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Exploring the state of evidence on aging with HIV in long-term care: A scoping review protocol
No full text© 2025 Kokorelias et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background
The growing population of older adults living with HIV presents unique challenges for long-term care facilities, which are increasingly tasked with supporting residents who require both HIV-specific and geriatric care. Despite advances in HIV treatment that have extended life expectancy, the needs of these individuals in long-term care remain underexplored, and the field lacks a consolidated understanding of how facilities are currently equipped to manage these complexities. This scoping review protocol outlines the approach for synthesizing existing evidence on the experiences, challenges, and care outcomes of aging with HIV in long-term care settings.
Objective
To examine the state of evidence on older adults with HIV in long-term care, providing an overview of current knowledge on the health, social, and systemic factors influencing their care and identifying gaps that may guide future research and practice.
Methods
The team includes knowledge users, including experts by experience, to ensure the findings are grounded in lived realities and practical applicability. Using a scoping review framework by the Joanna Briggs Institute, we will conduct a comprehensive search of literature from inception in the following electronic databases: MEDLINE (R) ALL (Ovid), Embase Classic + Embase (Ovid), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Ovid), CINAHL Ultimate (EBSCO), PsycINFO (Ovid), AgeLine (EBSCO), and Scopus to capture studies that address aging with HIV in long-term care settings. Eligible studies will be screened and selected based on criteria focused on relevance to the intersection of aging, HIV, and long-term care. Articles will be screened by two reviewers. Data will be charted and synthesized thematically, allowing for an organized summary of findings on key topics such as physical and mental health, care provision, and facility preparedness.
Discussion and implications
This review will offer an overview of the current state of knowledge on aging with HIV in long-term care facilities, highlighting what is known about care practices, health outcomes, and systemic challenges in these settings. Findings will clarify the breadth and depth of existing evidence and reveal areas requiring further research, thereby informing policy and enhancing care strategies for this population.The authors acknowledge funding provided by The Ontario HIV Treatment Network
Episodic flooding causes sudden deoxygenation shocks in human-dominated rivers
No full textThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.Dissolved oxygen (DO) sustains river ecosystems, but the effects of hydrological extremes remain poorly understood. While high river discharge (Q) enhances aeration, floods also deliver oxygen-consuming pollutants, making net impacts uncertain. Here, we analyze daily DO and its percent saturation (DO%sat), and Q in 1156 Chinese rivers over three years. We show that DO and DO%sat decrease with rising Q in 69.1% and 55.7% of rivers, respectively. Floods (Q > 95th percentile) cause abrupt declines in both DO (19.7%) and DO%sat (16.2%) in 80.1% and 69.4% of the rivers, respectively, with the sharpest declines in agricultural and urban areas. These abrupt deoxygenation events link to increased ammonium and land-use intensity, causing more frequent hypoxia in developed regions. Contrary to initial expectations, floods often reduce oxygen levels, with faster recovery in urbanized regions. As climate change intensifies flooding, such sudden deoxygenation shocks may degrade aquatic ecosystems particularly in human-altered landscapes.This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 42322104 and 42471123), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS (2021312), the Provincial Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu (BK20220162), and the CAS President’s International Fellowship Initiative (2024PG0017). Peter R. Leavitt and Marguerite A. Xenopoulos were supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Research Chair Program. R. Iestyn Woolway was supported by a UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Independent Research Fellowship [NE/T011246/1]. Stephen F. Jane was supported by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and partially by a University of Notre Dame Society of Science postdoctoral fellowship. Erik Jeppesen was supported by the Tübitak program BIDEB2232 (project 118C250)
Health anxiety in children with cystic fibrosis
No full textA Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Psychology, University of Regina. 38 p.Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life-threatening genetic disorder affecting 105,000 people worldwide (Dickinson & Collaco, 2021; Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, n.d), caused by mutations in the CFTR protein that disrupt chloride ion transport, leading to ionic imbalances and mucus throughout major organ systems (Rowe et al., 2014). CF’s multisystemic impacts require intensive treatments, (Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, n.d.) and patients with the disorder demonstrate 2-3 times higher anxiety and depression symptoms than the general population (Quittner et al., 2014). Beyond anxiety and depression, few other mental health constructs have been examined in CF populations. Health anxiety – worries that one has a serious illness without evidence of an underlying health condition (Wright et al., 2016) – has been observed to be elevated in other health populations but has not been studied in CF. The current study explored health anxiety and related constructs in children with CF, compared to established rates in typically developing children. Ten participants aged 8-12 completed self-report measures of health anxiety, depression, state and trait anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and intolerance of uncertainty. Study results demonstrated significantly higher levels of state and trait anxiety in children with CF compared to typically developing children, but no differences in health anxiety and other constructs. These results have mixed consistency with pre-existing literature, highlighting the need for future research with a larger sample size. Nevertheless, the study’s findings highlight the urgent need for early identification of mental health symptoms and implementation of tailored mental health intervention programs for children with CF
Adults' awareness of coaching in child sexual abuse cases
No full textA Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology, University of Regina. 50 p.Child sexual abuse (CSA) victims often withhold disclosure due to the perpetrator coachin
COVID-19-associated impacts on the mental health of canadian adults in the late pandemic period
No full textA Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology, University of Regina. 31 p.During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, research in Canada reported increased rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal ideation. Pandemic impacts, including infection or hospitalization of oneself or a loved one or death of a loved one, have been associated with negative mental health symptoms. Most research investigating COVID-19 impacts on Canadian mental health collected data during the height of the pandemic (2020-2021), with less research from 2022 and early 2023. Moreover, most research focuses on specific populations (e.g., healthcare workers) and not on the general Canadian adult population. The present study aims to address these research gaps by exploring COVID-19-associated mental health impacts on the general Canadian adult population within the late stage of the pandemic. Cross-sectional data from Statistics Canada’s Survey on COVID-19 and Mental Health (SCMH) Cycle 3 (Feb. 23–May 31, 2023) will be used, which invited 36,000 households to participate and resulted in a 46.5% response rate. The SCMH uses the PHQ-9, GAD-7 and PCL-5 to assess symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD (respectfully), and a single question regarding suicidal ideation. The primary research objective is to investigate if a COVID-19 diagnosis is positively associated with significant symptoms of MDD, GAD, PTSD, suicidal ideation, emotional distress, loneliness, or increased alcohol and cannabis use. As a secondary research objective, we will explore if being diagnosed with COVID-19 will be negatively associated with protective factors—the measures of happiness, community belonging, social support, behavioural health, and mastery of control. Data was accessed and analyzed at the Regina Research Data Centre (RDC) using the program STATA. Descriptive statistics, an independent t-test, crosstabulations, and chi-square tests of independence were used to explore demographic characteristics and our research objectives. It was found that having been diagnosed with COVID-19 was significantly associated with greater scores on measures of mental health disorders, and with lower scores on the protective factor measures, compared to not having been diagnosed with COVID-19. It was also found that a significant proportion of the sample screened positive for each of the mental health disorders that were assessed, with a slightly larger proportion screening positive among those who have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Additionally, a significant proportion of the respondents experienced each of the nine COVID-19 impacts that were assessed in the SCMH, aside from hospitalization. The results of this study will help inform the degree to which COVID-19 pandemic impacts influenced specific mental health symptoms within the late stage of the pandemic, providing a more comprehensive picture of the pandemic’s influence on mental health across its duration
Safeguard programs and mandatory mental health checks in Canadian police agencies: history, trends, and future directions
No full textThis paper traces the emergence of Safeguard programs in Canadian police agencies and explores the research and methods of delivering routine, mandatory mental health check-ups to sworn and civilian personnel in positions with frequent exposure to potentially psychologically traumatic content or situations. A definition for Safeguards is proposed and future directions for police leaders and research are discussed
The (re)emergence of the huntress: Towards an understanding of interspecies relations and knowledges in the Northwest Territories
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 Anthropology, University of Regina. viii, 126 p.Partially funded by the “Sensory Acts: More than Human Communication in the Circumpolar
North” project, this research aims to contribute to the ongoing conversation of interspecies
communication, using storytelling and multisensory ethnographic methodologies to describe the
interspecies relationships that have informed Indigenous ways of knowing since time
immemorial. Contrary to previous beliefs surrounding the sexual division of labor and the
understanding of the male–female/ hunter–gatherer binaries, current archaeological research has
uncovered historical evidence of females’ involvement in the hunt. Through a partnership with
Inuvialuit women who hunt, fish, and trap in the Western Canadian Arctic, this research
contributes to multispecies ethnography and seeks to (re)establish women’s perspectives of
nonverbal communication in a harvesting context. The findings of this work offer insight into the
complexity of these interspecies relationships, which oppose the romanticized works that exist
surrounding this topic. Further, this research emphasizes the importance of amplifying the voices
of Inuit women and including diverse interpretations of nonhuman knowledge, contributing to
the knowledge gap that still exists in this field.
Keywords: Indigenous Knowledges; Circumpolar North; hunting; women who hunt; trapping;
nonverbal communication; multispecies ethnography.Studentye
Validation of the disorganized thoughts scale
No full textA Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Psychology, University of Regina. 52 p.Formal thought disorder (FTD) is a key diagnostic criterion of schizophrenia, marked by unstructured, illogical, and incoherent thinking. Although FTD has been observed in both clinical and non-clinical populations, no widely accepted self-report measure currently exists for assessing disorganized thinking in the general population. This study aimed to examine and validate the new Disorganized Thoughts Scale (DTS), a 20-item self-report measure developed to address this gap. To achieve this, a sample of 142 psychology students from the University of Regina completed a Qualtrics survey consisting of the DTS, demographic questions, Big Five Inventory (BFI-44), and Metacognitions Questionnaire (MCQ-30). It was hypothesized that the DTS would show a two-factor structure via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and that the DTS scores would be positively correlated with neuroticism and maladaptive metacognitive beliefs. CFA was used to test whether the DTS followed a two-factor model (Positive and Negative Thought Disorder), and correlational analyses were conducted to examine potential relationships between DTS scores with personality traits (BFI-44), metacognitive beliefs (MCQ-30), and demographic variables. The model showed modest fit, with SRMR being within acceptable limits, but CFI, TLI, and RMSEA were under ideal cutoffs. The DTS scores were positively correlated with neuroticism and maladaptive metacognitive beliefs, consistent with the hypotheses. Overall, these findings supported the DTS’s internal structure and convergent validity. However, future studies could benefit with further testing using larger and more diverse samples
The germ game design framework for user engagement, retention, and monetization
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. xiv, 110 p.Many video game development teams passionately pursue innovative concepts they
believe will appeal to users, often resulting in well-crafted games as products. However,
despite the creativity and effort of the teams, the resulting games frequently fail to realize
their full audience potential and economic viability.
This thesis presents the GERM framework to enhance user engagement, retention, and
monetization in video games. The framework is named GERM, which is short for Game
Engagement, Retention, and Monetization, to emphasize its focus on strengthening these
three foundational areas. The framework elements are a Multi-Objective Goal Generator,
Reward System, Timer Scheme, Social Dynamics, Enhancers, Obstructors, Monetization
Design, Analytics Design, Impression Design, and Novelty. The framework was devised
following a comprehensive review of successful video games, experience in the video game
development field, and a study of the psychological factors relevant to game success.
Following a concise description of each component of the framework, the thesis discusses
the Phased Integration methodology, which is a five-phase process for applying the
framework during game development and enhancement. In the first phase, the Assessment
Phase, a game is evaluated using the Game Assessment (GERMAF) form, which scores the
game across the elements of the GERM framework. This scoring identifies areas needing
improvement, which guides attention to weaker points in the Engagement, Retention, and
Monetization strategies. Next, the Engagement Phase targets elements that directly influence
player engagement, establishing a foundation for sustained interest in the game. The
Short-term Retention Phase then addresses elements focusing on player retention during the
early stages of player engagement. The Monetization Phase focuses on the game’s monetization
design elements to increase profitability. Finally, the Long-term Retention Phase
focuses on strategies that promote extended player retention, such as planned updates and
dynamic content.
A case study was conducted on a live game named One Shot Golf, which faced challenges
in user retention and overall profitability. The game’s engagement, retention, and
monetization features were evaluated using the GERM Assessment form (GERMAF). This
assessment identified areas for improvement across the game. Several features were proposed
and discussed with the game’s design team.
In conclusion, this thesis presents a comprehensive framework for enhancing user engagement,
retention, and monetization in video games. The framework extends beyond
current industry practices and encourages game developers to innovate and tailor strategies
aligned with their game’s design and audience. Future research could test the applicability
of this framework across diverse game genres. The applicability of the framework to
software design could also be investigated.Studentye
Effects of temporal and spatial variability in energy fluxes on phytoplankton
No full textClimate change has significantly altered the energy dynamics of lakes; however, little is known of how the temporal and spatial variation in energy fluxes impacts the structure and function of lake ecosystems. This study combined long-term (2011–2018) measurements of lake energy fluxes with environmental, nutrient, and phytoplankton data at five stations to investigate the effects of variably energy fluxes on phytoplankton production and composition in a large, shallow, eutrophic lake (Lake Taihu, China). Overall, atmospheric warming increased heat storage and water temperatures, with energy fluxes exhibiting significant spatial heterogeneity. Specifically, faster rates of energy input and higher energy budgets increases were observed in the clear macrophyte-rich regions of the lake compared to turbid hypereutrophic habitats. Temporal variation in energy fluxes was a strong predictor of primary production (as chlorophyll a), the spatial extent of cyanobacterial blooms, and phytoplankton biodiversity at the whole-lake level, whereas 42.4% of the variation in phytoplankton community composition was explained by a combination of energy fluxes, nutrients, and other environmental factors. Cyanobacterial taxa were significantly correlated with nutrients (total nitrogen and phosphorus), while green algal abundance was associated mainly with variations in the energy budget. These findings highlight the spatial variability of energy fluxes driven by local environmental conditions, underscoring the need for climate adaptation and mitigation strategies to account for heterogeneous energy effects on lake production and structure.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 42177058 and 42571022 to Jian Zhou, U24A20577 to Changchun Huang, 42425102 and U22A20561 to Kun Shi). Peter R. Leavitt was supported by the Canada Research Chair program and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.© 2025 The Author(s). Limnology and Oceanography published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited