MacEwan Open Journals (MacEwan University)
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To Tell the Tales of Two: A Visual Exploration of Dialogue in Literature
No full textTo Tell the Tales of Two: A Visual Exploration of Dialogue in Literature is a project of DESN231 Typography II, a course in the Bachelor of Design taught by Constanza Pacher at MacEwan University. Students were asked to visually translate an assigned short story into a two-page layout that challenges convention. With the overall goal of enhancing the meaning of the written text through visual devices, students focused on the peculiarities of language and speech in dialogues. Students were encouraged to explore linguistic deconstruction (semantics, syntax, grammar), alternative ways to organize the page, and to experiment with non-traditional grids, all while maintaining the legibility and readability of the text. Informative callouts where added throughout the publication to give conceptual or factual context to the piece.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Creation of a Visual System for the Colloquium Project
No full textBooks with many stories require a visual system in order to maintain a feeling of unity. The Colloquium project is a book of short stories that each have a unique 2-page spread designed by the students of 231. Our group sought to create a dialogue-based design inspired by mid- century style designs. This project required exploration and co-collaboration from each co- collaborator as well as critique and feedback from one another.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Artificial Intelligence Approaches to Build Ticket to Ride Maps
No full textFun, as a game trait, is difficult to evaluate. Previous research explores game arc and game refinement to improve the quality of games. Fun, for some players, is having an even chance to win while executing their strategy. To explore this, we build boards for the game Ticket to Ride while optimizing for a given win rate between four AI agents. These agents execute four popular strategies in Ticket to Ride: one-step thinking, long route exploitation, route focus, and destination hungry strategies. We create the underlying graph of a map, we use a multiphase design, with each phase implementing several Monte Carlo Tree Search components. Within a phase, the components communicate with each other passively. We explore preferred map structures for each agent in 4-player, 3-player, and 2 player scenarios. The experiments show that the proposed approach results in improvements over randomly generated graphs and maps.
Department: Computer Science
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Calin Anto
Smart Camps: The Digital Revolution\u27s Dark Creation
No full textWithin the history of penal systems, China represents a special case that initially adopted western penal models in the early 20th century but subsequently diverged onto a separate and unique path. Upon Mao Zedong’s victory in 1949 over the ruling Nationalist government, the focus on a western prison reform model shifted to one based on ideological purity and correct political thought, resulting in re-education camps known under the blanket term laogai. This change in penal practice occurred during the embryonic stages of the digital revolution, where humanity discovered ever more powerful methods of computation and data processing. The fixation on punishing incorrect thought led the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to adopt data collection and observation methodologies that could be easily digitized, allowing for exponential growth in oppressive systems. This comingling of laogai camp practices with computing power harnessed by the digital revolution has resulted in a new system of penal camps that is a stark break from traditional models. Using the PRC as a historical case study, this presentation will explore the history of re-education camps, contextualizing the evolution towards the modern ‘smart camp’ that is unique within the history of internment camps.
Department: Humanities
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Aidan Fort
Adsorption of Cadmium to Diatomite
No full textUnnatural levels of cadmium have been detected in rural and urban runoff, as well as surface and ocean waters globally. The universally toxic effects of cadmium on humans, plants, animals, and microbial life alike emphasize the importance of concern from these discoveries. Cadmium is introduced into the environment both naturally and anthropogenically, but the contribution of cadmium from anthropogenic sources has been increasing, restructuring the cadmium biogeochemical cycle. Anthropogenic sources of cadmium include expelled wastewaters and the displacement of contaminated soils from industrial sites- often urban adjacent. There is a known ability of raw diatomite (amorphous bio-silica), a low-cost biosorbent, to adsorb cadmium; but measures of the adsorbance capacities and binding mechanisms have varied markedly. In this study, Raman spectroscopy as well as Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy are employed to inform a more replete understanding of the physical chemistry of cadmium binding to diatomite. The influence of varying pH within environmentally relevant ranges and cadmium concentration on the diatomite\u27s capacity to sorb cadmium is evaluated. This us done through adsorption isotherms, as a function of Cd concentration and pH, and the amount of Cd removed from solution is monitored using Inductive Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). FTIR spectroscopy was used to determine the bulk binding mechanisms, while Raman spectroscopy helps us determine the variations of Cd sorption as a function of diatom morphology. Reconciling the behaviours of cadmium against diatomite at environmentally relevant conditions aids attempts to mitigate cadmium pollution and modeling its current and future biogeochemical cycle.
Department: Physical Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Janice Kenne
The Positive and Negative Perspectives of Narcissism
No full textHere, we explored public stigmas related to grandiose narcissism (i.e., a personality trait characterized by an excessive need for admiration, exaggerated self-importance, and a sense of entitlement; Grapsas et al. 2020). Although narcissism is perceived as a socially undesirable trait by those low in narcissism, individuals high in narcissism consider narcissism to be a positive “get ahead” trait (Carlson, 2013). However, narcissistic individuals may exacerbate (diminish) their narcissistic tendencies when told that narcissism is socially desirable (vs. undesirable). To examine this, 300 participants completed the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire, read either a positive (e.g., narcissistic individuals are charismatic) or negative (e.g., narcissistic individuals are manipulative) definition of narcissism, and reported their thoughts regarding the definition. We hypothesize that narcissistic individuals will deny being more narcissistic upon reading the negative (vs. positive) definition because it presents narcissism as socially undesirable. Less narcissistic individuals will view narcissism negatively regardless of whether they read the positive or negative definition of narcissism because of their previous knowledge of narcissism’s darker connotations. Future research will examine whether narcissism is stigmatized and how being high in narcissism may buffer the impact of stigmatization.
Department: Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Miranda Giacomi
If you change your mind: The relationship between implicit theories and materialism
No full textThe present two experimental research studies examine the influence of materialism and implicit theories have on one another. Individuals who hold materialistic values avoid emotional and physiological negative experiences. Some avoidance strategies, such as cognitive deconstruction, living in the present, or constant need to acquire materialistic items, are utilized to protect self-identity against any negativity. Implicit theories refer to one’s belief regarding the malleability of human attributes, abilities, and values, specifically whether they are malleable (incremental) or fixed (entity). Individuals with an entity mindset tend to engage in helpless response patterns and embrace performance-related goals. The first study involves randomly assigning participants to one of three conditions (entity, incremental or control), in which we induce each theory through an article. Participants endorsement of materialism was measured using the Belk, Materialism Value Scale, and Revised Materialism Scale (RMS). We predicted that entity mindset will hold more materialistic values than the incremental and control group.
The second study involves randomly assigning participants to either a control or materialistic condition, in which they were exposed to videos and 5-word sentence scrambles. Participants were implicit theories were measured using the ‘Kind of Person’ Implicit Theory Scale. We predicted that those with higher materialistic values will likely hold an entity mindset rather than an incremental mindset. Results will be further discussed, along with will future directions and limitations.
Department: Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. David Watso
The Effects of Oxytocin on Social Anxiety-Like Behaviour in Zebrafish
No full textSocial anxiety is a predominant disorder in Northern America affecting approximately 7% of the population. Various medications are consistently being tested to minimize the effects of social anxiety as there is no one drug that works on everyone. Zebrafish have been used as a model organism for neurological research over the last few decades and are ideal to test how drugs affect anxiety. The effects of oxytocin on decreasing social anxiety-like behaviours were examined in zebrafish. Past studies have shown that a moderate amount of oxytocin lowers average levels of social anxiety (Strungaru et al., 2017). This study aims to examine the therapeutic potential of oxytocin as an anxiolytic drug. Three groups of four zebrafish were exposed to varying doses of oxytocin (control: 0.0ng/ul; low: 52.8ng/ul; and high: 88.0ng/ul) for 90 seconds via immersion and then monitored for 5 minutes. Inter-individual distance between shoal mates was measured as a degree of social anxiety. The results showed no significant differences in mean distance between experimental dosage groups. Although the results came back insignificant, further research is needed to determine whether oxytocin holds an anxiolytic effect with different dependent variables such as exposure time and drug administration method.
Department: Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Melike Schalomo
The role of sexual practice in shaping perception of consent and cue interpretation
No full textDetermining whether an individual wants to engage in sexual activity is an essential skill. For most, consent is learned from several common sources like sex education, media, close others, and the internet. However, these sources can be ambiguous, lacking, or absent leading to knowledge gaps and potentially inadequate acquisition or performance of this essential skill. In contrast, among BDSM communities, consent has been described as a central construct where members of these communities have opportunities to experience consent as more affirmative, less taboo, more progressive, and grounded in mutual respect. Scholars have argued that BDSM conceptions of consent may be valuable to improving practices in conventional sexual cultures. The current project examines whether individuals with experience in BDSM cultures exhibit more effective recognition of consent cues relative to individuals with experience only in conventional sexual cultures. Members of both groups were recruited to read through sexual encounter scenarios that varied in their consensuality, and to indicate and discuss all relevant cues. We expected BDSM members would identify more cues, especially implicit ones, and might also identify cues earlier in the scenarios as relevant. We describe trends in participants rated consensuality and cue identification and discuss noteworthy observations from their open- ended discussion of both scenarios. In addition, we present considerations and challenges for recruiting participants from special populations, especially during a pandemic. Consent is multi- dimensional and contextualized. In our discussion, we emphasize that consent is perceived in a variety of ways, and this varies across both domains examined in this study.
Department: Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Aimee Sky
Indigenous Beading Knowledge in context of International Social Work Research
No full textOur poster presents the phases of our research and firsthand results of data analysis through beadwork. Our study involved three semi-interviews with local Indigenous artists to explore from their perspective about how their own cultural identity expressed through beadwork can inform social work practice. As a social worker with a Cree-Metis background and co-investigator, this study allows me to connect with my own Indigenous ways of knowing while incorporating non- westernized ways of learning in my social work practice. The poster will focus on 1) presenting the study’s phases, 2) introducing the firsthand results of the participants’ understanding of beadwork from their perspective and 3) opening the reflection around how beadwork can contribute to a culturally centered way of learning and practicing social work. Our poster’s purpose is to open the dialogue for cultural identity grounded social work practice by creating space for a decolonized framework.
School of Social Work
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Somnoma Valerie Ouedraog