were willing to pay higher entrance fees. Visitors to Fuvahmulah Atoll highly value marine conservation, and their financial support creates unique opportunities to safeguard biodiversity and ensure the sustainability of the tourism industry. Increasing our understanding of the biological community while exploring avenues to finance conservation can provide opportunities to create informed and comprehensive management plans. While many elasmobranch populations continue to experience global declines, protected and well-managed sites may increase resilience on a global scale.Graduate2025-08-0
Understanding climate risks facing housing finance stakeholders in British Columbia: Interview-based empirical evidence
No full textThe effects of climate change are yielding unprecedented extreme weather events in British Columbia. The impacts of these climate changes are felt across many sectors, including the housing finance sector. This study seeks to gain an understanding of how physical climate change risks are manifesting in British Columbia (BC)'s housing finance sector and impacting homeowners and homebuilders, and to uncover potential market failures, with a goal of developing recommendations for policy and regulatory responses. Methods comprise conducting eighteen (18) in-depth semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, including: homeowners, construction industry representatives, mortgage insurers, insurance industry representatives, financial lenders, real-estate industry representatives, academic researchers, data providers, and financial and technical regulators. Interview findings focus on gaps or inefficiencies in BC’s housing finance ecosystem covering five key themes: (i) assessing and pricing risk, (ii) lender risk concerns and disclosures, (iii) improving data, modeling, and transparency, (iv) insurance accessibility (v), and adaptation education and incentivization. Based on interview findings, this study recommends policy and regulatory interventions be explored to address the gaps and market failures present within BC's housing finance ecosystem. Recommendations include expanding current and emerging adaptation policy and risk disclosure regulations, improving risk awareness, investing in data and modeling capacities, encouraging cross-collaboration between stakeholders, setting industry standards, incentivizing adaptation measures, and prioritizing risk mitigation.Graduat
Prescribed safer opioid supply: A scoping review of the evidence
No full textBackground: Safer opioid supply programs provide prescription pharmaceutical opioids, often with supportive services, to people at high risk of experiencing harms related to substance use. However, questions regarding the effectiveness and safety of this practice remain. We conducted a scoping review of literature describing client outcomes from formal opioid supply programs providing prescriptions for pharmaceutical opioids, and the perceptions of involved clients/providers.
Methods: We performed a scoping review of peer-reviewed studies and grey literature published between January 1, 2012, to September 12, 2023. We included articles reporting either safer opioid supply client outcomes or clients/providers perspectives. Extracted data included study objectives, substance use patterns, client outcomes, client/provider perspectives, and estimates of effectiveness and/or harm.
Results: Our search yielded 1,597 articles. Following removal of duplicates and application of exclusion criteria, 24 publications comprising 17 peer-reviewed and seven grey literature publications were included in our study. We generated eight themes summarizing topics in the available literature: opioid-related toxicities, infectious complications, other clinical outcomes, client-reported outcomes, program access barriers, diversion, program retention, and costs to the healthcare system. Specific findings included low rates of opioid toxicities, improved physical and mental health, and improved quality of life among clients. A lack of access to adequate opioid doses and the limited range of opioid options offered within safer opioid supply programs was described by clients and providers as a potential reason for diversion and a barrier to program access.
Conclusions: Generally, evidence suggests that safer opioid supply programs are beneficial to clients through measurable outcomes. However, the available literature has important limitations, including limited inferences about the effectiveness, safety, and potential for diversion within safer opioid supply programs. Further research is needed to support the ongoing evaluation of safer opioid supply programs as one component of a multifactorial response to escalating rates of substance-related harms.This work was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Grants #153070 and #178163). S. Ledlie is supported by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship and the Network for Improving Health Systems Trainee Award. R. Garg is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral Research Award. G. Kolla is supported by a Banting postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. T. Gomes is supported by a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair.FacultyReviewe
Sharing the catch; Social and environmental correlates of body condition in threatened Northern Resident killer whales
Get PDFEffective conservation and management should consider a species’ social dynamics, given that resource scarcity can lead to intragroup conflict. When food is limited, the reallocation of shared resources may incur costs for group members who depend on provisioning or for members that provide shared food. Resident Killer Whales share prey within their stable kin-based groups (matrilines), but little is known about how social group composition might influence allocation of shared prey and associated individual physiological condition. Using drones, we collected aerial images to estimate body condition of Northern Resident Killer Whales over ten years (2014-2023) to evaluate the health of individuals, some across multiple years (n = 175 individuals from 39 matrilines), in a population of approximately 345 whales. Our first objective was to examine the association between individual body condition and the composition of their matrilines, while accounting for salmon availability. Our second objective was to evaluate if mothers with more offspring had lower body condition, and if this relationship depended on their offspring sex. Using two candidate model sets of generalized mixed effect models, we found that social variables influenced body condition. Specifically, males showed declines in body condition as the proportion of juveniles in the matriline increased, while females either showed no change or increased in condition. These sex-specific patterns suggest that males may receive reduced investment through prey sharing in families with more dependent young. Additionally, we found a negative relationship between the body condition of adult females and the number of offspring they have, indicating that adult females may also incur costs in provisioning offspring. Interestingly, these patterns did not depend on salmon abundance. Our results demonstrate how sociality can influence individual health and provides insights into intragroup conflict and parental investment in a species with lifelong parental care and high social stability.Graduat
Impacts of marine shipping on the underwater soundscape and Chinook salmon behaviour
Get PDFWith the persistent growth of the shipping industry, the underwater soundscape across the globe has been changing. The prevalence of low-frequency noise from shipping activities has led to a noticeable increase in ambient underwater noise levels. Research to date has focused on large commercial vessels in motion, but commercial vessels are also anchoring in coastal ecosystems and there is a high presence of small commercial vessels that might be altering the marine soundscape. In this dissertation, these underrepresented anthropogenic noise sources are explored in Cowichan Bay, and Campbell River, British Columbia using underwater hydrophones. Results from these chapters (2 and 3) demonstrated significant changes to the underwater soundscape from anchored commercial bulk carriers and tugboats, highlighting the need to understand these noise sources further. Additionally, the growing body of literature on the impacts of anthropogenic noise on the underwater soundscape has generated concern about the impacts of the elevated noise on marine species. In the Northeast Pacific Ocean, many ecologically important species have been declining since the 1970s including Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). Although behavioural changes including modified sound production behaviours have been documented in response to anthropogenic activities for some fishes, there has been
little research on the impacts of shipping on Chinook salmon. Furthermore, Chinook salmon sound production has received little attention and only limited information on frequency and amplitude has been reported. To better understand the impacts of shipping on Chinook salmon vocal behaviour, understanding of salmon sound production, Chinook and other Pacific salmon, is required. Sound production in three species of Pacific salmon (Chinook, pink, O. gorbuscha and coho salmon, O. kisutch) was evaluated at Big Qualicum Hatchery (chapter 4). Chinook and coho salmon were found to produce air movement, hydrodynamic and pulse sounds, while pink salmon were shown to likely produce all these sounds. However, because pink salmon were always recorded in mixed schools with Chinook salmon, further work is required to validate their sound production. Additionally, the impacts of shipping on Chinook salmon movement and behaviour have never been evaluated, but vessel noise and other anthropogenic sources like pile driving have been shown to produce spatial displacement and behavioural changes in other salmonids. To begin to address this issue, changes in Chinook salmon behaviour in the presence of shipping noise were evaluated using acoustic tags in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia (chapter 5). Significant changes in depth for tagged salmon were observed with increased sound
pressure levels and number of AIS-equipped vessels present. However, the influence of the number of AIS-equipped vessels present on the overall activity levels of Chinook did not appear linear and further work is needed to understand vessel noise effects on activity levels. This chapter represents the first study demonstrating the impacts of increased underwater noise levels on Chinook salmon. Collectively this dissertation highlights the impacts of anchored commercial vessels and tugboats on the underwater soundscape and the influence of shipping noise on Chinook salmon behaviour, demonstrating the importance of developing mitigation methods to help reduce the noise produced by shipping activities to protect these ecologically, and culturally important species.Graduate2025-02-2
Exploring complex earthquake sequences through innovative automatic detection and location methods
Get PDFEarthquakes present significant risks to both human lives and infrastructure. Most large earthquakes occur in sequences, with thousands of smaller events after, and sometimes also before, the main event, known as aftershocks and foreshocks, respectively. Precise, comprehensive catalogs for these events are essential for advancing our understanding of the seismogenic processes, regional fault maps, and active tectonics, which form the foundation for effective earthquake study and hazard mitigation efforts. Existing automatic workflows for earthquake monitoring usually lack completeness and accuracy during busy earthquake sequences. Developing automatic methods capable of producing consistently high-quality catalogs in near real-time for major earthquake sequences is crucial. In this dissertation, I develop innovative earthquake sequence observation techniques and apply them to three recent large earthquakes around the world.
In the first project, I improve the Seismicity-Scanning based on Navigated Automatic Phase-picking (S-SNAP) workflow to enable it to delineate the spatiotemporal distribution of dense foreshock and aftershock sequences in real time. Applied to the 2019 M 7.1 Ridgecrest, California earthquake sequence, the S-SNAP catalog usually contains 1.4–2.2 times as many events as the TriNet catalogue, a customized real-time earthquake information system for southern California. In addition, S-SNAP is more likely to solve phase association ambiguities correctly and provide a catalogue with consistent quality through time. Our new catalog details the spatiotemporal evolution of the sequence, including early foreshocks fours days before the mainshock, a subsequent acceleration in foreshock activities, a seismicity gap before the main shock around its epicentre, seismicity on discrete structures within a broad fault zone, and triggered earthquakes outside the main fault zone.
In the second project, I propose a novel approach that utilizes three‐dimensional image segmentation—a computer vision technique—to detect and locate seismic sources, and develop this into a complete workflow, Source Untangler Guided by Artificial intelligence image Recognition (SUGAR). In synthetic and real data tests, SUGAR can handle complex, energetic earthquake sequences in near real time better than skillful analysts and other artificial intelligence (AI) and non‐AI based algorithms. I apply SUGAR to the 2016 M 7.8 Kaikōura, New Zealand earthquake sequence and obtain five times more events than the analyst‐based GeoNet catalog, providing the most complete catalog of the immediate aftershock sequence to date, independent from all existing catalogs. The improved aftershock distribution shows continuous clusters of seismicity under the highly segmented surface ruptures and reveals a connection between well‐studied onshore faults and a hitherto poorly characterized offshore thrust fault, suggesting the possibility of an unusual simultaneous rupture of the onshore and offshore faults. The diffuse nature of the seismicity indicates widespread secondary faulting extending well beyond the normal kilometric‐width damage zones associated with the major faults.
In the third project, I apply SUGAR to the 2023 M 7.8 and M 7.6 Turkey earthquake doublet sequence with a neural network retrained using the regional station coverage. The SUGAR catalog has 2–4 times as many events as the Turkey Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) catalog. The result resolves the detailed spatiotemporal distribution of the seismicity, showing the branch initiation of the first mainshock, the separation between the two mainshock ruptures, bifurcated aftershock clusters at the southern end, and the shallow dipping structure at the western end. More complex secondary structures, a single foreshock, and delayed aftershocks are found in and around the rupture zones, shedding lights on the dynamics of the mainshocks.
These innovative methods have yielded more comprehensive and accurate catalogs for complex earthquake sequences, providing essential data for studying earthquake statistics and physics. Broader impacts can be achieved through additional case studies, applications to other seismic sources and data types, interdisciplinary research and close collaboration with hazard management departments and other stakeholders.Graduat
2024 Gladys Nipp and Stephen Mah Award-Winning Research Proposal
Get PDFIn this award-winning 500-word research proposal, undergraduate student Spencer Leong Cowie describes a proposed use of UVic Libraries' Chinese-Canadian collections.Gladys Nipp and Stephen Mah Family Award, UVic LibrariesUndergraduat
Who are We Playing for? Fairness in Piano Competitions
No full textSince the Anton Rubinstein International Piano Competition was established in 1890, piano competitions have proliferated in both number and popularity. The World Federation of International Music Competitions has grown from 10 piano competitions in 1957 to 61 in 2024, while major competitions like the Chopin and the Van Cliburn continue to receive record numbers of applications. In the face of this rapid growth of competitions and competitors, performance careers remain scarce, leading to questions about the effectiveness of competitions in a shifting global landscape for historical musical performance. Furthermore, because winning a major competition is viewed as a near-instant ticket to success, competitions are often scrutinized for their fairness and professional outcomes. Some critics contend that competitions have unscrupulous judging and scoring methods that place competitors of diverse backgrounds and musical styles at a disadvantage. My project addresses various aspects of fairness in competitions with a specific focus on three piano competitions: the International Chopin Piano Competition, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition. By analyzing the histories, structures, and media of these three competitions, I argue that piano competitions serve as microcosms of major trends and issues facing pianists in the classical music industry today.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
Haida Gwaii food strategy
No full textColonial food systems continue to disrupt many people’s relationships with food, land, and each other. Haida Gwaii’s food system is heavily dependent on a ferry to import grocery store products, which is vulnerable to shutdowns and delays due to weather, climate crisis-related events, pandemics, and staff shortages. Prices in stores are very high, and processed food is sometimes the most available option for families. But there is incredible energy around building food independence on Haida Gwaii, and in deepening people’s capacity to feed themselves. Haida people are leaders in the movement towards food sovereignty, and share wisdom about land cultivation, harvesting, and gathering with their communities. Gardeners and growers of all stripes on Haida Gwaii also form an important part of the Islands’ food system.
The Haida Gwaii Food Strategy aims to play a part in better understanding Haida Gwaii’s food system, amplifying local knowledge, identifying needs and recommendations, and highlighting pathways for the Islands’ communities to move further down the pathway of food self-reliance.Local Foods to SchoolGraduat