StFX Scholar (St. Francis Xavier University)
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"Fhir mo chridhe" (Dear Sir): An analysis of letters to the editor of Mac-Talla, 1892-1904
No full textThis research project examines the readership of a late nineteenth-century Scottish Gaelic newspaper called Mac-Talla, with a view to understanding who the readers were, how they used the paper and how they created connections through the paper. Examining this network can lead to insights that may be of use to current day Gaelic networks that struggle to resist English assimilation. This study uses the prosopographical method to look at subscribers and the writers of letters to the editor, in combination with historical biography. The research shows that the readers were mostly male, largely Protestant, and mainly living in the Scottish Gaelic diaspora. They were highly concerned with language loss as an issue. They created friendships across space. These findings reveal that they formed an early social media community
Influences shaping nurses' continuing professional education choices and learning pathways: An exploratory case study
No full textNurses need to be lifelong learners to navigate a career in a very complex healthcare system while providing care for people and populations with diverse health and wellness needs. In this context, continuing professional education (CPE) is an important part of the lifelong learning continuum and encompasses the many ways professionals learn. However, CPE has shifted to be more directed at training or “delivery” of education programs focused on providing information and technical skills to improve workplace efficiency and client outcomes and to meet the regulatory requirements of their profession. This shift privileges instrumental knowledge over other knowledge forms and impacts nurses’ professional learning by aligning CPE with employer needs rather than developing more expansive nursing discipline-specific knowledge forms. This doctoral research is an exploratory case study examining influences shaping continuing professional education (CPE) choices and learning pathways of later career nurses in Nova Scotia. Critical and post-structural feminist lenses are applied to isolate individual professional/organizational and societal level influences shaping nurses’ CPE choices and professional learning pathways. The findings suggest that the educational discourse informing the broader regulatory environment and embedded in government policy and employer expectations worked to create a hidden curriculum that directed the participants into CPE for employment and regulatory requirements. Analysis of the findings highlights the need for comprehensive CPE programs for nurses that are accessible and meet their professional learning needs and interests throughout their careers
Baseline monitoring of contaminant concentrations in American lobster (Homarus americanus) tissues from coastal Northumberland Strait, Nova Scotia, Canada.
No full textA baseline survey was conducted in 2018 to characterize contaminants in American lobsters, Homarus americanus in the Northumberland Strait, Canada. Sampling included three age classes of lobsters at sites 4, 20, and 70 km from the Boat Harbour estuary, a historically contaminated site set to undergo remediation. Lobster tissues were measured for metal(loids), methylmercury, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzo-p-furans. Contaminant concentrations were generally below the guidelines set by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, except for arsenic which was elevated in all age classes from all sites (4.8–12.68 mg kg−1). Mercury and methylmercury (both ~0.04 mg kg−1) minimally exceeded one guideline in some age-classes and sites. There was also no consistent pattern of contaminant accumulation across either age classes or at particular sites. This study serves as a baseline for future monitoring following remediation of Boat Harbour
Extension learning and adult education in Jamaican agriculture: A qualitative case study
No full textAgricultural extension learning is understood by scholars as a key adult education learning method used to educate and improve small-scale farmers’ practices. This project aims to understand the impact that extension learning programs have on Jamaican small-scale farmers. This study was conducted in the rural region of Yankee District of St. Ann, Jamaica. A total of eight farmers were interviewed about their experiences of extension learning in agriculture. The findings provide evidence that there are some factors that affect small-scale farmers’ growth in Jamaica, for example, low literacy rates. While extension learning can be employed to address these issues, there are limited extension learning programs to improve the skills and learning of farmers in rural communities. This thesis reports three main findings. First, there is evidence that most small-scale farmers learn to farm informally and experientially, and yet, this informal learning is not considered within the realm of extension learning programs. Second, farmers living in Yankee District have established informal cooperative groups among themselves. However, the findings reveal contradictions between practices and information sharing among members, resulting in unfortunate gaps in collective learning. Third, extension learning programs do not do enough to support women small-scale farmers, resulting in women leaving the community to support their families
'Putting on a Show': An Analysis of Gender and Canadian Fitness Culture
No full textResearch shows that gender performance within fitness culture largely reinforces hegemonic gender norms, which can be described as the idealized performances of gender (Andreasson and Johansson 2013 and, Mink and Szymanski 2022). Simultaneously, there exists opportunities to challenge these norms within fitness spaces. I argue that fitness culture built on hegemonic gender norms results in inequitable fitness experiences, therefore it is important to analyse gender and fitness culture in order to ensure inclusive fitness opportunities and decrease hegemonic constraints. A sports philosophical feminist perspective was applied to understand gender performances and the ways in which these performances are valued inequitably within Canadian fitness culture. I maintain that Canadian fitness cultures involve gender stereotypes, performing gender, and policing bodies. Additionally, I make the case that these gender stereotypes can deter girls and women from participating in fitness
A teacher's autoethography of grit and student success in a high school physics classroom
No full textWhat factors, situations and contexts lead to the success of students in school? Success can mean different things to different individuals and, therefore, success is context specific. Authors such as Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews and Kelly (2007) refer to success and achievement as the “accomplishment of widely valued goals” (p. 1087). These researchers suggest that highly accomplished students tend to have a high degree of grit. While much research related to grit focuses on personality traits such as determination, conscientiousness, sustained effort and the ability to persevere when encountering obstacles, other significant and sometimes overlooked factors also significantly impact a student’s ability to be gritty and successful in schools. Literature from Gorski (2016) suggests that grit ideology falls somewhere between two ends of a wide spectrum—deficit and structural ideology. For those who associate grit with deficit ideology, there is a belief that students can change their success and situation through a change in “attitudes, behaviors, cultures, and mindset” (p. 381). However, for those who associate grit with structural ideology, there is recognition of factors such as poverty, socioeconomic status, race, gender and inequity of school resources. Through an autoethnographic lens, the culture of grit and student success was researched and explored within a high school physics classroom. While deficit ideological traits exist in the autoethnographic stories involving former students, structural ideological factors also show crucial moments and times when a student’s grit and success radically changed for the better or declined as a result
Towards designing 3D generative models for medical image synthesis
No full textThis study introduces several contributions on medical image synthesis, especially medical image-to-image translation. In my undergraduate thesis, a robust and flexible architecture has been proposed to solve various magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) translation problems, which applies multichannel input pixel-wise regression 3D U-Net for cross-modality estimation, longitudinal image estimation and diffusion image reconstruction. The first part of this thesis extends my undergraduate thesis by comparing whether using adversarial loss combined the fixed traditional loss will improve performance. A more comprehensive and complete comparison has also been completed with five-fold cross-validation on each application. The results demonstrate that this approach is robust and versatile and can be applied to three different medical image prediction tasks. High-resolution (HR) MRI scans obtained from research-grade medical centers provide precise information about imaged tissues. However, routine clinical MRI scans are typically in low-resolution (LR) and vary greatly in contrast and spatial resolution due to the adjustments of the scanning parameters to the local needs of the medical center. End-to-end deep learning methods for the MRI super-resolution (SR) problem (predicting higher resolution MRI examinations from lower resolution acquisitions) have been proposed, but they require re-training each time there is a shift in the input distribution. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach that leverages a state-of-the-art 3D brain generative model, the latent diffusion model (LDM) from [63] trained on the UK BioBank, to increase the resolution of clinical MRI scans. The LDM acts as a generative prior, which has the ability to capture the prior distribution of 3D T1-weighted brain MRI. Based on the architecture of the brain LDM, we find that different methods are suitable for different settings of MRI SR, and thus propose two novel strategies: 1) for SR with more sparsity, we invert through both the decoder of the LDM and also through a deterministic Denoising Diffusion Implicit Model (DDIM), an approach we will call InverseSR (LDM); 2) for SR with less sparsity, we invert only through the LDM decoder , an approach we will call InverseSR (Decoder). These two approaches search different latent spaces in the LDM model to find the optimal latent code to map the given LR MRI into HR. The training process of the generative model is independent of the MRI under-sampling process, ensuring the generalization of our method to many MRI SR problems with different input measurements. We validate our method on over 100 brain T1w MRIs from the IXI and OASIS dataset. Our method can demonstrate that powerful priors established by LDM can be used for MRI reconstruction
Understanding the views of physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, and medical students on activity monitors in healthcare.
No full textGiven the rising prevalence of wearable devices such as activity monitors, understanding their potential for integration into healthcare practices is of considerable importance. This study seeks to uncover the views of physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, and medical students on the use of activity monitors and identify demographic and professional features that influence their propensity to use this technology in their healthcare practice. We collected an extensive dataset of 235 responses, and after preprocessing to ensure data quality and completeness, we worked with a refined dataset of 158 responses. This dataset captures the views and opinions of the targeted healthcare professionals regarding the use of activity monitors. We administered a questionnaire consisting of 36 questions to each professional group. The responses were analyzed using Mann-Whitney U tests to compare distributions of numerical features between facilitators and non-facilitators, and Chi-Square tests to examine relationships between categorical features and the willingness to adopt activity monitors. The application of eight machine learning algorithms, including logistic regression and support vector machines, further helped in identifying influential features, with Shapley values employed to determine feature importance. Notably, the logistic regression model demonstrated commendable performance across all groups in predicting the propensity to adopt activity monitors. Our findings reveal that the inclination towards the adoption of activity monitors varied across professional groups, each influenced by a unique set of features. For physicians, factors such as age, professional experience, and if they are interested in incorporating activity monitors into their practice were key predictors. While nurse practitioners’ understanding of physical activity guidelines and their experience with virtual 4 care were pivotal. Among registered nurses, patient volume, personal health behaviours, and technological adaptability emerged as key determinants. Medical students were influenced by personal health behaviours and choice of practice area. Despite limitations related to sample size and potential biases, this study provides valuable insights into the attitudes of various healthcare professionals towards activity monitors. These findings will aid in developing tailored strategies to promote the adoption of this technology across diverse healthcare settings, thereby contributing to improved patient outcomes and the management of chronic health conditions
Body and tentacle movement patterns of lymnaea stagnalis in response to an attractive odour cue and varying water flow conditions
No full textAquatic-odour based navigation is important for aquatic organisms as it allows them to locate distant odour sources, including food, predators and potential mates. To locate such odour sources, animals respond to two main navigational cues: flow directions and chemical concentrations. Depending on the environment, the fluid dynamics of water can greatly influence the dispersal of chemicals and thus, it can impact how animals find odour sources. Previous research has suggested that animals which inhabit multiple flow environments may have different navigational strategies for different environments. Evidence for or against the use of different navigational strategies can be gathered by analyzing the movement patterns of the animals. Lymnaea stagnalis is naturally found in varying flow conditions and is known to detect and respond to both flow and chemical cues. I hypothesize that the presence or absence of odour will cause different movement patterns, and additionally, that different flow conditions will cause different movement patterns. Thus, the goal of our research was to observe body and tentacle movement patterns of the gastropod, L. stagnalis, with or without food odour in both laminar (slow and smooth) and turbulent (fast and mixed) flow conditions. To do this, behavioural experiments were performed using a flow tank that could create different flow conditions and various chemical dispersal conditions. The snails’ movements in these conditions were tracked and behaviours were categorized using an ethogram. I observed different L. stagnalis body and tentacle movement patterns between low conditions and among trials with and without odour. However, I did not see a large behavioural response to the attractive odour source like I expected to see. Our results suggest that in certain conditions L. stagnalis may navigate following chemical cues and n other conditions the snails may follow a combination of flow and chemical cues. Overall, these results provide supporting evidence for both hypotheses. Future studies could consider exploring three dimensional interactions between sense organs and environmental cues or investigate whether other body parts of the animal could be useful in detecting sensory stimuli important for guiding navigation behaviours. Further research could also focus on manipulating odour cues relative to flow cues to determine which are prioritized for navigation
#HOCO is not just for the football bros: An Analysis of Gender Construction in Sport and Homecoming
No full textTraditionally, at North American universities, a men’s sport team (football) is featured on Homecoming Saturday. From a historical context, homecoming at StFX has emphasized and celebrated men’s football and promoted a masculinist culture. On October 5th, 2019, StFX made history by featuring a women’s game (rugby) as Saturday’s main sporting event in conjunction with StFX celebrating fifty years of women’s sport. Then again in 2022, StFX women’s rugby held the spotlight game on Homecoming Saturday in conjunction with the University women’s rugby capital fundraising campaign. However, 2022 women’s rugby was only featured due to a scheduling mishap. For both 2019 and 2022, rugby wasn’t normalized as the featured main Saturday event. It was considered an honour and a privilege for the rugby team to be featured, which further emphasized the gendering of homecoming. By applying a sport feminist philosophical lens, I argue that university homecoming is gendered