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Feature Story: Alumni Crowning Achievement Awards
No full textThe University of Regina is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its Alumni Crowning Achievement Awards (ACAAs) by recognizing five remarkable members of its alumni community. This year's honourees reflect a wide array of academic and professional disciplines including a mathematician, a community organizer, a social worker, a journalist, and a leader in the film and television industry.Staffn
Exploring the experiences of members of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities pursuing third-party reproduction
No full textA Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology, University of Regina. 77 p.One in six reproductive-matched (RM) couples in Canada experience infertility, as defined by the inability to conceive after 12 months of exposure to pregnancy risk, and this has been associated with significant psychological distress. However, very little is known about the experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals navigating social infertility, which refers to the inability to conceive as a result of identity or relationship status, and the ensuing reliance on third-party reproduction (TPR). An exploratory, mixed-methods study was conducted to begin this necessary investigation. The experiences of 22 2SLGBTQIA+ couples actively attempting to conceive via TPR were explored using semi-structured interviews and an online survey consisting of several self-report questionnaires measuring quality of life and distress in various domains and rates of institutional betrayal in healthcare contexts. This sample was found to report levels of distress comparable to or higher than those observed in previous RM samples and intended gestating partners were found to report more distress than their partners on average. Thematic analysis also identified patterns in participants’ responses related to specific inequities faced by this population in navigating this process, including gaps in access, information, and support. These results indicate a need for improved competence on the part of healthcare providers and the development of targeted supports for this population.Studentn
Sentiment Analysis Using Part-of-Speech-Based Feature Extraction and Game-Theoretic Rough Sets
No full textA Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Computer Science, University of Regina. viii, 86 pSentiment analysis, one of the trending natural language processing tasks, is used to
mine opinions or sentiments from a given text. There are two significant challenges
in sentiment analysis. The first challenge is the complexity in data pre-processing
caused by the high dimensionality of textual data. The second is the uncertainty
in classifying sentiment polarities due to the ambiguity of natural languages. Existing
research may lack an efficient and straightforward solution to resolve the first
issue; or discuss the trade-off between accuracy and coverage regarding uncertain
data. To address these issues, we propose a model using part-of-speech-based feature
extraction to reduce dimensionality and game-theoretic rough sets (GTRS) to
analyze the accuracy and coverage trade-off. We evaluate this model with three different
datasets, Yelp reviews, IMDB movie reviews, and Amazon product reviews.
The experiment results show that the proposed model outperforms Pawlak’s rough
set model and 0.5-probabilistic rough set model. In comparison with the sentiment
analysis tool Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning (VADER) and four
traditional binary classification models (i.e., SVM, na¨ıve Bayes, decision tree, and
KNN), the proposed model also achieves higher accuracy. This research suggests
that the proposed model has achieved higher results of both accuracy and coverage,
and is promising to deal with the complexity and uncertainty in sentiment analysis
tasks.Studentye
Ruralia
No full textA Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing & English, University of Regina. vii, 82 p.Ruralia is a collection of original lyric poetry written to explore the feelings of longing and displacement that underscore my relationship to my prairie home. The collection draws on contemporary poetics and theory related to nostalgia, the lyric, the liminal, and the uncanny to examine the speakers’ continued attempts to define and attain a sense of “home” amid recurring transition and loss. Read as a regionalist work, Ruralia best aligns with the contemporary post-prairie poetic movement, which is characterized, in part, by its urban settings, location-based anxiety, and an absence of pastoral landscapes typical of traditional prairie poetry.Studentye
Healthcare Barriers Affecting Breastfeeding Immigrant Mothers
No full textThis video presents healthcare barriers experienced by breastfeeding immigrant mothers in Saskatchewan, Canada.Facultyye
Engagement in synchronous university courses
No full textA Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology, University of Regina. 56 p.Previous research has shown that extraversion, conscientiousness, and intrinsic motivation are related to engagement in synchronous online university courses in general and through tool use (chat, camera, and audio). The objective of the current study was to investigate the effects of personality traits and academic motivation on engagement in synchronous online university courses. No previous research had investigated this question with an emphasis on specific channels that allow for engagement in synchronous online courses such as cameras and chat functions, so the current study aimed to rectify this omission. The participants for this study (n = 178) were recruited through the University of Regina Participant Pool. The participants were administered three inventories/self-report measures pertaining to their personality traits (BFI-2), academic motivation (AMS-C 28), and engagement (USEI) as well as a demographics questionnaire. Extraversion, conscientiousness, and the opposite of negative emotionality as well as intrinsic motivation were statistically significant predictors of engagement in synchronous university courses in general and via camera use, chat function use, and speaking aloud. Some effects may not have been discovered due to not having delved into the levels of facets for personality traits and specific styles of intrinsic and extrinsic academic motivation. The results of the current study inform the practical understanding of how students engage in online courses and could inform online course design. The results lend support to the Five-Factor Model of personality, three-factor model of academic motivation, and three-factor model of student engagement.Studentn
Adapting capacity at the Alzheimer Society of Calgary to meet the demands of a culturally diverse population of persons living with dementia
No full textA Practicum Report Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Social Work, University of Regina. vi, 178 p.This report provides an account of the student’s Master of Social Work research practicum with the Alzheimer Society of Calgary (ASC), a non-profit dementia serving society. The report first starts with an introduction that describes the issue under consideration, the objectives of the study and the context of the research practicum. After the introduction, the report provides a comprehensive literature review on the topic of dementia and caregiving, highlighting research on trauma, trauma-informed care, the social impact of COVID-19, counselling frameworks, therapy techniques, single session interactions, and research on dementia perspectives. Next, the report reviews current policy and procedures within the Learning and Support Services (LSS) Department at the ASC, and provides a critical analysis of the Best Friends™ Approach which serves as the core professional development training offered by the agency. The report also incorporates Adaptive Capacity tasks aimed at building the internal capacity of the LSS Department. This includes the steps taken by the ASC to define agency social worker’s scope of practice and increase cultural awareness and sensitivity. The report then goes on to discuss the new acronyms proposed by the student researcher for caregivers’ communication with persons living with dementia (PLWD) and agency social workers’ communication with caregivers. It integrates presentations on mental health and therapy techniques that the student researcher created for this practicum as well. Lastly, the report includes data collected from an interview with an agency social worker, an environmental scan on dementia serving organizations in Alberta, a discussion on the major benefits and opportunities for growth at the ASC, implications for social work practice, and ends with a conclusion.Studentye
Rosemary essential oil and its components 1,8-cineole and α-pinene induce ROS-dependent lethality and ROS-independent virulence inhibition in Candida albican
No full textThe essential oil from Rosmarinus officinalis L., a composite mixture of plant-derived secondary metabolites, exhibits antifungal activity against virulent candidal species. Here we report the impact of rosemary oil and two of its components, the monoterpene α-pinene and the monoterpenoid 1,8-cineole, against Candida albicans, which induce ROS-dependent cell death at high concentrations and inhibit hyphal morphogenesis and biofilm formation at lower concentrations. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (100% inhibition) for both rosemary oil and 1,8-cineole were 4500 μg/ml and 3125 μg/ml for α-pinene, with the two components exhibiting partial synergy (FICI = 0.55 ± 0.07). At MIC and 1/2 MIC, rosemary oil and its components induced a generalized cell wall stress response, causing damage to cellular and organelle membranes, along with elevated chitin production and increased cell surface adhesion and elasticity, leading to complete vacuolar segregation, mitochondrial depolarization, elevated reactive oxygen species, microtubule dysfunction, and cell cycle arrest mainly at the G1/S phase, consequently triggering cell death. Interestingly, the same oils at lower fractional MIC (1/8-1/4) inhibited virulence traits, including reduction of mycelium (up to 2-fold) and biofilm (up to 4-fold) formation, through a ROS-independent mechanism.This work was supported by Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grant (NSERC DG; RGPIN-2018-06649), Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation Collaborative Innovation Development and Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grants to TESD, a NSERC DG (RGPIN-2017-4799) and Canada Research Chair (950-228957) to MW. TS was partially supported by the Faculty of Science and CFI infrastructure operating fund to TESD. ZS was partially supported by the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Regina.Facultyye
Feature Story: #GetReal with Ben Hillis: An Up Close and Personal Chat on Sports and Mental Health
No full textIt's Mental Health Week - May 2-8, 2022! And Ben Hillis knows the importance of the Canadian Mental Health Association dedicating this week to mental wellness awareness. Hillis, an all-star guard with the Cougars men's basketball team, has been an advocate for mental wellness, talking to University students about the stresses of exams and keeping on top of studies. He also regularly gives talks to students in Regina-area schools about balancing athletics and academics.Staffn
Feature Story: 'There for the students': Rob Kleisinger wins U of R Distinguished Service Award
No full textRob Kleisinger was on a bus bound for southern Saskatchewan when Brett Banadyga first met him in the summer of 2017.
Kleisinger, the University of Regina's manager of mechanical services at the time, and Banadyga, then a third-year industrial systems engineering student, were both part of a larger group embarking upon a power plant tour.
They struck up a conversation that Banadyga, BASc'19, said helped direct his career.Staffn