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Solidarity from immigrants to Indigenous peoples in Canada: A person-centered analysis
Get PDFBackground: Experiences of victimization (e.g., discrimination) have been shown to relate to greater feelings of connectedness (i.e., solidarity) and supportive actions from one structurally marginalized group to another. Experiences of marginalization have been found to coexist with different degrees to which systems are believed to be fair (i.e., system justification beliefs), with high system justification being negatively related to intergroup solidarity. Last, knowledge has been found to influence intergroup solidarity. Community-engagements have shown similarities in race/ethnicity-based victimhood experiences between Canada’s Indigenous and immigrant groups. Canada’s growing immigrant population is increasingly diverse, especially in their victimhood experiences and views towards society and solidarity. Thus, a person-centered analysis will be conducted to investigate if unique combinations of knowledge, victimization identities, and system justifying beliefs may impact solidarity and political action towards Indigenous peoples.
Methods: 285 adults, identifying as having an immigrant background, were recruited across Canada via an online survey from January to May, 2024. Measures collected demographic information, different types of race/ethnicity-based victimhood identification (e.g., collective, inclusive, exclusive), system justification beliefs (i.e., meritocracy, zero-sum game, social dominance orientation), Indigenous knowledge, political solidarity, and support for policies benefitting Indigenous peoples.
Results: Latent profile analysis results identified four profiles with varying levels of victimhood, system justification beliefs, and Indigenous knowledge: 1) Inclusive victim, aware system criticizers (own-group victimization similar to others); 2) Non-victim, very unaware hierarchical-meritocrats (believe in social hierarchy and meritocracy); 3) Non-victim, aware anti-hierarchical anti-meritocracy; 4) Exclusive victim, unaware system supporters (own-group suffering is unique). Profiles 1 and 2 showed high solidarity and policy support for Indigenous peoples, while Group 3 had the lowest. Results for Profile 1 and 4 are supported by previous literature showing high victimhood, high knowledge, low SJ beliefs related to greater solidarity. Results for Profile 2 and 3 add to the literature, in that knowledge and SJ beliefs may influence solidarity differently in non-victimized groups. . Profiles differed in age, gender, racial/ethnic background, visible minority status, and sexual orientation but not socioeconomic status or immigrant generation.
Conclusion: This research demonstrates the utility of person-centered analyses to highlight individual differences previously unrecognized in the literature. Results may inform relationship building and continued reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and immigrants.Graduate2025-08-2
Wind turbine damage equivalent load assessment using Gaussian Process Regression combining measurement and synthetic data
No full textAssessing the structural health of operational wind turbines is crucial, given their exposure to harsh environments and the resultant impact on longevity and performance. However, this is hindered by the lack of data in commercial machines and accurate models based on manufacturers’ proprietary design data. To overcome these challenges, this study focuses on using Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) to evaluate the loads in wind turbines using a hybrid approach. The methodology involves constructing a hybrid database of aero-servo-elastic simulations, integrating publicly available wind turbine models, tools and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) measurement data. Then, constructing GPR models with hybrid data, the prediction is validated against the hybrid and SCADA measurements. The results, derived from a year of SCADA data, demonstrate the GPR model’s effectiveness in interpreting and predicting turbine performance metrics. The findings of this study underscore the potential of GPR for the health and reliability assessment and management of wind turbine systems.We greatly acknowledge the funding for this study by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and MiTACS.FacultyReviewe
Working Towards Improved Protection of Cave and Karst Environments in British Columbia
Get PDFBritish Columbia contains over a thousand known caves, with new discoveries each year. These subterranean environments hold unique archeological, biological, cultural, geological, hydrological, paleontological, and recreational value. Due to their delicate nature, locational data is often hidden in hopes of protecting these unique environments. Currently, much of the provincial knowledge is held by a few select community members, with no long-term database strategy. A new community-maintained database may prove beneficial, limiting potential loss of information and more importantly, help support provincial conservation efforts. Working with the British Columbia Speleological Federation, based on needs expressed by the members of the community, this project entails the creation of a new cave and karst database. Methods include anonymous surveys of cavers with various experience levels, observations, and review of existing database structures. Results show members of the caving community strongly desire certain aspects of information to be included over others: 88% of respondents indicated desire for the cave survey to be locationally linked, 83% indicated desire for a linked entrance picture, and 80% indicated desire for included information on the cave length and depth. Results also revealed complexities found within the caving community regarding staggeringly different opinions on who should be able to access and update the database. Upon completion of the database, it will be gifted to the British Columbia Speleological Federation to utilize as a community maintained living database. Improved utility should encourage frequent information updates and therefore further karst related conservation efforts, in terms of protecting caves and karst from industry operations.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
UVic Convocation June 13, 2024 – 10:00 am
No full textStudents from the faculties of Graduate Studies, Engineering and Computer Science and Humanities. Dr. James Carley received an honorary degree.UndergraduateUnreviewe
Drivers of Coastal Morphodynamics on a Deltaic Barrier in the Colombian Caribbean
No full textThis research presents results from a series of analyses focussed on the overarching goal of identifying and understanding drivers of coastal morphodynamics on a deltaic barrier in the Colombian Caribbean coast, eastward from the Magdalena River mouth. Forcing mechanisms operating at different temporal scales were considered, including the influence of vertical land motion (VLM), storms, river discharge, trade winds, and wave conditions. These forcing mechanisms were related to geomorphic changes determined from satellite imagery taken before and after specific events.
Satellite imagery and synthetic aperture radar acquisitions were used to assess decadal-scale coastline changes and VLM for the period 2007–2021. The findings revealed that VLM rates are highly variable alongshore, and that subsidence occurs mainly landward of highly erosive stretches of coastline associated with former mangrove forest.
Drivers of coastal morphodynamics operating on time spans from days to seasons were assessed by focusing on four lagoons located along the back-barrier to better understand the interplay between extreme events and the breaching and healing of inlets that are temporarily formed between the lagoons and the ocean. Satellite data in conjunction with hourly readings from weather stations spanning the past 50 years helped to determine the conditions that enabled the breaching and healing processes to transpire in the lagoons. Aligned with the predominantly erosive regime along the study area, the findings indicated that the cumulative effect of the breaching and healing of the lagoons resulted in a deltaic barrier that has rolled over the lagoons, modifying their size over time.
The occurrence of meteotsunamis and their role in coastal morphodynamics was investigated using a wavelet analysis applied to water-level readings in three tide gauges for the period 2013–2022. After the discovery of one event with meteotsunami-like characteristics, the atmospheric conditions and total water levels associated with this event were analyzed. The results indicated that total water levels related to the meteotsunami are similar to those produced by moderate storms and both phenomena can induce breaching of lagoons.
To date, the barrier has responded to external forcers through a landward displacement of the coastline driven by cycles of lagoon breaching and healing as well as overwashes on lagoons, wetlands, and beaches. Seasonal storms have been critical in forcing these processes and have substantially influenced the barrier evolution during the last 50 years. Taken as a whole, this body of work provides knowledge about the response of deltaic barriers to geomorphologic forcers based on a study area in an understudied region of the Caribbean. At a regional level, the findings are relevant for science-based coastal planning and managing policies. Moreover, this research used a variety of methodological approaches to track causality on coastal landscapes in a manner that can be replicated in other areas with limited pre-existing information and without ongoing monitoring programs.Graduate2025-01-1
Implementation of Frequency Divider by Ring Counter with Design Constraint based on FPGA
No full textShift registers have been widely used in the field of integrated circuits, which can be used to transport data from a flip-flop to another. A ring counter is composed of a shift register by connecting the input and output of it to form a ring. In this project, a type of frequency divider is implemented with a ring counter to divide the frequency of the clock, and its optimization can be achieved by timing constraints, placement constraints, and routing constraints. In this simulation, Xilinx Vivado is utilized as an optimization tool to refine the timing results of frequency divider, whereas the setup slack time and hold slack time are used as important references. The timing results measure the quality of the design at different stages of adding constraints and other modifications and optimizations are made based on them.
All the constraints are completed by adding constraint files in the source except that the routing design should be done by the router tool in Vivado to choose better net nodes for the critical path. After the modification of all constraints, it shows an improvement in the design timing summary.Graduat
"I'm here for it... but I'm not 'Feminist Ken'": Unpacking young men's perspectives on feminism
No full textCurrent understandings of feminism emphasize that men’s inclusion in the feminist movement is of utmost importance to achieve gender equality and dismantle hegemonic power structures. Despite this, there is a shortage of contemporary research exploring the manner through which men understand feminism, and how that understanding may influence their willingness to engage with feminism. Using semi-structured interviews with thirteen men enrolled at the University of Victoria, this research explores some of the ways that young men are understanding and engaging with feminism. The research questions guiding this project are: 1. How do young men understand and engage with feminism? What factors influence this relationship? 2. How do social norms of masculinity influence men’s relationship with feminism?
Findings indicate that participants' understandings of feminism are complex and sometimes contradictory. All participants indicated that they supported gender equality broadly, yet also expressed resistance to various elements of feminism. Specifically, the data indicates that participants commonly understand feminism positively when framed in terms of liberal feminism, and express resistance to forms of feminism that challenge traditional patriarchal structures. The data also suggests that young men’s understanding of feminism is intertwined with their understanding of masculinity and their role as men in society, as participants expressed concern over backlash from other men and discussed archetypes of demographics of men most likely to engage in feminism. Overall, this study suggests that young men’s understanding of feminism transcends binary acceptance or rejection, and is often intertwined with their understanding of masculinity and performance of their gender. Furthermore, the findings provide insight into the ways that young men are currently grappling with shifting hegemonic norms of masculinity, and the potential consequences that may have on their understanding of their role in social change and gender equality.Graduat
A Gaussian function model of mesoscale eddy temperature anomalies and research of spatial distribution characteristics
No full textMesoscale eddies are ubiquitous oceanic phenomena and play an important role in ocean circulation, ocean dynamics, and the transport of material energy. Temperature anomalies are a crucial parameter that reflects the state of mesoscale eddies. This study proposes a Gaussian function model to fit the vertical temperature anomaly (TA) profile to facilitate the analysis of variations, and the principle of the model is based on the fact that each TA profile tends to fluctuate around one or more peaks. The model is extracted and validated using Argo profiles within cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies in the Northwest Pacific Ocean spanning over the period from 2002 to 2021. The validation demonstrates that the model can accurately recover the vertical TA profiles with a limited number of parameters. This makes it suitable for analysing the spatial distribution patterns that require a large sample count. The analysis indicates that eddies with different TA profiles have a spatial aggregation effect in geographic distribution. Eddies with lower extreme temperature anomalies, at depths of 200–300 m, are mainly distributed along two bands on the north side of the Kuroshio Extension (KE) and the North Equatorial Current. Eddies with extreme TAs at the deepest depth (500–600 m) are distributed along the KE.This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant No. 42276179 and 62271459, and Laoshan Laboratory Science and Technology Innovation Projects, Grant No. LSKJ202201302 and LSKJ202204301.FacultyReviewe
Ego-motion Aware Multi-object Tracking: An application for a ROS-based Framework
Get PDFMulti-object tracking (MOT) is a critical step for safe and reliable operations of robotics and autonomous systems in dynamic and cluttered environments which are inherent to real-world applications. This thesis introduces a novel MOT framework designed for the Robot Operating System (ROS), serving as a versatile foundation for the implementation, testing, and evaluation of various MOT algorithms within the realm of robotics and autonomous systems. A key hallmark of this framework is its integration with both simulated environments and real-world robotic platforms, facilitating exhaustive testing and refinement of MOT algorithms under a broad spectrum of conditions. Moreover, this comprehensive framework is distinguished by its capability for automatic ground truth generation enables detailed and systematic evaluation across numerous operational scenarios.
Within this framework, the Ego-motion Aware Target Prediction module (EMAP) is developed, which significantly enhances the performance of detection-based multi-object tracking algorithms. By integrating camera motion and depth information, EMAP effectively decouples camera movement from object trajectories, thereby minimizing tracking disturbances caused by the ego-motion of the observer. EMAP's effectiveness is rigorously demonstrated through evaluations using the KITTI dataset and a custom-generated dataset in the CARLA autonomous driving simulator, showing substantial improvements in tracking performance, especially in scenarios marked by significant camera motion or the absence of detections.
Additionally, this thesis presents a self-supervised multi-object tracking algorithm that incorporates an adaptive track-matching mechanism. This mechanism leverages unlabeled data to refine tracking precision and efficiency, reducing the dependency on extensive manual annotations and thereby enabling more scalable and generalizable tracking applications. Together, these contributions significantly advance the field of autonomous systems and robotics by paving the way for more robust and reliable multi-object tracking technologies.Graduat
Transceiver optimization for multiuser multiple-input multiple-output full-duplex amplify-and-forward relay downlink communications
Get PDFThis paper considers the transceiver design in a multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) full-duplex (FD) amplify-and-forward (AF) relay downlink communication system, where users simultaneously transmit data via an FD relay node. The design incorporates an imperfect loop interference (LI) cancellation which results in a residual LI. Linear precoders are employed at the sources and relay, and minimum mean-squared-error (MMSE) combiners are employed at the destinations to mitigate the effect of the residual LI. The corresponding design problem is highly nonconvex, so a closed-form solution is intractable. Thus, an iterative method is developed to solve this optimization problem. Simulation results are presented which show that the proposed iterative algorithm provides better performance than the corresponding half-duplex (HD) solution in terms of the achievable rate under residual LI.FacultyReviewe