1722 research outputs found
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First Foods as Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Country Foods and Breastfeeding Practices in a Manitoban First Nations Community
Get PDFAs a concept and in practice, Indigenous food sovereignty (IFS) offers insights into the social, cultural, and environmental challenges of a deficient food system. The associated poor health outcomes of this system include infant and child health issues such as early childhood caries and childhood obesity, and are a grave concern in many First Nations communities. Extant research has failed to consider the role of infant feeding traditions as an element of Indigenous food sovereignty. Breastfeeding and country food (also called traditional food or cultural food) consumption among infants has been long practiced in First Nations communities, resulting in healthier infants. The research described in this article originated with a research project called the Baby Teeth Talk study (BTT). This is a community-based trial which is testing a pre-natal/post-natal behavioural and preventive intervention for early childhood caries (ECC) among pregnant First Nations women and their infants in urban and on-reserve communities in Ontario and Manitoba. In Norway House Cree Nation, located in northern Manitoba, research participants shared stories on the methods used by caregivers for oral health care, including breastfeeding promotion. This paper reviews the literature relating to IFS, breastfeeding, and the introduction of country food to infants. Through the voices of grandmothers in one community in northern Manitoba, Canada, we connect the introduction of country food and breastfeeding to the larger IFS movement and positive health outcomes for infants, and improve the conceptualization and practice of IFS."This research was funded through the New Investigator Award for Aboriginal scholars through the Network Environment for Aboriginal Health Research (NEAHR) through the Canadian Institute of Health Research. We would like to acknowledge the support of the Manitoba NEAHR program in assisting with the logistics of this project. Funding was also provided through Northern Scientific Research Program."https://canadianfoodstudies.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cfs/article/view/24
On the Evaluation of Pattern Match Queries in Large Graph Databases
Get PDFRecently, graph databases have been received much attention in the research community due to their extensive applications in practice, such as social networks, biological networks and World Wide Web, which bring forth a lot of challenging data management problems including subgraph search, shortest-path query, reachability verification, pattern matching, and so on. Among them, the graph pattern matching is to find all matches in a data graph for a given pattern graph and is more general and flexible than other problems mentioned above. In this thesis, we address a kind of graph matching, the so-called pattern matching with δ, by which an edge in is allowed to match a path of length ≤ δ in . In order to reduce the search space when exploring to find matches, we propose a novel pruning algorithm to eliminate all unqualified vertices. We also propose a strategy to speed up the distance-based join over two lists of vertices. Extensive experiments have been conducted, which show that our approach makes great improvements in running time compared to existing ones.Master of Science in Applied Computer Scienc
Habitat quality, torpor expression and pathogen transmission in little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus)
Get PDFProtection of habitat can improve survival and reproductive fitness of threatened and endangered wildlife, particularly if that habitat helps individuals maintain energy balance. Temperate bats are heterothermic and rely on torpor to save energy during winter hibernation and, to a lesser extent, during summer. However, torpor delays parturition and slows lactation for females, and inhibits sperm production for males, so reproductive bats should select warm roosts to help them avoid torpor. Torpor may also slow healing rates, which could have implications for bats that survive the winter with white-nose syndrome (WNS), a devastating fungal skin disease impacting hibernating North American bats. WNS survivors must emerge from hibernation and initiate reproduction while also healing from extensive wing damage caused by the disease. Warm roosting habitat could help WNS survivors avoid torpor to heal and reproduce more quickly, enhancing population recoveries. However, reduced torpor expression and increased activity and exploration could increase the chance of bats acquiring pathogens and parasites from substrates in their environment. I tested the hypotheses that warm roosting habitat: 1) reduces use of torpor by endangered little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus); but 2) increases the risk of pathogen acquisition from substrates in the environment. I captured bats from a fall swarm and housed individuals in outdoor flight enclosures equipped with either four heated or four unheated roost boxes. I quantified torpor expression using skin temperature dataloggers and used ultraviolet (UV) fluorescent powder as a proxy pathogen which I applied to one of the four roost boxes in each tent. Bats provided with warm roosts used less torpor (p<0.0001), but the amount of time a bat spent in torpor (p=0.26), had no effect on intensity of infection with the proxy pathogen. My data highlight roost temperature as a driver of torpor expression in little brown bats but suggest that heated roosts will not speed rates of pathogen or parasite acquisition from the environment. This result supports the potential of enhancement of summer roosting habitat as a management strategy for WNS.Master of Science in Bioscience, Technology, and Public Polic
Global Water Governance and Climate Change: Identifying Innovative Arrangements for Adaptive Transformation
Get PDFA convoluted network of different water governance systems exists around the world.
Collectively, these systems provide insight into how to build sustainable regimes of water use and management. We argue that the challenge is not tomake the systemless convoluted, but rather to support positive and promising trends in governance, creating a vision for future environmental outcomes. In this paper, we analyse nine water case studies from around the world to help identify potential ‘innovative arrangements’ for addressing existing dilemmas. We argue that such arrangements can be used as a
catalyst for crafting new global water governance futures. The nine case studies were selected for their diversity in terms of location, scale and water dilemma, and through an examination of their contexts, structures and processes we identify key themes to consider in the milieu of adaptive transformation.
These themes include the importance of acknowledging socio-ecological entanglements, understanding
the political dimensions of environmental dilemmas, the recognition of different constructions of the
dillema, and the importance of democratized processes.The research for this paper is a part of the “CADWAGO: Climate change adaptation and water governance—reconciling food security, renewable energy and the provision of multiple ecosystem services” project funded as part of the “Europe and Global Challenges programme” by Compagnia di San Paolo, VolkswagenStiftung and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/10/1/2
Nitrogen and phosphorus loads to temperate seepage lakes associated with allochthonous dissolved organic carbon loads
Get PDFTerrestrial loads of dissolved organic matter (DOM) have increased in recent years in many north temperate lakes. While much of the focus on the “browning” phenomena has been on its consequences for carbon cycling, much less is known about how it influences nutrient loading to lakes. We characterize potential loads of nitrogen and phosphorus to seepage lakes in northern Wisconsin, USA, based on a laboratory soil leaching experiment and a model that includes landscape cover and watershed area. In these seepage lakes, nutrient concentrations are positively correlated with dissolved organic carbon concentrations (nitrogen: r = 0.68, phosphorus: r = 0.54). Using long‐term records of browning, we found that dissolved organic matter‐associated nutrient loadings may have resulted in substantial increases in nitrogen and phosphorus in seepage lakes and could account for currently observed nutrient concentrations in the lake. “Silent” nutrient loadings to brown‐water lakes may lead to future water‐quality concerns. PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: The color of many temperate lakes is changing; some lakes are becoming more darkly stained brown. The tea‐colored stain is due to dissolved organic matter from the surrounding landscape. Much of the research related to the causes and consequences of increased staining, or “brownification,” relate to its connection to the carbon cycle. However, by examining long‐term lake chemical records, analyzing the properties of the organic compounds, and modeling potential flows of the compounds, we find that carbon is not the only element that is influenced by browning. Nitrogen and phosphorus, two nutrients important to growth of organisms at the base of the food web, may also be increasing in lakes due to brownification."Funding for this research was supported by the Northern Research Station and the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to support the North Temperate Lakes Long-Term Ecological Research (NTLLTER) Site (DEB-#1440297)."https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018GL07721
Designing Biocultural Protocols with the Embera People of Colombia
No full textIn Colombia's recent history, the Embera people are one of the Indigenous groups most impacted by forced displacement and violence. Along with other Indigenous nations, such as the Wananni, Guandule (formerly known as Kuna), and Afro-Colombian communities, the Embera share the richly biodiverse Chocó region. Repeatedly displaced within their own territory, the Embera communities of the Urabá subregion strive to protect their biocultural heritage. This is the story of their resilience and of our efforts to bring Indigenous worldviews to bear on the realms of policy and legislation.http://www.terralinguaubuntu.org/Langscape/Volume_7/langscape7-1to
Opening spaces for learning and teaching through community-based teacher education
No full textFollowing Nunatsiavut land claims on the Northeast Atlantic coast in Canada, Memorial University and the Nunatsiavut Government partnered to offer a community-based, Inuit-specific Bachelor of Education (IBED). This program was developed to lay a foundation for Inuit-governed schools. In the context of a broader research project on the development and mobilization of Inuit educational leaders in northern Canada, we listened to the stories of Inuit pre-service teachers, instructors, and administrators who contributed to the first IBED program. Analysis of their narratives shows how the physical location of the program opened learning spaces for Inuit students who were unwilling or unable to study outside their home region. We also discuss how program developers and instructors interpreted “community-based” to include anchoring learning in community relationships with each other and with local knowledge holders, as well as learning in and from the natural environment. Inuit and non-Inuit instructors modelled the incorporation of Inuit language, knowledges, culture, and pedagogies across the curriculum. We suggest that these processes opened ideological spaces which enhanced student engagement and retention and prepared the pre-service teachers to be agents of change in Inuit schools."We gratefully acknowledge research funding by ArcticNet Centre for Research Excellence."https://www.abdn.ac.uk/eitn/journal/568
Becoming an Oxfordian: The Phenomenology of Shifting Research Paradigms in Shakespearean Biography
Get PDFPublic presentation of this paper on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xjsOv0e7SM8This essay seeks to gain a phenomenological understanding of the journey from skepticism in the traditional biography of Shakespeare to belief that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was the poet-playwright, and how this belief affects one’s experience of the canon. An interpretive hermeneutic reading of fifty recently-published personal essays by self-identified “Oxfordians” suggests that an expansive experience of Shakespeare’s works obtains when viewed as de Vere’s writing, one that can intersect significantly with one’s sense of self. Using a Ricoeurean lens as well as a framework for mapping the phenomenology of paradigm shifts, the essay uncovers novel cognitive, affective and conative responses to Shakespeare, in particular a strong sense of empathy for the author otherwise difficult under the traditional attribution
Synthesis and coordination chemistry of cyclic seleno- and telluroureas
Get PDFChalcogenated derivatives of N-heterocyclic carbene ligands have received increasing attention due to their
diverse chemical reactivity and potential applications in fields such as medicine and materials chemistry. This
chapter summarizes the synthetic methods for the preparation of cyclic heavy chalcogenoureas featuring heterocyclic
cores and explores their diverse coordination chemistry with p- and d-block metals.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery Development Grant (DDG-2017-00041)).https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/psr-2017-0128/htm
A Descriptive Tolerance Nearness Measure for Performing Graph Comparison
Get PDFAccepted versionThis article proposes the tolerance nearness measure (TNM) as a computationally reduced alternative to the graph edit distance (GED) for performing graph comparisons. The TNM is defined within the context of near set theory, where the central idea is that determining similarity between sets of disjoint objects is at once intuitive and practically applicable. The TNM between two graphs is produced using the Bron-Kerbosh maximal clique enumeration algorithm. The result is that the TNM approach is less computationally complex than the bipartite-based GED algorithm. The contribution of this paper is the application of TNM to the problem of quantifying the similarity of disjoint graphs and that the maximal clique enumeration-based TNM produces comparable results to the GED when applied to the problem of content-based image processing, which becomes important as the number of nodes in a graph increases."This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant 418413."https://content.iospress.com/articles/fundamenta-informaticae/fi1746Preprin