19614 research outputs found
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Through the fence: Painting, walking, and drawing at the intersection of nature and humanity
Get PDFWith this paper, I document a year-long art-based research project that explored walking, drawing, and painting. Using enabling constraints made from my methods and environments, I explore how painting could enact effects on me and the way I see the world. I use Barbara Bolt’s perfomativity as a lens through which to examine my work, in the form of questions. I explain what significance the subject matter of my paintings came to have. Through narrative, I describe the process of making the paintings as well as the effects they had on my practice. Finally, I answer the questions posed at the beginning, and look to the future of my teaching, painting, and learning.Graduat
Resuscitating myself
Get PDFAn award-winning work of non-fiction with the theme of equity, diversity, and human rights created by undergraduate student Annika Saule Olson, selected by celebrity judge Thembelihle (Thembie) Moyo.2024 On the Verge Writing Contest first-place non-fiction winnerUndergraduat
Curiosity Killed the Cat: Vivisections in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England
Get PDF'In eighteenth century England, there was a rise in empirical experimental methodology that coincided with the growing interest in human anatomy. A roadblock in this was the lack of both human volunteers and human cadavers available to experiment on. Thus, the trend of animal experimentation became the backbone of scientific discoveries. A primary vessel for vivisections was the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge. Opening in 1660 as an enlightened establishment for scientific research, it brought together the virtuosi of science to expand natural knowledge. Early members of the Royal Society included Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, whose experiments laid the groundwork for the practices and values of vivisections. Public reactions to these experiments varied from satirical to sentimental, with others condemning the Royal Society for wasting resources on inferior species. Overall, the transactions, personal correspondences, newspapers, and artwork of the era all work to reveal the English populace's attitudes towards vivisections in the eighteenth century.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
Perceptions of Psychedelics: University Students' Attitudes and Motives for Psilocybin Use
Get PDFIntroduction: Motives are a highly influential force in substance use and may vary depending on the substance or dose being used (Barber et al., 2016; Votaw & Witkiewitz, 2021). However, little research has compared motives for microdosing and macrodosing psilocybin. Additionally, scarce literature has explored the public's attitudes toward recreational psilocybin use and psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy (PAT). The current study examines whether attitudes differ amongst psilocybin users and non-users and whether motives differ for microdose and macrodose psilocybin use.
Methods: A survey was employed to examine differences in motivations on an adapted Marijuana Motives Measure (Simons et al., 1998) and differences in attitudes on an adapted Attitudes on Psychedelics Questionnaire (Žuljević et al., 2022). Additionally, a thematic analysis was conducted to explore qualitative responses regarding attitudes and motives for psilocybin use.
Results: As hypothesized, there was a statistically significant difference in attitudes of psilocybin users and non-users, and in the motives for microdosing and macrodosing psilocybin. Qualitative results indicated that participants had more positive attitudes towards PAT than recreational psilocybin use, that motivations for initiating and continuing use may differ, and that there is a need for more education on psilocybin use. These findings have important implications for PAT, harm reduction, and education efforts.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
Taxing the digital economy: Options available for African countries
Get PDFTax authorities have always assessed and enforced taxes based on the physical address of businesses over the years. Nevertheless, the idea of tax jurisdiction has taken on a new meaning with the development of information and communication technology, and its profound impact on every facet of human existence – including but not restricted to trade and business. This development has undoubtedly increased capital mobility, especially in corporate form, and exposed more the weaknesses in national tax laws by enabling the artificial relocation of important economic components and potential exemption from taxes. Since it is getting harder to separate the digital economy from the rest of the economy for taxation reasons, the process of digitalization has emerged as one of the primary growth drivers. This expansion, together with aggressive tax planning strategies used by multinational enterprises (MNEs) to move revenues to low-tax jurisdictions and the development of business models requiring less physical presence, has increased the workload for tax administrators; furthermore, it has reduced governments’ capacity to raise funds in the traditional manner.
In this regard, I assess how “adequate” the selected African countries’ frameworks are vis-à-vis the ongoing OECD and UN negotiations. Beyond the consultations, I call for a more inclusive and Africanised approach and the need for African countries to improve their tax administration mechanisms.Graduat
Do We Still Need Utopias?
No full textThis poster tackles the question: Do we still need utopias. It briefly overviews the history of the term and outlines some key features of Influential Utopias. It then problematizes utopias as they are understood conceptually and used practically, and argues that the value of utopias are in their ability to induce imaginative critical political thought. The research conducted for this project involved an overview of current and historic litterature.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
Buckling free and high optical quality factor large thin rib disk
Get PDFThis thesis investigates the fabrication and characterization of Silica on Silicon (SoS) microcavities, for potential comb generation and sensing applications. In this thesis, novel approaches were introduced on silica-on-silicon microdisks to remove some of the inherent hurdles, namely mitigating the rough surface through chemo-mechanical polishing, and suppressing buckling-induced mechanical instability by introducing a rib disk structure. Quality factors as high as 10₈ were achieved for polished disks. Furthermore using the rib-disk structure, microdisks with thickness smaller than 1.5µm and quality factors as high as 10₇ materialized. By addressing these challenges we unleash the enormous potentials of ultra-high Q silica microdisks in microcomb generation in visible regime and sensing. Finally, a multi-transverse mode dense comb generation scheme on this platform is investigated.Graduate2025-08-1
Enhancing few-shot prediction of ocean sound speed profiles through hierarchical long short-term memory transfer learning
Get PDFThe distribution of ocean sound speed profiles (SSPs) profoundly influences the design of underwater acoustic communication and positioning systems. Conventional methods for measuring sound speed by instruments entail high time costs, while sound speed inversion methods offer rapid estimation of SSPs. However, these methods heavily rely on sonar observational data and lack the capacity to swiftly estimate SSPs in arbitrary oceanic regions, particularly in scenarios with few-shot data. Precisely estimating non-cooperative maritime SSPs under such conditions poses a significant challenge. To explore temporal distribution patterns of sound speed and achieve precise SSP predictions with limited data, we propose a hierarchical long short-term memory transfer learning (H-LSTM-TL) framework. The core idea involves pre-training the base model on extensive public datasets, transferring the acquired knowledge to task models, and fine-tuning the task model on few-shot data to predict future SSPs. Through H-LSTM-TL, it accelerates model convergence, enhances sensitivity to few-shot input data, alleviates overfitting issues, and notably improves the accuracy of SSP predictions. Experimental results demonstrate that the H-LSTM-TL model exhibits strong generalization capabilities in few-shot data scenarios, effectively reducing overfitting problems and proving its applicability for rapid prediction of SSPs.This research was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2023QF128), Laoshan Laboratory (LSKJ202205104), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022M722990), Qingdao Postdoctoral Science Foundation (QDBSH20220202061), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC:62271459), National Defense Science and Technology Innovation Special Zone Project: Marine Science and Technology Collaborative Innovation Center (22-05-CXZX-04-01-02), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Ocean University of China (202313036).FacultyReviewe
A droplet-based microfluidic impedance flow cytometer for detection of micropollutants in water
No full textMicroplastics as micropollutants are widely spread in aquatic areas that can have a toxic effect on aquatic life. To reduce the potential risk they pose, it is essential to detect the microplastics and the source of the contamination of the environment. Here, we designed and developed a droplet-based microfluidic impedance flow cytometer for in situ detection of microplastics in water. Impedance spectroscopy enables the direct measurement of the electrical features of microplastics as they move in water, allowing for sizing and identification of concentration. To show the feasibility of the developed method, pure and functionalized polystyrene beads ranging from 500 nm to 6 μm in four size groups and different concentrations were used. Focusing on three different frequencies (4.4 MHz, 11 MHz, and 22.5 MHz), the changes in the signal phase at frequencies of 4.4 MHz and 11 MHz are a strong indicator of microplastic presence. In addition, the functionalized microplastics showed different magnitudes of the measured signal phase than the pure ones. A k-nearest neighbors classification model demonstrated our developed system’s impressive 97.4% sensitivity in accurately identifying microplastics based on concentration. The equivalent circuit model revealed that the double-layer capacity of water droplets is significantly impacted by the presence of the microplastics. Our findings show the potential of droplet-based microfluidic impedance flow cytometry as a practical method for detecting microplastics in water.This research was funded by the Discovery Grant (RGPIN-2018-05726) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.FacultyReviewe
Development of a disease analytic model for estimating the hidden population using the stratified-Petersen estimator
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic brought the need for novel disease analytic models capable of estimating the true number of infections, including those that evaded detection. Statistical methods, such as the stratified-Petersen estimator, provide effective ways in wildlife population modelling to estimate hard-to-reach population size. We developed a novel disease analytic model to estimate the levels of underreported COVID-19 cases and the true population size based on the idea of developing a Bayesian version of the stratified-Petersen estimator under a state-space formulation using individual-level capture-recapture data. We obtained the capture events from individuals’ electronic health records and treated the occurrence of positive SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic test results and 2020 COVID-19-related hospitalizations as the tagging and recapture processes. Applying this model to the data from the Northern Health Authority region in British Columbia, Canada in 2020 by using a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach, we found that the estimate of the size of the COVID-19 population (Nˆ = 2, 967) is 1.58 (95% CI: (1.53, 1.63)) times greater than the observed cases (nobs = 1, 880), which is a comparable result to those reported in other studies.Graduate2024-10-3