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Development of Sustainable Konjac Glucomannan-Based Microcarriers for Cultivated Meat Production
Get PDFThe global demand for sustainable alternatives to conventional meat production has promoted advancements in cultivated meat technologies, with scaffolding materials playing a key role in supporting cell growth and mimicking natural meat structures. This study investigates konjac glucomannan (KGM), a plant-based polysaccharide, as a biocompatible and cost-effective material for microcarrier generation in cell culture technologies. A method was developed to synthesize KGM hydrogels and fabricate microcarriers via controlled acidic degradation and crosslinking with epichlorohydrin (ECH) using a water-in-oil emulsion technique. The resulting microcarriers demonstrated excellent biocompatibility, mechanical stability, and a reticulated structure that may support cell adhesion and proliferation, competing with conventional dextran-based microcarriers while offering cost and sustainability benefits. These findings highlight KGM's potential as a cruelty-free microcarrier material for cultivated meat production and other biomedical applications, supporting the objectives of ethical innovation and global sustainability.Graduat
A novel approach to life cycle assessment for early-stage design of low-carbon buildings
Get PDFBuilding design processes are dynamic and complex. The context of a building project is manifold and depends on the context, climatic conditions and personal design preferences. Many stakeholders may be involved in deciding between a number of possible designs defined by a set of influential design parameters.
Building LCA is the state-of-the-art way to provide estimates of the building carbon content and environmental performance of various design alternatives. However, setting up a simulation model can be labour intensive and evaluating it can be computationally unfeasible. As a result, building simulations often occur at the end of the design process instead of being an influential factor in making early design decisions. Given this, the growing availability of machine learning algorithms as a potential method of exploring analytical problems has lead to the development of surrogate models in recent years. The idea of surrogate models is to learn from physics-based models, here a building LCA model, by emulating the simulation outputs given the simulation inputs. The key advantage is their computational efficiency in terms of accuracy and time. They can produce performance estimates for any desired building design within seconds, while in physics based modeling hours maybe needed to run the analysis. This shows the great potential of surrogate modelling to innovate the field. Instead of only being able to assess a few specific designs, entire regions of the design space can be explored, or instant feedback on the sustainability metrics of building can be given to architects during design sessions.
This PhD thesis aims to advance the young field of building LCA surrogate models. It contributes by: (a) developing a parametric model capable of whole design space exploration, to solve the issue of lack of building LCA data and (b) deriving surrogate models that can process dataset of building carbon results and estimate the associated impact on building performance. The result of this study can assist architects, engineers, researchers and policy makers both by provided results and also the proposed methodology to integrated LCA in strategic and early-stage decision making in the design process.Graduat
Influence of ecotourism on grizzly bear activity depends on salmon abundance in the Atnarko River corridor, Nuxalk Territory
Get PDFEcotourism management can draw on theory and data related to non-consumptive effects of risk on wildlife. The asset protection principle (APP) predicts that variable food supply and its associated risks will affect antipredator behavior; responses to predation risk should dominate when food reserves are high, while nutritional risk becomes more important when food reserves are limited. Additionally, the human shield hypothesis (HSH) describes how some individuals might seek human presence if it repels potential sources of risk. Using camera traps, we used generalized linear mixed effects and multinomial regression models to test components of the APP and HSH where ecotourism co-occurs with grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) foraging during hyperphagia. When salmon abundance was high (+1 SD), bear activity (weekly detections) decreased by 13% with every 100 visitors/week. Under low salmon conditions, bear activity increased with visitor numbers, creating ‘high bear-high visitor’ conditions. Consistent with HSH, detection data revealed an increased likelihood of detecting subordinate age-sex classes compared with adult males when visitor numbers were high. Our findings suggest that when salmon are low, managers might consider limiting visitors to mitigate disturbance. More broadly, understanding how wildlife allocate antipredator behavior as a function of risk and food can inform conservation science and practice.This project received funding from The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (CGS-D to KAF and Discovery Grant to CTD), Raincoast Conservation Foundation, BC Parks License Plate Program, SkyeMikko Foundation, Wilburforce Foundation, with in-kind support from the Nuxalk Stewardship Office.FacultyReviewe
Big government, big trouble? The role of government size in climate policy support
No full textKey messages:
- Size of government is studied as a new country-level contextual factor determining citizen support for climate policy.
- Larger size-of-government is associated with lower climate policy support.
- GDP-per-capita and emissions are positively associated with policy support.
- High-tax countries have an aversion to environmental tax increases.FacultyUnreviewe
Toxoplasma gondii mitochondrial association factor 1b interactome reveals novel binding partners including Ral GTPase accelerating protein α1
Get PDFThe intracellular parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has developed sophisticated molecular strategies to subvert host processes and promote growth and survival. During infection, T. gondii replicates in a parasitophorous vacuole (PV) and modulates host functions through a network of secreted proteins. Of these, Mitochondrial Association Factor 1b (MAF1b) recruits host mitochondria to the PV, a process that confers an in vivo growth advantage, though the precise mechanisms remain enigmatic. To address this knowledge gap, we mapped the MAF1b interactome in human fibroblasts using a commercial Yeast-2-hybrid (Y2H) screen, which revealed several previously unidentified binding partners including the GAP domain of Ral GTPase Accelerating Protein α1 (RalGAPα1(GAP)). Recombinantly produced MAF1b and RalGAPα1(GAP) formed as a stable binary complex as shown by size exclusion chromatography with a Kd of 334 nM as measured by isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). Notably, no binding was detected between RalGAPα1(GAP) and the structurally conserved MAF1b homolog, MAF1a, which does not recruit host mitochondria. Next, we used hydrogen deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) to map the RalGAPα1(GAP)-MAF1b interface, which led to identification of the “GAP-binding loop” on MAF1b that was confirmed by mutagenesis and ITC to be necessary for complex formation. A high-confidence Alphafold model predicts the GAP-binding loop to lie at the RalGAPα1(GAP)-MAF1b interface further supporting the HDX-MS data. Mechanistic implications of a RalGAPα1(GAP)-MAF1b complex are discussed in the context of T. gondii infection and indicates that MAF1b may have evolved multiple independent functions to increase T. gondii fitness.This work was supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research Grants 148,596 to M. J. B., a MSFHR Scholar award (17,686) and Natural Sciences Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC-2020–04241) to J. E. B., and National Institutes of Health grant AI11465 to J. P. B. M. J. B. gratefully acknowledges the Canada Research Chair program for salary support.FacultyReviewe
Ultimement: Fragments d'un discours universitaire
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In this thesis, the author presents, in the form of a research-creation essay, theoretical reflections on the current situation of writing at the university. How can we continue to write theses and dissertations today, when there are so many threats arrayed against the liberal arts and against human life more generally? This reflection is undertaken with concern for the author’s personal experience (via the practice of autotheory), namely that of physical illness, in combination with an attention to historical examples providing the ethical and political justification for writing under duress. A composite example is probed: the nineteenth century’s total work of art (the Gesamtkunstwerk or Grand projet), through many works and author-biographies taken from mainly French literature, namely Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Nodier, Richard Wagner, Stéphane Mallarmé, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, and the turn-of-the-century décadents, each addressing the idea of totality through their works in unique ways. Theoretical support is drawn from the Marxist tradition, including from Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and Georg Lukács, and finally from Fredric Jameson, whose cognitive mapping project, seen as grounds for a new total work of art, is taken as a basis for the thesis’s second part. The author asks how we can write in a mode that will allow us, politically and ethically, to unite ourselves against society’s urgent challenges, to imagine ourselves and our common lot, even though contemporary theory seems to have hitherto only provided justifications and explanations of our division and disunity. This question is phrased again in literary terms: how can we write monumental works of literature, up to the task of facing a “mad century,” when we have no recent examples, in fiction and in life, of such successfully organized monumentality?
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Dans cette thèse, l'auteur présente, sous la forme d'un essai de recherche création, des réflexions théoriques sur la situation actuelle de l'écriture à l'université. Comment pouvons-nous continuer à écrire des thèses et des mémoires aujourd'hui, alors qu'il y atant de menaces contre les arts libéraux et contre la vie humaine en général ? Cette réflexion est menée en tenant compte de l'expérience personnelle de l'auteur (via la pratique de l'autothéorie), à savoir celle de la maladie physique, en combinaison avec une attention aux exemples historiques fournissant la justification éthique et politique de l'écriture sous contrainte. Un exemple composite est exploré : l'œuvre d'art totale du XIXe siècle (le Gesamtkunstwerk ou Grand projet), à travers de nombreuses œuvres et biographies d'auteurs principalement tirées de la littérature française, à savoir Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Nodier, Richard Wagner, Stéphane Mallarmé, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, et les décadents de la fin du siècle, chacun abordant l'idée de totalité à travers leurs œuvres de manière unique. Le soutien théorique est tiré de la tradition marxiste, notamment de Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, et Georg Lukács, et enfin de Fredric Jameson, dont le projet de cognitive mapping, vu comme fondement d'une nouvelle œuvre d'art totale, est pris comme base pour la seconde partie de la thèse. L'auteur se demande comment nous pouvons écrire d'une manière qui nous permette, politiquement et éthiquement, de nous unir contre les défis urgents de la société, d'imaginer nous-mêmes et notre sort commun, alors que la théorie contemporaine semble jusqu'à présent n'avoir fourni que des justifications et des explications de notre division et désunion. Cette question est reformulée en termes littéraires : comment pouvons-nous écrire des œuvres monumentales de littérature, qui sont à la hauteur de faire face à un « siècle fou », alors que nous n’avons aucuns exemples récents, dans la fiction et dans la vie, où une telle monumentalité a été réussie ?Graduat
2024 David Harris Flaherty Award-Winning Essay (2/2)
Get PDFIn this award-winning 500-word essay, undergraduate student Lucy Balogh demonstrates the effective use of UVic Libraries' resources.David Harris Flaherty Undergraduate Student Library Scholarship, UVic LibrariesUndergraduat
Counting Codes via the Container Method
Get PDFThe container method is a technique used to upper bound the number of independent sets in a graph. The technique originated from Kleitman and Winston, and Sapozheko. It was developed in full generality and extended to hypergraphs independently by Saxton and Thomason, and Balogh, Morris and Samotij. This technique has been used by Balogh, Treglown and Wagner to prove an upper bound on the number of t error correcting codes, as well as a bound on the number of r-(n,k,d) codes when r=2. The goal of this project is to extend these results to upper bound the number of r-(n,k,d) codes for general r.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
Label-Free Studies of Single Biological Nanoparticles Using Optical Nanotweezers
Get PDFThis thesis has two parts. In the first, we demonstrated tracking and imaging of single proteins without a fluorescent label or tether, well below the previously achieved smallest protein. This result made use of interference effects similar to interferometric scattering microscopy, with additional interference enhancement from the enhanced electromagnetic field. We use the tracking to obtain a single proteins velocity and size the protein. In the second part, we explored the use of optical scattering from an unlabelled. single extracellular vesicle to be used for cancer diagnostics. We trained a 1D-convolutional neural network using the transmission signal of an extracellular vesicle trapped in a double nanohole. We achieved a greater than 90% accuracy in classifying an extracellular vesicle with its parent cell. Three different parent cells were used, MCF10A (non-malignant), MCF7 (non-invasive, cancerous), and MDA-MB-231 (invasive, cancerous).Graduat
The problem of originality: Reading Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers
No full textThe present study examines the problem of historical originality in order to theorize education as both the teaching and learning undergone within a society according to certain models and also the development of those models themselves. Such a study requires a method that is generated by the problem of originality itself. The present study therefore takes a reading of Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers as a unit of analysis that can simultaneously generate insights into the problem of originality and an original method of interpretation. Joseph and His Brothers is concerned with the concept of originality, takes the problem as generative of its own method of narration, and elicits a kind of reading that is developed in this study into a method. The study concludes that a ‘readerly’ understanding of the problem of originality supports theorizing education and the interpretation of historical experience without slipping into some of the pitfalls that accompany the presumption of authoritative self-knowledge.Graduat