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Envisioning a culturally safe midwifery model from the perspective of Indigenous families: A case study of midwifery care in inner city Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Get PDFPrenatal care is associated with improved outcomes for the mother and baby. Ongoing research in Winnipeg shows that pregnant people, especially Indigenous people, living in Winnipeg’s inner city have significantly lower rates of prenatal care than others in the city. There are no specific predictors of inadequate prenatal care among Indigenous families. Instead, being Indigenous is in and of itself a risk factor for inadequate prenatal care. This research project is a case study of culturally safe prenatal care and the role midwives can play in facilitating culturally safe prenatal care that is appropriate for Indigenous families living in Winnipeg’s inner city. It examines the decolonization of midwifery practice using pragmatic and Indigenous research paradigms. The goal was to understand, from the perspective of Indigenous midwifery clients, how midwives and other care providers can shape the quality of prenatal care services to meet the needs of Indigenous families more effectively and in a culturally safe manner. This research examines the prenatal care model of a group of midwives based out of an interdisciplinary health clinic called Mount Carmel Clinic (MCC) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It finds increased rates of prenatal care for Indigenous families at risk of receiving inadequate prenatal care in pregnancy. It also finds that despite increased engagement in prenatal care, many MCC midwifery clients have their babies apprehended by Child and Family Services at birth. The findings suggest that the MCC midwifery model is on a continuum of culturally safe practice, and that the model of care could facilitate a deeper level cultural safety by expanding their care team to include Indigenous members and traditional knowledge about pregnancy, birth and parenting. Finally, it finds that Two-Eyed Seeing can be used by non-Indigenous healthcare practitioners as a tool for engaging in reflective practice to design a working model of cultural safety in the context of the local community.Master of Arts in Indigenous Governanc
"Voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently": Protecting informed consent in school-based mental health referrals
Get PDFCoherent with mental health literacy curricula, mental health assessment and referral is embedded in Canadian educational contexts. Mental health literacy excludes the substantial scholarly critique of mental health produced by psychiatry, the disciplinary base of the field of mental health. In-school student referrals to mental health professionals may similarly omit important critical information. Key critical areas of concern include scientific evidence, psychiatric drugs, psychiatric diagnosis, misinformation, and potential for harm. Professional ethics codes call for full disclosure of risk and open access to any relevant information needed for informed decision-making. Some mental health interventions commonly take place on an implied consent basis within first-time consult appointments. Consequently, parents and students require access to critical mental health knowledge before or during referral processes. Beyond aligning mental health referral with the ethical principle of informed consent, professional ethics require institutional divestment from any mental health premises and practices that cause harm and lack scientific, intellectual, and ethical integrity.https://journals.library.brocku.ca/brocked/index.php/home/article/view/78
Chemistry and the Environment: A Chemistry Perspective for discussion of Environmental Issues [first edition]
Get PDFA second edition of this work is available at https://pressbooks.openedmb.ca/chemistryandtheenvironment/.Chemistry and the Environment is designed to accompany a one-semester course in chemistry-based discussions of important environmental issues such as air pollution, the ozone layer, climate change and water quality. Chemical principles are introduced, followed by environmental ‘focus’ sections to base discussions on the scientific principles and societal intricacies of the individual topics. Instructors can also use the focus sections as a resource for presentation slides. Chemistry 2e is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the two-semester general chemistry course. The textbook provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of chemistry and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them
Long-Range Dispersal Behaviour and Spatial Distribution Modelling of Adult Mosquitoes in the Winnipeg Region
Get PDFMosquitoes are present in virtually every nation worldwide, acting as both a vector for many serious pathogens, and as a nuisance because of their blood-feeding behaviours. As a principle of Integrated Mosquito Management (IMM), pre-emptive rather than reactive mosquito control measures are recommended and have been shown to be effective in suppressing mosquito populations. However, pre-emptive actions require insight into the spatial dynamics of mosquitoes to be effective, as mosquito dispersal behaviour is broadly influenced by local environmental conditions and species physiology. This research project was designed to investigate the dispersal behaviour and landscape ecology of adult mosquitoes in the Winnipeg region in central Canada. In Manitoba, mosquitoes primarily present an annoyance rather than a public health risk, though a risk of exposure to several mosquito-borne diseases persists in southern Manitoba. As part of the Winnipeg’s long-standing IMM program, the city maintains a mosquito control buffer zone extending approximately 10 km beyond the city limits. Within this zone, a surveillance program is implemented for adult and larval mosquitoes and larviciding operations occur when necessary. However, there is a lack of local evidence to justify the size of this zone, and literature addressing the establishment of effective buffer zones for mosquito control is nearly non-existent. Assessment of the potential effectiveness of a buffer zone requires information on mosquito flight ranges and dispersal behaviours, as well as knowledge of their overall distribution. This study 1) demonstrates two approaches that are commonly used to characterize mosquito behaviour for the purpose of optimizing control measures: mark-release-recapture (MRR) experiments and spatial distribution modelling, and 2) uses the results of these approaches to infer the potential effectiveness of the mosquito control buffer zone surrounding Winnipeg. Mark-release-recapture studies have long been used to measure mosquito flight distances and to investigate the environmental drivers of dispersal movement. In this study, field-sourced larval mosquitoes were reared to adulthood and marked with fluorescent dust prior to release. I hypothesized that mosquitoes would actively disperse towards areas with higher moisture profiles, such as those with dense canopy cover or near bodies of water. Additionally, I predicted that females would orientate toward areas with high densities of their preferred hosts. With Winnipeg mosquito buffer in mind, these experiments were designed to a) establish the flight ranges of common mosquito species, and b) discern the influence of landscape-based variables on adult mosquitoes dispersing into the urban areas of Winnipeg from the peri-urban outskirts. Recaptured mosquitoes included primarily Aedes vexans, Culiseta inornata, and Coquillettidia perturbans, all of which were recaptured 3 km or more from a single release site located on the southern edge of the City of Winnipeg within a few days of release. Female Ae. vexans were found to commonly travel more than 3 km following release, and male recaptures were often observed several kilometres from the release site. A few female Ae. vexans were recaptured over 15 km away, but the lifetime flight range for most (90%) is estimated to be over 8 km. Female Cs. inornata movement was in part influenced by the presence of mammalian livestock. While too few Cq. perturbans were recaptured to estimate mean flight distance or total flight range, in two separate events, marked individuals were recaptured over 26 km from the release site. Generally, mosquitoes appeared to be more prevalent in areas with extensive vegetative cover, and findings suggest these areas may act as corridors that facilitate dispersal into urban areas. Remote sensing data and spatial models created with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) platforms are increasingly being used to help clarify landscape-wide patterns of mosquito distribution. The approach presented here used nine consecutive years of trap data from Winnipeg’s mosquito surveillance program to model mosquito distribution in unsampled areas. Landscape-based variables such as distance to nearest river, land cover and land use classes, as well as vegetation and wetness indices were extracted for the study area using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery at a resolution of 10 m. Circular zonal areas (“buffer zones”, though not to be confused with the mosquito control buffer zone surrounding Winnipeg) generated at varying distances around traps were used to characterize habitats in terms of these variables. These were then used as explanatory variables in random forest regressions iterated to identify key predictors of mosquito distribution. The maps produced from the final models identified “hotspots” within the Winnipeg area several common local mosquito species. I hypothesized that mosquito their preferred hosts. With Winnipeg mosquito buffer in mind, these experiments were designed to a) establish the flight ranges of common mosquito species, and b) discern the influence of landscape-based variables on adult mosquitoes dispersing into the urban areas of Winnipeg from the peri-urban outskirts. Recaptured mosquitoes included primarily Aedes vexans, Culiseta inornata, and Coquillettidia perturbans, all of which were recaptured 3 km or more from a single release site located on the southern edge of the City of Winnipeg within a few days of release. Female Ae. vexans were found to commonly travel more than 3 km following release, and male recaptures were often observed several kilometres from the release site. A few female Ae. vexans were recaptured over 15 km away, but the lifetime flight range for most (90%) is estimated to be over 8 km. Female Cs. inornata movement was in part influenced by the presence of mammalian livestock. While too few Cq. perturbans were recaptured to estimate mean flight distance or total flight range, in two separate events, marked individuals were recaptured over 26 km from the release site. Generally, mosquitoes appeared to be more prevalent in areas with extensive vegetative cover, and findings suggest these areas may act as corridors that facilitate dispersal into urban areas. Remote sensing data and spatial models created with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) platforms are increasingly being used to help clarify landscape-wide patterns of mosquito distribution. The approach presented here used nine consecutive years of trap data from Winnipeg’s mosquito surveillance program to model mosquito distribution in unsampled areas. Landscape-based variables such as distance to nearest river, land cover and land use classes, as well as vegetation and wetness indices were extracted for the study area using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery at a resolution of 10 m. Circular zonal areas (“buffer zones”, though not to be confused with the mosquito control buffer zone surrounding Winnipeg) generated at varying distances around traps were used to characterize habitats in terms of these variables. These were then used as explanatory variables in random forest regressions iterated to identify key predictors of mosquito distribution. The maps produced from the final models identified “hotspots” within the Winnipeg area several common local mosquito species. I hypothesized that mosquito populations would be densest in areas with high moisture profiles, such as vegetated regions near rivers, as was implied by the MRR experiment outcomes. Hotspots for Ae. vexans and Cx. restuans confirmed this hypothesis, as these were clustered within riparian areas closest to rivers. Conversely, population hotspots for Cx. tarsalis were located near or beyond city limits. No consistent trends were identified for Ae. dorsalis. Influence of certain vegetation-based land cover classes such as cultivated land, grass and forest were more important in predicting mosquito distribution at larger scales (500 to 1000 m) in comparison to land use classes such as commercial or industrial areas which influenced mosquito distributions at smaller scales (50 to 100 m). These support the hypothesis that relationships between mosquitoes and their surroundings extend beyond the reach of their olfactory or visual senses and that larger scale landscape factors also influence mosquito movement to a significant extent. Based on these findings, we can infer that many mosquito species are capable of dispersing distances that justify the extent of the current buffer zone surrounding the Winnipeg city limits. The results from the MRR experiments demonstrated that these mosquitoes could disperse several kilometres into the city from outside its limits. However, the MRR experiments were not designed to fully address the directionality of their movements, and mosquitoes may be dispersing towards rural areas as well. The results of both the spatial distribution models and the MRR experiments provided similar insights regarding habitat preferences. Most prominently, the distribution and dispersal patterns of Ae. vexans suggests that mosquitoes may be using vegetated riverbanks as corridors for dispersal. Additionally, the risk of encountering the medically important species Cx. tarsalis increases with greater distances from the city center. Both these findings indicate that the diversity in habitat preference for Winnipeg’s mosquitoes would necessitate thorough monitoring and treatment of larval habitats to prevent most mosquitoes from immigrating into the city. This may be impractical, nay impossible given the nature of the breeding habitats preferred by Ae. vexans (soils with intermittent flooding) and Cx. tarsalis (small and discrete artificial containers) and the difficulty associated with treating these. Regardless, these results illustrate an improved understanding of the landscape ecology of mosquitoes in the Winnipeg region.City of Winnipeg, Manitoba Graduate ScholarshipMaster of Science in Bioscience, Technology and Public Polic
Genome-Wide Regulatory Interactions in the Early Stages of Drosophila Speciation
Get PDFSpeciation occurs when reproductive barriers prevent the exchange of genetic information between individuals. A common form of reproductive barrier between species capable of interbreeding is hybrid sterility. Genomic incompatibilities between the divergent genomes of different species contribute to a reduction in hybrid fitness. These incompatibilities continue to accumulate after speciation, therefore, young divergent taxa with incomplete reproductive isolation are important in understating the genetics leading to speciation. Here, I use two Drosophila subspecies pairs. The first is D. willistoni consisting of D. w. willistoni and D. w. winge. The second subspecies pair is D. pseudoobscura, which is composed of D. p. pseudoobscura and D. p. bogotana. Both subspecies pairs are at the early stages of speciation and show incomplete reproductive isolation through unidirectional hybrid male sterility. In this thesis, I performed an exploratory survey of genome-wide expression analysis using RNA-sequencing on D. willistoni and determined the extent of regulatory divergence between the subspecies using allele-specific expression analysis. I found that misexpressed genes showed a degree of tissue specificity and that the sterile male hybrids had a higher proportion of misexpressed genes in the testes relative to the fertile hybrids. The analysis of regulatory divergence between this subspecies pair found a large (66-70%) proportion of genes with conserved regulatory elements. Of the genes showing evidence or regulatory divergence between subspecies, cis-regulatory divergence was more common than other types. In the D. pseudoobscura subspecies pair, I compared sequence and expression divergence and found no support for directional selection driving gene misexpression in their hybrids. Allele-specific expression analysis revealed that compensatory cis-trans mutations partly explained gene misexpression in the hybrids. The remaining hybrid misexpression occurs due to interacting gene networks or possible co-option of cis-regulatory elements by divergent transacting factors. Overall, the results of this thesis highlight the role of regulatory interactions in a hybrid genome and how these interactions could lead to hybrid breakdown by disrupting gene interaction networks.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)Master of Science in Bioscience, Technology, and Public Polic
Supporting Teachers in Times of Change: The Job Demands- Resources Model and Teacher Burnout During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFBurnout in teachers has been broadly investigated, but no studies have investigated burnout in teachers during a pandemic. The current study is based on a survey of 1278 Canadian teachers and examined whether the Job Demands-Resources model was a useful lens for examining teacher burnout in this unprecedented context. Results supported the model in general terms in that most demands were most strongly correlated with the initial exhaustion stage of burnout. However, not all resources were most strongly associated with the later stages of burnout, suggesting that the examination of specific resources in the context of a pandemic as opposed to examining resources together as a latent variable contributes to development of a more refined model. Suggestions for supporting teachers’ welfare are provided."We would like to recognize the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the form of an Explore grant to the first author."http://redfame.com/journal/index.php/ijce/article/view/493
COVID-19’s Second Wave: How are teachers faring with the return to physical schools?
Get PDF"Part two of the results of a national teacher survey on resilience andburnout during the coronavirus pandemic."https://edcan.atavist.com/teacher-covid-survey-
Detecting Overlapping Communities using Ensemble-based Distributed Neighbourhood Threshold Method in Social Networks
No full textIn this thesis, we have proposed a novel overlapping community detection algorithm based on an ensemble approach with a distributed neighbourhood threshold method (EnDNTM). EnDNTM uses pre-partitioned disjoint communities generated by the ensemble mechanism and then analyzes the neighbourhood distribution of boundary nodes in disjoint communities to detect overlapping communities. It is a form of seed-based global method since boundary nodes are considered as seeds and become the starting point for detecting overlapping communities. A threshold value for each boundary node is used as the minimum influence by the neighbours of a node in order to determine its belongingness to any community. The effectiveness of the EnDNTM algorithm has been demonstrated by testing with five synthetic benchmark datasets and fifteen real-world datasets. The performance of the EnDNTM algorithm was compared with seven overlapping community detection algorithms. The F1 − score, normalized mutual information ONMI and extended modularity Qov metrics were used to measure the quality of the detected communities. EnDNTM outperforms comparable algorithms on 4 out of 5 synthetic benchmarks datasets, 11 out of 15 real world datasets and gives comparable results with the remaining datasets. Experiments on various synthetic and real world datasets reveal that for a majority of datasets, the proposed ensemble-based distributed neighbourhood threshold method is able to select the best disjoint clusters produced by a disjoint method from a collection of methods for detecting overlapping communities.Master of Applied Computer Scienc
Temperature and freezing effects on phosphorus release from soils to overlying floodwater under flooded-anaerobic conditions
Get PDFIncreased phosphorus (P) availability under flooded, anaerobic conditions may accelerate P loss from soils to water bodies. Existing knowledge on P release to floodwater from flooded soils is limited to summer conditions and/or room temperatures. Spring snowmelt runoff, which occurs under cold temperatures with frequent freeze–thaw events, is the dominant mode of P loss from agricultural lands to water bodies in the Canadian Prairies. This research examined the effects of temperature on P dynamics under flooded conditions in a laboratory study using five agricultural soils from Manitoba, Canada. The treatments were (a) freezing for 1 wk at −20 ◦C, thawing and flooding at 4 ± 1 ◦C (frozen, cold); (b) flooding unfrozen soil at 4 ± 1 ◦C (unfrozen, cold); and (c) flooding unfrozen soil at 20 ± 2 ◦C (warm). Pore water and surface waterwere collectedweekly over 8 wk and analyzed for dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), pH, calcium, magnesium, iron (Fe), and manganese (Mn). Soils under warm flooding showed enhanced P release with significantly higher DRP concentrations in pore and surface floodwater compared with cold flooding of frozen and unfrozen soils. The development of anaerobic conditions was slow under cold flooding with only a slight decrease in Eh, whereas under warm flooding Eh declined sharply, favoring reductive dissolution reactions releasing P, Fe, and Mn. Pore water and floodwater DRP concentrations were similar between frozen and unfrozen soil under cold flooding, suggesting that one freeze–thaw event prior to flooding had minimal effect on P release under simulated snowmelt conditions."Funding for this research was provided by a National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant to Darshani Kumaragamage and by a NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Assistantship (USRA) to Angela Concepcion."https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jeq2.2006
Perceptions of Crime Seriousness and Punitive Attitudes in Post-Secondary Students
Get PDFPublic perceptions of crime seriousness and attitudes towards the punishment of crime stem from the social norms and values that shape society and are informed by ways of knowing about crime. Located within a social constructionist paradigm, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of post-secondary education, crime type and crime representation on perceptions of crime severity and punitive attitudes for different crime types. A sample of 971 students from the University of Winnipeg completed an online questionnaire measuring perceptions of crime severity for one-line crime descriptions as well as crime scenarios based on actual court data. Results show that both wrongfulness and harmfulness are strong predictors of perceived seriousness. As predicted, violent crimes ranked highest on measures of seriousness, wrongfulness, and harmfulness, and received the most severe sentencing recommendations. While the level of education completed had no significant difference on perceptions of crime severity, differences between fields of study showed significance. Comparisons between responses to the one-line crime descriptions and the crime scenarios revealed significantly stronger severity ratings for the scenarios than for the one-line descriptions although the ranking of crimes remained similar. Findings suggest that universal notions of wrongfulness and harmfulness exist that influence perceptions of seriousness and are resistant to change. Perceptions towards crimes are informed by a socially constructed reality of crime that shapes our knowledge of crime. Understanding the underlying factors that influence perceptions and attitudes towards crime may shed new light on the social approaches to dealing with crime and provides new insights into crime control practices and government crime policy. Finally, results also emphasize the importance of reflecting on the matter of crime representation in academic research.Social Science Humanities Research Council (Scholarship)Master of Arts in Criminal Justic