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Socio-Cultural Challenges to Women’s Solo Domestic Travel Pursuits: A Mini-Ethnographic Case of Iranian Culture
Get PDFThis qualitative mini-ethnographic case study aimed to explore and document the challenges and limitations of domestic solo travel for Muslim Iranian women, focusing on the role of family and friends in the actualization of their trip. Using thematic analysis, the study examines the socio-cultural aspects that limit solo travel, the travel decision-making process for women who travel solo, and the empowering aspects of solo leisure travel. The research question addressed is the role of family and friends in Iranian women's solo domestic travel actualization. The study found that solo travel for women in Iran is restricted by various socio-cultural aspects, including collectivist culture, safety concerns, patriarchal norms, and religious beliefs. Family support and financial affordability play significant roles in the decision-making process. The study provides insights into the challenges faced by women who choose to travel alone and the importance of financial independence and budgeting skills for female travelers. The study's unique contribution lies in its focus on women's solo travel in Iran and its examination of the socio-cultural aspects that limit solo travel for women. The study's practical guidance for policymakers and stakeholders interested in promoting women's empowerment in Iran and other collectivist societies makes it a significant contribution to the literature
On the Physical Demands of Gaming: Quantifying Pain, Muscle Activity, Kinematics, and Performance Changes
Get PDFWith the rapid growth of both the gaming and esports industries, millions of individuals are now playing games as hobbies and careers. The intense and repetitive nature of gaming can likely lead to significant muscle fatigue and increase an individual’s susceptibility to musculoskeletal injuries and pain. However, the physical demands of gaming have largely been unexplored.
The objectives of this thesis fell into three categories. 1) Determine where gamers most commonly experience pain while gaming and whether any demographics or gaming habits can predict pain or discomfort in the upper body (Chapter 3). 2) Determine how muscle fatigue and motor performance of the distal upper limb are impacted by a low-force/high-repetition fatiguing protocol utilizing rapid mouse clicking (Chapter 4) and mouse aiming (Chapter 5). 3) Determine the muscular and postural demands associated with high level, competitive gaming (Chapter 6).
In Chapter 3, we identified that the neck, low back, and right arm were the most common locations of gaming-related pain. The high prevalence of gaming-related pain reported confirmed that gaming-related pain is a significant problem which requires further investigation. In Chapters 4 and 5, we found that low-force, high repetition fatigue protocols led to few impairments in motor performance. However, changes in EMG characteristics indicated that the mouse clicking protocol led to fatigue of the wrist flexors while the mouse aiming protocol produced muscle fatigue in the wrist extensors. Finally, in Chapter 6, we found that static loading of the shoulder and forearm musculature exceeded guidelines while playing a competitive PC first-person shooter. Musculature of the upper limb produced sustained high levels of muscle activity with little to no rest, exceeding suggested guidelines based on both magnitude of activity and rest time.
This thesis provides some of the first research investigating the physical impact of video games on the upper body. It is also the first work to document the impact of low-force fatiguing protocols on fine motor functioning of the distal upper limb and to quantify the physical demands while playing competitive PC video games
Agreement between Lewis Shickluna, St. Catharines and M.W. and E. Browne of Hamilton to build a schooner, 1845
No full text(Spelling and grammar are as these appear in the document)
Agreement between Lewis Shickluna of the Town of Saint Catharines, and M. W. & E Browne of the Town of Hamilton both places, Canada West. __________
That the aforesaid Lewis Shickluna is to build a Schooner length to Keel to be One Hundred and ten feet, the remainder to be, as laid down in the Estimate which will be signed by both parties , a copy to be made out and signed as above so that each party may always have a reference to the agreement. __________ For and in consideration of the building the above mentioned Schooner the aforesaid M. W. & E. Browne is to pay the aforesaid Lewis Shickluna the Sum of Two Thousand One Hundred Pounds Halifax Currency, to be paid as follows. __________
Four Hundred pound to be paid now out of his Store. __________
Two Schooners the Kent and Telegraph for and in consideration of Seven Hundred pounds, the above Schooners to be delivered to the said Lewis Shickluna at St. Catharines in the fall of this year one Thousand Eight Hundred and forty five.__________ The above Schooners are valued at as follows __________ The Kent 400 Pounds __________ [The] Telegraph 300 [Pounds) __________
Two Hundred pounds when the Vessel is all in frame. __________ Two Hundred pounds when planked. __________
Two Hundred pounds when Launched.
__________ Two Hundred pounds Three Months after the Launch payable at the Bank of ...
__________ And Two Hundred pounds Six Months after the Launch payable at the Bank of ...
__________ Given under our hands and seals this ... day of ... In the year of our Lord one Thousand Eight Hundred and forty five.A drafted agreement between Louis Shickluna and M. W. & E. Browne of Hamilton to build a 110 foot schooner in 1845. The cost of the ship was to be £2100 Halifax Currency. The terms of the agreement are laid out as well as the payment schedule which included the transfer of two older schooners to Shickluna
Scaffolded, embedded required: information literacy education in undergraduate health sciences
Get PDFBackground: The Health Sciences Library and the Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) Program (BHSc) at McMaster University worked together to build a multi-year information literacy (IL) curriculum embedded within the program under a suite of courses called Praxis Pathways.
Description: Praxis Pathways consists of four Threads. Thread 4: Information Literacy is the focus of this case report. The authors will describe the multi-year embedded IL curriculum, which is scaffolded to build both IL skills, such as database searching, and introduce students to key conceptual conversations in IL, production and dissemination.
Outcomes: BHSc program graduates in 2023 will be the first to have completed all four years of the Praxis Pathways courses, including the IL program developed and delivered by the library. The authors will describe how the impact of the program will be evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively going forward.
Conclusion: Embedded librarianship for multi-year, scaffolded IL education in undergraduate programs continues to be a rarity, despite the acknowledgement that one-shot instruction has several limitations. The authors present this case report to share how they embedded a for-cred IL curriculum in an undergraduate program that looks beyond the one-shot, skill-based tutorial and focuses on developing adaptive, information-literate lifelong learners
Emergent Behaviour in Game AI: A Genetic Programming and CNN-based Approach to Intelligent Agent Design
Get PDFEmergent behaviour is behaviour that arises from the interactions between the individual components of a system, rather than being explicitly programmed or designed. In this work, genetic programming is used to evolve an adaptive game AI, also known as an intelligent agent, whose job is to capture up to twenty-five prey agents in a simulated pursuit environment. For a pursuit game, the fitness score tallies each prey the predator captured during a run. The fitness is then used to evaluate each agent and choose who moves forward in the evolutionary process. A problem with only choosing the best performing agents is that genetic diversity becomes lost along the way, which can result in monotonous behaviour. Diverse behaviour helps agents perform under situations of uncertainty and creates more interesting computer opponents in video games, as it encourages the agent to explore different possibilities and adapt to changing circumstances. Inspired by the works of Cowan and Pozzuoli in diversifying agent behaviour, and Chen’s work in L-system tree evaluation, a convolutional neural network is introduced to automatically model the behaviour of each agent, something previously done manually. This involves training the convolutional neural network on a large data set of behaviours exhibited by the agents, which take the form of image-based traces. The resulting model is then used to detect interesting emergent behaviour. In the first set of experiments, the convolutional neural network is trained and tested on several sets of traces, then the performance of each run is analyzed. Results show that the convolutional neural network is capable of identifying 6 emergent behaviours with 98% accuracy. The second set of experiments combine genetic programming and the convolutional neural network in order to produce unique and interesting intelligent agents, as well as target specific behaviours. Results show that the system is able to evolve more innovative and effective agents that can operate in complex environments and could be extended to perform a wide range of tasks
Leveraging Wikipedia in undergraduate health sciences education: a key tool for information literacy and knowledge translation
Get PDFBackground: Academic institutions and libraries are familiar with Wikipedia. There is growing momentum in higher education for using Wikipedia as a learning tool in various contexts. These include, but are not limited to, the use of Wikipedia-based assignments to teach information literacy, science communication, evidence-based practice, and more. Although there is growing acceptance of Wikipedia’s value in the classroom, there are limited exemplars available for how it is applied in undergraduate health sciences education.
Description: This program description describes a librarian instructed course in the Bachelor of Health Sciences Program at McMaster University in which students dedicate one academic term to learning about Wikipedia content production and making contributions to a health-related Wikipedia article of their choice.
Outcomes: In the five iterations of this course that have been offered, undergraduate health sciences students have made significant contributions to 25 health-related articles in Wikipedia. They have added more than 120,000 words and over 2,000 references to high-quality literature. In class, conversations emerged about the meaningfulness of the editing Wikipedia, information literacy, and knowledge translation
Biking Through the Eyes of Kids: The Lived Experiences of Kids Riding Bikes in their Neighborhood
Get PDFBiking provides kids with a means of being active, social and mobile in the neighborhoods and
places they ride. This project aimed to look at the ways in which kids used their bikes and report on their
lived experiences. To understand the lived experience of kids’ biking, this project explored the
experiences of kids from various neighborhoods in the city of St. Catharines, Ontario. Data collection
drew upon the experiences of 12 participants who rode their bike at least once a week, without the
presence of an adult.
This project was guided by phenomenology and incorporated multiple data collection methods
in order to capture the perspectives of kids’ lived experiences as presented by the kids themselves. To
accomplish this goal, the study incorporated mobile methods of data collection adapted from Spinney
(2011), where kids video recorded parts of their typical bike rides, in addition to sit-down interviews.
The data presented by participants was also analyzed through the use of Interpretive Phenomenological
Analysis (IPA) as outlined by Smith, Flowers, and Larkin (2013). Using IPA as an analysis framework
allowed analysis to be flexible based on the unique experiences presented by the participants.
The findings of this study outline 6 themes; Building Spatial Knowledge, Going Out and About,
Being and Biking with Others, Maneuvering and Negotiating Others, Getting Away and Finding Peace
and Quiet, and Testing Independence. These themes are supported by the accounts participants
provided regarding their biking experiences. Based on the findings, this project’s discussion highlights
the importance of kids’ independent learning during biking experiences and outlines ways in which kids’
neighborhood biking can be supported by members of the community
Evolving Weighted Networks to Simulate Epidemics and Lockdowns
No full textSimulating epidemics is vital to understanding their effect on human populations,
and developing models to provide insights into epidemic behaviour is a primary goal
of this thesis. A generative evolutionary algorithm is used to evolve weighted personal
contact networks that represent physical contact between individuals, and thus
possible paths of infection during an epidemic. The evolutionary algorithm evolves a
list of edge-editing operations applied to an initial graph. Two initial graphs are considered,
a ring graph and a power-law graph. Different probabilities of infection and
a wide range of weights are considered, which improve performance over other work.
Modified edge operations are introduced, which also improve performance. When
attempting to match a given epidemic profile, similar results are obtained when using
either initial graph, but both improve performance over other work.
The impact of different lockdown strategies upon the total number of infections in
an epidemic are evaluated for two models of infection: one in which the disease confers
permanent immunity, and one in which it does not. The strategies are based upon the
proportion of the population infected at a time in order to trigger lockdown, combined
with the proportion of interactions removed during lockdown. The population, its
interactions, and the relative strengths of those interactions are stored in a weighted
contact network, from which edges are removed during lockdown. These edges are
selected using an evolutionary algorithm (EA) designed to minimize total infections.
Using the EA to select edges significantly reduces total infections in comparison to
random selection. In fact, the EA results for the least strict conditions were similar or
better to the random results for the most strict conditions, showing that a judicious
choice of restrictions during lockdown has the greatest effect on reducing infections.
Further, when using the most strict rules a smaller proportion of interactions can
be removed to obtain similar or better results in comparison to removing a higher
proportion of interactions for less strict rules
Beyond plagiarism: ChatGPT and the future of AI
Get PDFNetworking Event by Graduate students at the CSSHE conference at York University, ON, Canada (May 30, 2023)CSSH
“Disappearing Motels” postcard collection, 2022
Get PDFAn introduction to the postcards written by Joan Nicks is included. Her description of the postcards follows:
This postcard package represents a photographic exhibition at your fingertips. Tucked into the book, it is more than a souvenir. It invites readers to contemplate the vision and perspective of two remarkable photographers, Oliver Pauk and Zach Slootsky, who immersed themselves in the long-term collaborative project of documenting visual elements of a disappearing Niagara motel culture. By day, by night, owners, clients, active, and abandoned sites. Formally framed and angled, their photos suggest ways of re-seeing this famous place, capturing something authentic, even disturbing, in the remnants, ruins, and stillness of local motel culture as a barely-there series of scenes.The collection consists of 19 postcards featuring photographs of motels in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Postcards include photos of the sign for the Anchor Lodge Motel; abandoned motels; motels on Lundy’s Lane; motel proprietors and/or guests; a drained motel pool; a stack of mattresses piled in a motel parking lot with the motel in the background; a gazebo outside the Melody Motel; and a sign for the River Boat Motel. The photos were taken by Oliver Pauk and Zach Slootsky, and were included with the book Disappearing Motels, Niagara Falls, Ontario: cultural decline of a post-war travel icon (2022) by Joan Nicks