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The Role of Institutional Barriers in SaskPower
Get PDFThis study examines the decision-making processes and structures relevant to low- and non-emitting generation in Saskatchewan’s regional energy utility, SaskPower.
Background:
SaskPower is a Crown Corporation responsible for the provision of power in Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan electrical grid is among the most carbon intense in Canada. This carbon intensity is of increasing importance as net-zero, coal phase out, and green industry growth become key elements of Canadian energy governance.
The history of SaskPower’s interaction with lowering grid emissions presents challenges. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) and purchased wind power have made up the bulk of the emissons reducing investments so far, with nuclear, solar, hydro and development of in-house wind generation capacity not playing any significant role. Closer inspection of these generation methods reveals inconsistent approvals, initiatives and efforts to develop each method (i.e. solar programs implemented, and then cut short). The uneven consideration of options raises questions about the decision-making process as SaskPower seeks to develop and implement emissions reducing capacity.
Methods:
To evaluate these processes and structures, this thesis utilizes an interview series targeted at SaskPower’s executive and management level cadre (n=13, response rate = 7%). Inclusion criteria required that participants were currently employed at SaskPower, or had occupied these positions within the last 5 years. The study investigates potential barriers of institutional interest, institutional structure, and institutional innovation culture. Participant responses were coded according to reflexive thematic analysis. A variety of emergent semantic and latent codes were applied to the data, which were later collapsed into code groups, themes and subthemes.
Conclusions
The study documents that the SaskPower decision-making arena is the subject of intermittent influence from a variety of actors that may have varying interests and purposes. While SaskPower possesses the necessary structures, innovative pathways, and resources to adapt to catalysts in the decision arena, the fractured nature of the decision-process may be a cause for inconsistent decision-making. Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development framework is a tool that allows clear definition of institutions and rules as they interact with one another, and facilitates exploring nested systems of organizational rules, environment, and responsibilities. Utilizing this framework to explore and unpack the interview series, this thesis asserts that SaskPower is subject to multiple (and at times conflicting) sets of internal rules. The dominant set of rules may change at any given time, resulting in actions that appear inconsistent. This thesis also asserts that the institution of SaskPower exists within an overarching institution, the provincial government, which sometimes influences the choice sets available to actors within SaskPower
Evaluation of Sensors for Biosecurity and Animal Welfare on Livestock Trailers
Get PDFValidation of a Thermally Assisted Drying and Decontamination (TADD) cycle requires verification that every surface within a livestock trailer achieves the target temperature and time combination required to inactivate pathogens of concern. This validation can be achieved by instrumenting the areas of a trailer that are known to remain coldest during TADD and inferring that everywhere else in the trailer is as hot or hotter.
Research presented in this thesis outlines a procedure for determining the consistency and reliability for any sensing device seeking to enter the market of validating TADD cycles by reporting surface temperatures of livestock trailers undergoing TADD. Through this procedure, devices are subjected to seven simulated sources of damage identified by ISO standards and industry professionals. Consistency of a device’s measurement is demonstrated graphically by plotting its measurement deviance from a calibrated reference transducer during a sweep of the devices operating temperature range before and after being subjected to a source of damage. Reliability of devices tested was defined as the acceptance quality limit (AQL) as outlined in ISO 2859-1. A randomized block design dictating the order that the methods of damage are applied to the sensors and subsequent analysis of variance (ANOVA) determines which sensors, if any, have significantly worse measurement deviance than others of that design.
Application of the proposed testing methodology revealed that the measurement deviance metric used to evaluate sensor measurement performance is prone to experimental error as the temperature sweep of the device’s operating range is inconsistent. A revised procedure is recommended that would assess a prospective devices measurement accuracy and time response separately.
The small test lots of five devices used meant that the ANOVA had very little capability of identifying outlying devices. Devices which failed outright further reduced the sensitivity of the ANOVA by eliminating replicate observations of measurement deviance that could be used.
The assessment of these metrics for a given sensor, based on the testing methodology in this thesis, does provide a generalized, and unbiased tool for prospective sensor manufacturers and livestock industry professionals to evaluate a new product before it is sold or utilized
Towards Improved Hydrologic Land-Surface Modelling To Represent Permafrost
Get PDFPermafrost affects hydrological, meteorological, and ecological processes in over one-quarter of the land surface in the Northern Hemisphere. Permafrost degradation has been observed over the last few decades and is projected to accelerate under climatic warming. However, simulating permafrost dynamics is challenging due to process complexity, scarcity of observations, spatial heterogeneity, and permafrost disequilibrium with external climate forcing. Hydrologic-land-surface models (H-LSMs), which act as the lower boundary condition of the current generation of Earth system models (ESMs), are suitable for diagnosing and predicting permafrost evolution, as they couple heat and water interactions across soil-vegetation-atmosphere interfaces and are applicable for large-scale assessments. This thesis aims to improve the ability of H-LSMs to simulate permafrost dynamics and concurrently represent hydrology. Specific research contributions are made on four fronts: (1) assessing the uncertainty introduced to the modelling due to permafrost initialization, (2) investigating the sensitivity of permafrost dynamics to different H-LSM parameters, associated issues of parameter identifiability, and sensitivity to external forcing datasets, (3) evaluating the strength of permafrost-hydrology coupling in H-LSMs in data-scarce regions under parameter uncertainty, and (4) assessing the fate of permafrost thaw and associated changes in streamflow under an ensemble of future climate projections.
The analyses and results of this thesis that illuminate these central issues and various solutions for permafrost-based applications of H-LSMs are proposed. First, uncertainty in model initialization determines the length of required spin-up cycles; 200-1000 cycles may be required to ensure proper model initialization under different climatic conditions and initial soil moisture contents. Further, the uncertainty due to initialization can lead to divergent permafrost simulations, such as active layer thickness variations of up to ~2m. Second, the sensitivity of various permafrost characteristics is mainly driven by surface insulation (canopy height and snow-cover fraction) and soil properties (depth and fraction of organic matter content). Additionally, the results underscore the difficulties inherent in H-LSM simulation of all aspects of permafrost dynamics, primarily due to poor identifiability of influential parameters and the limitations of currently-available forcing data sets. Third, different H-LSM parameterizations favor different sources of data (i.e. streamflow, soil temperature profiles, and permafrost maps), and it is challenging to configure a model faithful to all data sources. Overall, the modelling results show that surface insulation (through snow cover) and model initialization are primary regulators of permafrost dynamics and different parameterizations produce different low-flow but similar high-flow regimes. Lastly, severe permafrost degradation is projected to occur under all climate change scenarios, even under the most optimistic ones. The degradation and climate change, collectively, are likely to alter several streamflow signatures, including an increase of winter and summer flows.
Permafrost fate has strategic importance for the exchange of water, heat, and carbon fluxes over large areas, and can amplify the rate of climate change through a positive feedback mechanism. However, existing projections of permafrost are subject to significant uncertainty, stemming from several sources. This thesis quantifies and reduces this uncertainty by studying initialization, parameter identification, and evaluation of H-LSMs, which ultimately lead to configuring an H-LSM with higher fidelity to assess the impact of climate change. As a result, this work is a step forward in improving the realism of H-LSM simulations in permafrost regions. Further research is needed to refine simulation capability, and to develop improved observational datasets for permafrost and their associated climate forcing
Antimicrobial resistance in the microbiome of feedlot watering bowls and bovine respiratory disease associated pathogens.
Get PDFBovine respiratory disease (BRD) is the primary disease of concern to beef production and
is driven by stress, bacteria, viruses, and environmental and management practices. Antimicrobial
use (AMU) to control BRD selects for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes (ARGs). Treatment
failure due to AMR necessitates a rapid switch to an effective antimicrobial before a devastating
amount of death loss occurs. Monitoring AMR in a herd through individual animals is impractical.
There is a need for a fast, pragmatic, and scalable methodology to monitor AMR within cattle to
guide effective AMU. Cattle watering bowls (WB) have been previously shown to harbour BRD
pathogens and ARGs but have yet to be explored in the same context as wastewater AMR
monitoring is for public health. This thesis outlines a pilot project of WB sampling as a proxy
method to monitor the presence of ARGs of relevance to BRD associated pathogens.
The microbiomes within watering bowls of two feedlots were genotypically and
phenotypically assessed through water, swab, and sediment sampling. A new feedlot was sampled
(68 water, 63 swab) as pens filled (up to 9 WB) over a series of 8 weeks. The other, older, feedlot
was only sampled in the 8th week (sediment, swab, water) from 20 WB. For phenotypic AMR
detection, samples were inoculated into antimicrobial sensitivity test (AST) panels containing
microdilutions of four antimicrobials (enrofloxacin, florfenicol (FFN), tulathromycin,
oxytetracycline). Bacteria that grew on these plates were isolated (n = 78). A subset (n = 28 new
feedlot, n = 3 old feedlot + H. somni from a deep nasopharyngeal swab) of these underwent further
characterisation on an AST panel containing 10 different antimicrobials. The whole genome of
isolates (n = 10, 6 new, 4 old) was sequenced and analysed for ARGs. These detected ARGs were
compared to a custom dataset of 172 BRD genomes from NCBI. The genetic neighbourhood of
floR, an ARG encoding for the efflux of FFN, within the WB isolates (n = 4) was also compared
to pathogen genomes. For the culture-independent methodology, samples from one feedlot
underwent amplified 16S rRNA sequencing (n = 122), while samples from the other underwent
shotgun metagenomic sequencing (n = 11). The ARGs detected in WB isolates were compared to
the ARGs detected within metagenomic sequencing, and previous datasets of feedlot water.
Multi-drug resistant bacteria were routinely isolated from WBs. When environmental
samples from the last week of sampling were inoculated into media with FFN (>32 µg/mL), 93/96
samples had bacterial growth. By constructing a genotypic AMR profile from two feedlots and by
consulting previous metagenomic datasets from feedlot water, the understudied resistome of the
watering bowl microbiome was shown to provide outstanding coverage of the ARGs (15/16)
detected within 172 BRD genomes. The overlap in genetic neighbourhoods between copies of floR
in WB and BRD genomes confirms the possibility of horizontal gene transfer via a myriad of
transposable elements between both populations. Though further studies are needed to reaffirm
our findings, in this thesis the understudied environmental microbiome within feedlot watering
bowls was found to serve as a potential source of ARGs for BRD pathogens and thus may serve
as a proxy for relevant ARGs within feedlot environments
“SHE KNOWS WHO I AM”: ADDRESSING PRISONERS’ INTERNALIZED STIGMA WITH AN PRISON ANIMAL PROGRAM IN A CANADIAN MEDIUM SECURITY PRISON
Get PDFPrison animal programs have been increasingly implemented in prisons across North America to improve recidivism rates among prisoners and their institution environment. Prisoners can experience internalized stigma because of the social stigma attached to incarceration, especially when they are problematic substance users. In turn, internalized stigma can hinder prisoners’ rehabilitation, including desistance from crime and community reintegration. A qualitative secondary analysis was done to examine the impacts of a canine- assisted learning program implemented in 2016 to offer comfort, love, and support among prisoners who had recently unintentionally overdosed at a medium-security prison in Drumheller, Alberta. Interviews were conducted with five prisoners and five institution staff in 2016 as part of a program evaluation. This research sought to understand (1) if and how the program participants experience internalized stigma and (2) how the program dogs can aid in the de-stigmatization process and in turn, contribute to a more positive sense of identity among participants. A total of five themes were developed from this study based on a thematic content analysis of interviews with both the program participants and program staff. Three themes identify the participants’ experiences of internalized stigma; i) De-individualization resulting in a perceived lack of care by others, ii) Stereotypes reinforcing their negative social labels as criminals and problematic substance users, iii) Mistrust by others due to perceived blemishes of their individual character. Two themes suggest how the dogs aid in alleviating the participants’ internalized stigma and in turn contributed to their development in positive self-identity;
i) Participants perceived the dogs as caring for them through their emotional and physical presence and unconditional love, ii) The dogs and handlers exuded a perceived sense of trust towards participants. Addressing the harmful impacts of internalized stigma in a prison setting with a prison animal program creates an understanding of the importance of building non- stigmatizing social relationships for alleviating prisoners’ internalized stigma within a prison institution. This research will contribute to literature exploring the impacts of prison animal programs specifically with regards to internalized stigma and problematic substance use. It will also contribute to prison program and policy development
Early Career Visible Minority (ECVM) Faculty Experiences of Mentoring in a Western Canadian University.
Get PDFMentoring experiences of early career visible minority (ECVM) faculty members in Canadian Universities are yet to be explored. While there is substantial literature and evaluated studies on the benefits of mentoring new faculty members (Bean et al., 2014; Beane-Katner, 2014; Boice, 1992; Henry, 2010; Mullen & Forbes, 2000), few studies portray the context of Western Canadian universities. Based on the steady increase in the population of immigrants in Canada, exploring the mentoring experiences of ECVM faculty members in a Canadian University is important. This study aimed to explore the mentoring experiences of ECVM faculty members as they transition into professoriate roles in a Canadian university.
I investigated the perceptions and experiences of ECVM faculty members at a university in Western Canada. In this study, I used an interpretive qualitative design through online face-to-face interviews with eleven ECVM faculty members. Each interview was audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and sent to individual participants for validity purposes. Data were analyzed using NVIVO 12 software.
Findings indicated that mentoring is practiced and conceptualized in the university; however, based on the differences related to culture, language, and backgrounds, ECVM faculty members have unique needs different from other early career faculty members. Early Career Visible Minority faculty experienced challenges with workload intensity, discrimination and stereotypic behaviours, meeting the university standards, language barriers, and adapting to the university culture. Furthermore, participants engaged in socialization and enculturation including observing faculty and students, asking questions, attending gatherings such as orientation parties and social evenings, learning more about the norms and culture, and adjusting to the university system.
Recommendations from the study were derived with utmost emphasis on the need to make mentoring possible for all ECVM faculty. A key recommendation is that universities ought to create safe and conducive mentorship environments to address the needs of ECVM through diverse mentoring options and mentoring networks which will generate more mentoring opportunities for ECVM faculty members.
This study is significant to early visible minority career researchers, universities, and other educational organizations that employ visible minority individuals, and the wider society. The study will create awareness of mentoring programs, enhance better planning and management of mentoring activities, and improve the need to support ECVM faculty members
Concurrent experience of self-reported mental health symptoms and problematic substance use during the first two years of COVID-19 pandemic among Canadian adults: evidence from repeated nationwide cross-sectional survey
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Drift instabilities, anomalous transport, and heating in low-temperature plasmas
Get PDFPlasma is an ideal gas of charged particles (ions and electrons) in addition to neutral particles. The
presence of charged particles results in the generation of electric and magnetic fields that serve as the primary
mechanism of the interaction and coupling of particles. As a result, various nonlinear collective phenomena
occur in the plasma, the understanding of many of which remains elusive today. On the other hand, plasmas
have many applications in different branches of science and technology. Different kinds of plasmas are
studied in the atmospheric and space sciences. In the semiconductor industry, the fabrication of electronic
chips relies heavily on plasma etching. Plasma is used in modern electrical thrusters for producing the
driving force of satellites and spacecrafts. It is also used in future fusion reactors for producing abundant
clean energy. Therefore, understanding the complicated phenomena in plasma is important for predicting
and controlling its behaviours in various conditions. In this regard, nonlinear phenomena, such as turbulence,
are formidable barriers to understanding plasma behaviours. These phenomena are described by nonlinear
differential equations that can be barely understood by analytical means and are usually investigated by
numerical simulations. Because of this, it is also important to understand the effect of numerical artifacts on
simulations.
In this thesis, we investigate the nonlinear characteristics of drift instabilities and the role of numerical
methods in our understanding of these instabilities. The drift instabilities are driven by excess free energy
that exists due to the average (drift) velocities of electron and ion components in plasmas. As a result of
these instabilities, the amplitude of fluctuations grows while the drift energy converts into electrostatic energy.
This growth continues until the nonlinear effects, such as turbulence, trapping, and wave-wave interactions,
become active. As a result of these nonlinear effects, the growth of the fluctuations saturates.
In this thesis, our focus will be on two particular types of drift instabilities, namely the Buneman instability
and electron-cyclotron drift instability (ECDI). The Buneman instability is driven when a beam of electrons is
injected into the stationary ions, while both electrons and ions are unmagnetized. In the ECDI, however, the
electrons are magnetized and are also influenced by an external electric field, perpendicular to the magnetic
field. This configuration of fields leads to the E × B drift of the electrons that drives the ECDI. Many kinetic
simulations are performed, and several nonlinear phenomena such as trapping, heating, anomalous transport,
backward waves, and transition of magnetized plasmas to the unmagnetized regime are studied with regard
to both instabilities. For the study of the nonlinear effects of drift instabilities, a grid-based Vlasov code is
developed and used. The numerical method used in this code is the “semi-Lagrangian” method, which is
among the most popular methods for continuum simulations of plasma. In the study of the drift instabilities,
we compare the results of the semi-Lagrangian Vlasov simulations with the more traditional particle-in-cell
(PIC) method. The results of these benchmarking studies reveal several similarities and discrepancies between
Vlasov and particle-in-cell simulations, showing how the numerical methods can interfere with the physics of
the problems
A Novel Platform for the Development of Cathepsin B-Selective Radiopharmaceuticals, Fluorogenic Substrates, and Prodrugs
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Genetic Analysis of Stemphylium Blight Resistance in Lentil Interspecific Recombinant Inbred Lines and Advanced Backcross Population
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