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Exploiting the Power of Wastewater Surveillance to Prevent Outbreaks of Respiratory Infections
No full text['UNSDG 3: Good Health and Well-being (https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal3)', 'UNSDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation (https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal6)']Viable, Healthy and Safe CommunitiesWastewater surveillance has gained traction during the COVID-19 pandemic as an effective and non-biased means to track community infection of respiratory diseases. Quantification of viral material deposited into the sewershed and collected at wastewater treatment plants provides a non-biased measure of community infection rates. However, wastewater surveillance is more actionable when samples are collected upstream of wastewater treatment facilities where mitigation of transmission is possible. This project targeted residence halls at the University of Windsor aimed at preventing outbreak escalation by mitigating community spread. Passive sampling devices were deployed in sewer laterals originating from residence halls for 24 hours at a frequency of twice weekly during fall 2021 as the Delta variant of concern continued to circulate across North America. Reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was then used to measure the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA within wastewater. A positive detection as part of routine sampling in late November 2021 triggered daily monitoring and further isolated the signal to a single wing of one residence hall. Detection of SARS-CoV-2 within the wastewater over a period of 3 consecutive days led to a coordinated rapid antigen testing campaign targeting the residence hall occupants and the isolation of infected individuals, thereby preventing transmission. These results reinforce the efficacy of wastewater surveillance as an early indicator of infection in congregate living settings. Detections can trigger public health measures ranging from enhanced communications to targeted coordinated testing and quarantine
Data Augmentation for BERT Context-Based Question Answering: Improving No-Answer Detection through Context Replacement
Get PDFQuestion Answering (QA) in NLP empowers applications like chatbots, virtual assistants, and search engines by providing relevant answers. Context-based QA aims to extract answers from a specific text provided together with the query. This functionality has been included in various language models, and a difficult point for the models to accomplish well is to determine whether an answer to the question is missing from the provided context. We consider fine-tuning a model targeting this difficulty. Due to the lack of suitable datasets, the data augmentation approach is adopted by constructing new samples from real datasets. Existing strategies in doing so include adding words or deleting words in an existing context, using synonyms to replace an existing query or context, etc. We propose to replace the context in one sample with a similar context from another. The context selection criteria include a combination of BM25 score and cosine similarity score, and the absence of the answer of the replaced sample in the replacing context. According to our experiment, the fine-tuning based on the proposed approach to data augmentation increased the precision of the BERT model from 2.70% to 96.18% on identifying questions with missing answers in a given context
Assumption College Review: Vol. 2: no. 7 (1909: Apr.)
No full text48 numbered pagesTo view online at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/assumptioncollegereview19090
The Psychedelic Dasein: Modelling the Effects of Psilocybin with Heidegger’s Phenomenology
Get PDFThis paper argues that the mystical experience induced by psilocybin (understood through the tradition of Heideggerian phenomenology) modulates the attuned understanding of oneself, the world, and how the individual relates to the world. This kind of particular experience is not accessible to the individual through ordinary consciousness, therefore psilocybin may give us access to a new kind of understanding. This understanding may offer a solution to the empirical deficiencies surrounding the short-term and long-term effects of psilocybin, such as how a meagre two to three high doses have yielded unprecedented results in the treatment of tobacco addiction, and in the treatment of depression and anxiety in terminally ill patients. The consensus in the literature suggests that it is not solely the molecular and physiological mechanisms responsible for the results. In addition to the physiological mechanisms, a mystical experience associated with it must be present, without which the long-term effects are not catalyzed. Scientific explanations are limited in explaining the relationship between attuned understanding, the individual, and the world, but conversely, phenomenology does, hence why it may be a better method of analysis. The argument made posits that the mystical experience enables one to reconstitute oneself at an ontological level shows that the work of Heidegger should be applied to ameliorate the empirical deficiency as a potential tentative framework for understanding its broader phenomenal mode of action. The primary reason for this is that Heidegger’s work describes an analogous mechanism concerning modes of attunement which may shift our totality of relevance and the context of our understanding and the meaning of the contents of our lives. This paper concludes that Heidegger’s phenomenology can offer a new explanation of how psilocybin works at the phenomenal level
Session G: Animals and Social Work: Examining Barriers to Inclusion of Knowledge of Human Animal Relations in Social Work Practice in Ontario and Thinking About Trans-species Social Justice.
No full textPracticeSocial work, critical animal studies, human animal relations, trans-species social justic
Babes in Arms: An Application of The Australian Federal Child Care Model to Canada
Get PDFThis paper examines the feasibility of implementing the Australian model of federal childcare policy in Canada. A historical institutionalist approach is used to examine this feasibility by means of qualitative and comparative analyses. The distinct policy histories and current measures of both countries are outlined and studied through the course of this paper. Its research finds that, while Australia possesses some similarities in political structure to Canada, their distinct socio-political contexts make much of the former’s model inapplicable to the latter. Canadian federalism’s asymmetry and the political will of its federal units to defend powers conceded to them make it highly unlikely for the federal government to implement one of the most important aspects of the Australian model: a nationwide care standard for childcare facilities. While enacting this tenet of Australian policy is untenable, this paper recommends that federal authorities expand their existing monetary benefits for childcare and for both national and subnational governments to maintain existing agreements on childcare provision
Session 1: Partner Assault Response (PAR) Programs for Women: An Ethical Dilemma
No full textPartner Assault Response (PAR) Programs for Women: An Ethical Dilemm
From 'Chrysler Girls' to 'Dodge Boys': The Emergence of Women in Windsor's Automotive Industry, 1964-1976
Get PDFFrom 'Chrysler Girls' to 'Dodge Boys': The Emergence of Women in Windsor's Automotive Industry, 1964-1976 is a study of female auto workers' lack of equality in seniority at the Windsor Spring plant, a division of Chrysler Canada. While a small number of women worked in Chrysler's, Windsor, Ontario, parts plants during the 1930s and 1940s, few women worked in passenger car and truck assembly plants because collective agreements between the UAW and the auto manufacturer upheld sex-based job classifications and seniority lists which ultimately limited women's participation in the plants. Based on the idea that women were financial dependents and that men were breadwinners, male UAW leaders adopted a wage strategy that not only justified women's lower pay rates but also ensured that female workers would receive fewer job and seniority rights than their male co-workers. Though historians have produced many exceptional studies on women auto workers and their roles in the UAW, their research over the past fifteen years has neglected the issue of women's seniority. This study examines how and why women were discouraged from using their seniority rights by focusing on the Windsor Spring plant before and after the amended Ontario Human Rights Code in 1970 abolished separate seniority lists for men and women. It concludes that both the company and union officials seem to have had a stake in continuing the system even when feminists challenged it through legal reform
Closing Borders on Sexual Slavery
Get PDFBackground: Human trafficking (HT) is a $150 billion industry impacting approximately 40.3 million internationally. The Windsor-Detroit border is the busiest in North America with over 20,000 vehicles crossing daily, making this a crucial corridor for human traffickers. Healthcare providers (HCP) are the first point of contact for sex trafficked victims seeking care and yet, HCPs have the least amount of specialized training compared to other stakeholders such as law enforcement. Objective: To our knowledge this is the first academic statistical analysis of HT. Our aim is to inform the public of the concealed pandemic in our community and to propose the innovative integration of trauma informed care (TIC) within the healthcare profession to increase victim identification. Method: We systematically reviewed multiple studies for current statistical analysis of HT and the implementation of TIC in other disciplines. Results: Our statistical analysis indicates an alarming lack of precision and rigor in quantitative methods used for identifying HT victims. Due to the nature of the crime, the statistics available are significantly unreliable because HT is highly under-reported. We detected critical gaps in the identification of HT victims and a scarcity of Canadian studies. Conclusion: We conclude the lack of attention with this emergent issue and inconsistencies in the data is detrimental to the safety of our border city community. Current knowledge of HT among HCPs hinders the identification of victims therefore, existing statistical data is inaccurate. Future studies should focus on incorporating TIC to identify victims, while also being statistically rigorous