MacEwan Open Journals (MacEwan University)
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Ecosystem Map: A Granular Representation of the Edmonton Transit Service (ETS)
No full textAn ecosystem map is a visual representation of an organization and its offered services. Through text, shape, colour, and line, it identifies relationships, issues, and service gaps and challenges. The visual acts as a communication tool between stakeholders and decision- makers as they plan, develop, and execute the service. There are no firm rules when representing ecosystem maps; the designer simply must frame the elements in as comprehensive and easily understandable a fashion as possible. In this project led by professor Isabelle Sperano, we partnered with community learning partner Edmonton Transit Service (ETS) to analyze its structure and the many elements that comprise it. With a focus on the topic of safety in public transit, I take a very granular view, listing every last channel, touchpoint, interaction, and safety concern and relate them to each other in a series of concentric rings that represent the user, stakeholders, and operational layers within the complex service. The ecosystem map is then used to inform the subsequent stages of the project, including research and solution development.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Isabelle Speran
Book Design: "Fairy Tales by H.C. Andersen, A Collection of Stories"
No full text"Fairy Tales by H.C. Andersen, A Collection of Stories” features work pulled from Andersen\u27s 156 fairytales existing across nine volumes. Andersen\u27s tales explore the hardship of life and champion resilience in the face of adversity, making his stories suitable for people of all ages. The design of this book pulls from the classic Fairy Tale genre, using ornamentation, frames, and highly stylized and whimsical typefaces. The dark blue cover with a subtle antique pattern creates a lovely backdrop for the typography and ornamentation. The inside of the cover features a dark and misty forest, lending to an air of mystery. Each typeface chosen interacts and compliments the theme and brings variety to each page. Illustrations accompany the introduction of each story, highlighting an essential part of the tale. The Illustrations are stylized and straightforward with a light antique line art feel. This illustrated collection consists of seven stories: the Littler Mermaid, Little Tiny Thumbelina, the Dumb Book, The Fir Tree, the Little Match Seller, The Brave Tin Soldier, and The Elf of the Rose. This Rendition of Andersen\u27s tales celebrates the whimsy of the genre and the haunting tales that have become embedded in western culture.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Exploration of Literary Parallelism in Product Design
No full textA chocolate bar packaging design is inspired by the \u27whole chocolate bars\u27 found in the short story Chick-A-Chee by Souvankham Thammavongsa in her published book How To Pronounce Knife. The design for the bar is a reflection of the parallelism found in the story. Following the perspective of a young girl through the good and bad parts of childhood experienced through different interactions involving strangers at the front door. The chocolate bar\u27s design similarly includes an interactive peel-away top panel, emulating a physical door. Inside the panel, there is either prose poetry of the \u27good\u27 nostalgic trick-or-treating experience or the \u27bad\u27 fear-induced hiding experience referenced in the story. Other notable elements of the chocolate bar\u27s design include Book Facts as a stand-in for nutrition facts customarily found on the back of food packaging. The facts detail the important story beats in Chick-A-Chee while subtly adding some cheekiness characteristic of the author\u27s writing. The internal bar wrapping includes some dialogue from the text that emphatically demonstrates the duality of the story in the back and forth between characters. For all design elements, the header typeface has a distinct humanist style that is heavy in appearance yet visually dynamic, echoing the writing style in How to Pronounce Knife. The secondary typeface is more clean and playful, highlighting all the lighter parts of Chick-A-Chee. Black and neon green are colours found in the text from the story around the child\u27s glow-in-the-dark skeleton Halloween costume. These further illustrated the idea of opposition found in the story and complemented the design of a modern chocolate bar. Other deliverables included the chocolate bar collection box. Each story from the book has a unique chocolate bar flavour and design inspired by the central theme of that particular story. Together, they create the collection of story-telling by Thammavongsa and her characters\u27 interactions throughout How to Pronounce Knife.
Department: Design
Faculty Mentor: Constanza Pache
Recovery Ability of Thermally Stressed Captive Coral Anthelia spp., as measured by Dinoflagellate Density
No full textCoral reefs are quickly becoming endangered due to mass bleaching events. Implicated in this are warming ocean temperatures. The rising temperatures put stress on the symbiotic relationship between coral and dinoflagellates, which often causes the zooxanthellae to be expelled, eventually leading to coral death. The recovery ability of corals that have been exposed to heat stress remains a relatively small area of research. The goal of this study is to determine the recovery ability of Anthelia spp. inhabited by clade C zooxanthellae after being exposed to heat stress. Over a nine-week period, dinoflagellate densities of the corals will be calculated as an indicator of coral health and recovery. Temperatures of the coral tanks will start at 28ºC and reach a maximum of 32ºC before being gradually lowered. Dinoflagellate density will be examined twice per week using a compound microscopy and a maceration method.
Expanding the knowledge of the recovery ability of soft coral may be vital to continuing the existence of these species.
Department: Biological Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ross Sha
Detecting Antibiofilm Activity in Phytochemical Extracts From Local Invasive Weed Species
No full textThe development of antibiotic resistant pathogens is a serious global healthcare concern. Treatment for pathogens that form biofilms is particularly difficult because biofilm formation provides an extra physical barrier that enhances a pathogen’s resistance to antibiotic treatment. New antimicrobial treatment options must be discovered to address this challenge. Invasive weeds are of increasing interest because of their potential to produce antimicrobial chemicals. Studies on the phytochemicals produced by local invasive weed species have been limited thus far, despite showing strong potential as a novel antibiofilm treatment due to their noxious and allelopathic nature. This project examined phytochemical extracts of invasive weeds from the local Edmonton, Alberta, environment and aimed to find evidence of extracts demonstrating antibiofilm activity. Previous students sequentially extracted samples with solvents of increasing polarity (hexane, ethyl acetate, and methanol). The solvent was removed by rotary evaporation, and the phytochemical mixtures were dissolved in DMSO to produce treatment extracts.
Preliminary disk diffusion assays identified general antibacterial activity in these extracts, indicating potential for the extracts to also demonstrate activity specifically targeting biofilms. An antibiofilm assay was developed, in which biofilms of gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial species were treated with phytochemical extracts. This assay identified phytochemical extracts of at least three weed species that had an inhibitory or killing effect on biofilm cultures. These extracts will be further studied to identify the specific phytochemicals causing the observed antibiofilm effects, and to assist in the development of new potential antimicrobial agents to treat antibiotic resistant pathogens.
Department: Biological Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kimberley Harcomb
Effects of host plant quality and microsporidia infection on forest tent caterpillar, Malacosoma disstria (Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae) performance and disease susceptibility
No full textThe cyclic population dynamics of forest tent caterpillar (FTC) (Malacosoma disstria Hbn.) (Lepidoptera: Lasiocampidae) are driven by a variety of factors including delayed-density dependent mechanisms such as disease. We measured the performance and microsporidia infection load of FTC when reared on four different diets, including trembling aspen foliage (Populus tremuloides Michx.), sugar maple foliage (Acer saccharum Marshall), a standard artificial diet, and an artificial diet fortified with lyophilized trembling aspen foliage to determine if diet interacts with microsporidia infection to alter FTC performance and their susceptibility to infection. There were no interactive effects between diet and microsporidia infection on adult performance of FTC, but diet affected FTC susceptibility to infection. Adult FTC had lower rates of infection when reared on fresh aspen foliage or an aspen-fortified artificial diet, compared to the other diet types. While diet and microsporidia infection do not interact to effect adult FTC performance, they may interact to effect larval performance as susceptibility to microsporidia infection varies by diet. The findings of this study help to increase our understanding of how disease and plant quality effect FTC and ultimately their population dynamics. Additionally, this study provides more information on tri-tropic interactions involving disease.
Department: Biological Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Leah Flahert
Does influencer culture promote toxic positivity on Instagram? Online Emotional Suppression and Mental Well-being
No full textThe Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increase in communication through the internet and social media platforms. Influencer culture on social media platforms such as Instagram has been linked to negative impacts on the mental well-being of social media consumers. Toxic positivity, a newer form of emotional suppression, has become prevalent specifically on Instagram. In this research study, the researchers examined existing literature regarding social media, emotional suppression, and mental well-being and expanded the literature to primary research regarding the perception of toxic positivity within influencer culture on Instagram. The researchers adopted a mixed methods approach to collect data through online survey distribution. Participants answered three demographic questions and 11 questions directly related to the research through an online descriptive survey. The researchers analyzed the responses to these questions in order to answer the presented research questions, and provide discussion and recommendations. The research was focused on the prevalence of toxic positivity in influencer culture on Instagram, as well as the effects on mental well-being after being exposed to toxic positivity.
Department: Communication
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Lucille Maz
Josef Pieper and the Recovery of Leisure in the Workaday World
No full textIn this paper, I look at Josef Pieper’s conceptualization of what he calls “total work”. In the world of total work, one’s value is reduced to their practical value to society. In this world, Pieper argues that we lose our ability to realize our full humanity by limiting ourselves to only the concerns of the workaday. The missing element that Pieper brings forward is that of leisure. Leisure, Pieper explains, is a time and place in which we are able to be fully human, free from concerns of the everyday. By recovering the practice of leisure, Pieper believes we can recultivate that which makes us distinctly human and reclaim our value as more than just our output. One of the activities Pieper proposes to promote leisure, the example that I will be focusing on here, is his example of philosophy. When properly practiced, Pieper argues that philosophy can lead to the realization of one’s humanity through experiencing a deeper understanding and affirmation of the world. Through looking at Pieper’s writings on total work, leisure, and philosophy, I will argue that the University should be a space dedicated to the fulfillment of the individual by distinguishing it from concerns of the everyday. I will then argue that this should be done by grounding academic disciplines in philosophy and practicing them in a philosophical way. By reuniting the University with its foundation in philosophy, the university can be re-established as a place of leisure, where one can realize their full humanity.
Department: Humanities
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Edvard Lorkovi
Bragg Diffraction of One Dimensional Substitution Tilings
No full textThis project presents tools for modeling and visualizing one dimensional substitution tilings as well as calculating and displaying their Bragg Diffraction patterns. The application is rather robust in that it allows the user to define a particular substitution, then displays visuals based on the defined substitution, erroring out if the substitution is invalid. The application also includes a set of some of the best-known one-dimensional substitutions, from which you can select from. For a given substitution the application can generate a segment diagram, calculate the PF Eigenvector, determine if the substitution is “Pisot”, generate a symbolic text representation of the substitution, plot a diffraction intensity graph, and generate a project of the Bragg diffraction pattern.
Department: Mathematics and Statistics
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Nicolae Strungar
Spectroscopic investigation of Cadmium sorption to Oncoids
No full textThere is a growing interest in preserving water quality, prevention of contamination and remediation of water systems. Once a metal contaminant enters a system, it is important to understand how the minerals and microbes making up a system will react to the contaminant. In this study, we are interested in how oncoids, nodular coated grains formed by biological activity in water environments, found in an alkaline lake in the Canadian Rockies, would take up metals in a contamination event. Oncoids were collected from a carbonate-rich mountain lake in western Alberta. The oncoid material was dissected and exposed to Cadmium (Cd), a highly toxic metal. The pH range studied was between 4-11. Following exposure, the oncoid was removed from the solution and the aqueous phase was analyzed by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), while the oncoid was analyzed using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Raman spectrometry was used to characterize variations in the Cd binding across the oncoid. Adsorption of Cd by the oncoid was found to increase as a function of pH, 24% at pH 4 rising to as high as 96% at pH 11, however above pH 8 much of that removal from solution was related to Cd precipitation. Assessing how environmental components, such as oncoids take up metals, such as Cd, is important as it could inform us on possible syncs of metals, to improve water qualities and environmental hazards in present day contamination events, but also inform us of potential metal syncs in geologic history.
Department: Physical Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Janice Kenne