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Mending the fashion industry: testing an intervention to influence students' clothing consumption habits and perceptions towards sewing and mending
No full textOur planet is currently facing numerous sustainability challenges. It is crucial to examine the industries that severely impact our capability to sustain life on Earth for future generations so that we can move from challenges to solutions. Grounded in research that highlights the negative environmental and social implications of the global garment industry, this thesis strives to understand Acadia University students’ perceptions about their clothing consumption habits, and the possibilities for behaviour change. This study evaluates the fashion industry’s global impact based on the Sustainable Development Goals created by the United Nations. In addition, by utilizing the principles of Community-Based Social Marketing this research attempts to shift students’ perceptions away from buying brand-new fast fashion pieces towards mending and altering clothing that already exists. The question that drives this thesis is: What influence would a sewing and mending workshop have on Acadia University students’ perceptions towards mending and altering their clothing? Using an action-based research approach, I conduct an initial survey to understand consumers' current clothing consumption habits, then I perform an intervention in the form of a sewing and mending workshop, followed by a post-intervention survey where students reflect on the impact of their intervention experience. I propose the existence of a paradoxical disconnect where students fear the climate crisis and know about the environmental impacts of the fashion industry but do not accept that their own clothing consumption habits play a role when considering this issue at scale. By keeping the concept of sustainability separate from the decision to purchase fast fashion clothing, they can feel like they are acting in accordance with their personal values while making an unsustainable choice. This thesis suggests that a Community-Based Social Marketing approach is an effective tool when working to influence consumers' perceptions about their consumption and purchasing habits for clothing. To meet our Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, mending and sewing workshops that blend information-sharing about sustainability challenges of the garment industry with a hands-on experience that provides a solution, should be implemented in communities and universities globally.</p
Warfare in the service of cosmic order
No full textWarfare in the world of the Old Testament of course served economic and political goals, but it was also embedded within a theological conception of divinely ordained cosmic order. This work examines the relationship of cosmic order within Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Israel. Mesopotamian cosmic order was established and maintained by the national god through the suppression of chaotic forces that threatened to destroy human society and the natural world. Society, centered in the person of the king, existed for the sole purpose of serving the gods and maintaining the rituals that provided for their daily needs. As society, the nation, the king, and the people were an intrinsic part of cosmic order, having been created by the gods, their maintenance was of paramount importance. Warfare served to suppress chaotic enemy forces that challenged Mesopotamian hegemony and that sought to disrupt cosmic order. Egyptian cosmic order was formally articulated in the concept of maat, the ordering force which existed in a duality with the disordering force of chaos. Maat was the proper ordering and functioning of the integrated whole of reality comprised of the gods, the natural world, the Egyptian nation and society, and the pharaoh. The pharaoh was the divine lynchpin that maintained and extended this order through good rule, cultic observance, and military campaigns to suppress existential threats to maat. Israel’s conception of cosmic order was rooted in the sovereign rule and reign of Yahweh, characterized by צדק and משפט . The people were called, via covenant, to adhere to Yahweh’s statutes and ordinances, but unlike Egypt and Mesopotamia, neither the king, nor the kingdom and land were construed as essential to cosmic order. Instead of maintaining cosmic order, warfare was subordinate to it: success in warfare came from alignment with cosmic order instead of being essential to it.</p
Magic, monsters, and myth, oh my! A study of essential vs commonly recurring generic memes in modern fantasy
No full textGiven an ongoing lack of consensus amongst Fantasy scholars on how to approach understanding the genre, my project aims to determine that Fantasy and the subgenres of Fantasy can be recognized and defined on the basis of certain essential generic features – features that are so common to a genre, they have become a part of its very foundation. By adapting the methods of genre theorists Helen Cooper, Kevin Whetter and Alistair Fowler, my project demonstrates how, for all the variety and evolution of genre over time, there are defining characteristics through which humans can determine patterns and recognize categories into which specific instances of literature, film, and other forms of storytelling are placed. By no means do I suggest that genre is merely a reductive system of compartmentalizing stories – but understanding a text’s genre is a key aspect of understanding its meaning. And, in the case of Fantasy, even those scholars who do give the genre credence disagree over what it is and how it works. Thus, in three chapters, I isolate the essential generic features acting as the supporting pillars of not only Fantasy, but two of its subgenres: the Dark Fantasy, and the High or Epic Fantasy. I do this by illustrating possible manifestations of these generic features through an analysis of three case studies consisting of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda, Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal franchise, and Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. In my first chapter, I focus on Fantasy as an encompassing genre by isolating the essential generic features of magic, questing, and realism in my case study The Legend of Zelda. My second chapter then shifts the focus from Fantasy in its entirety to Dark Fantasy, outlining the essential generic features of transformation prompted by the acquisition of wisdom or knowledge, a noticeably grim aesthetic, and the presence of specific monsters; here, my case study is The Dark Crystal. My third and final chapter is reserved for the High or Epic Fantasy – arguably the most popular form of Fantasy to date – whose essential generic features consist of extensive geographical and cultural worldbuilding, historical worldbuilding, and real-world influences; in this instance, my case study is Jordan’s The Wheel of Time.</p
Enhancing interpretability in deep learning models for breast cancer detection
No full textBreast cancer is one of the most common cancers found in women, affecting 1 in 8 Canadian women over their lifetime, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. The early diagnosis of breast cancer can be extremely beneficial for reducing the spread of cancer cells and the risk of death. Machine learning (ML) systems can help healthcare professionals diagnose breast cancer with better accuracy by identifying the underlying patterns in the images that the radiologist might find difficult to detect early on. While deep learning (DL) models can obtain high accuracies, their black-box nature inhibits their ability to explain how they came to their conclusion, creating distrust between DL systems and the radiologist.This research employs two CNN model architectures – AlexNet and Houby & Yassin’s CNN – to classify recently obtained mammographic images from the KAU-BCMD dataset into BI-RAD categories (0-6). To resolve the problem of non-explainability, SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), an explainability approach based on Shapley values, has been used to assess the role that each feature has in the prediction process. There were two SHAP variants that were applied: PartitionSHAP and DeepSHAP. The dataset was employed through three main steps: 1) preprocessing and augmentation, 2) classification into the BI-RAD categories, and 3) obtaining the SHAP plots to identify the model’s regions of interest (ROIs). The proposed methods achieved high-performance metrics for AlexNet and Houby & Yassin’s CNN with an AUC and F1-score of 0.925 and 76.7%, and 0.932 and 79.4%, respectively.</p
A short virtual reality (VR) exposure positively changes the attitudes of rural older adults
No full textAn emerging application of virtual reality (VR) is in the field of healthcare. VR can be used to offer portable, engaging, and effective rehabilitation services. However, older adults’ attitudes towards the technology, as well as visually induced motion sickness (VIMS), could be barriers to VR rehabilitation uptake. We sought to determine whether a short exposure to VR can enhance healthy, older adults’ attitudes towards the technology without causing significant motion sickness. Sixty-four rural, older adults over the age of 60 were recruited to participate in this between-subjects study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two exposures to VR: 1) the information condition in which participants received an infographic about VR, or 2) the firstperson VR condition in which participants completed four VR activities. The results of the study demonstrate that participants’ attitudes towards VR positively changed post-intervention, with 40.3% of participants having a positive attitude towards VR (compared to 4.8% of participants prior to the intervention). The effect size of the attitude change was large (d = 1.06, 95% CI [0.68, 1.44]), and the effect of study condition was statistically equivalent (t(60) = 2.09, p = 0.02). These findings suggest that rural, older adults’ attitudes towards VR can be changed following a brief exposure to VR. Additionally, giving older adults information about VR is as effective as a VR experience for changing attitudes towards VR. If older adults have a positive attitude towards VR, they may be more likely to use the technology. Accordingly, it could increase the likelihood that VR technology can be successfully adopted for stroke rehabilitation within this age group.Keywords: Virtual Reality, Attitude Change, Rural, Older Adults, Visually Induced Motion Sickness</p
On the turning away: direct and indirect effects of mortality salience, self-esteem, and fear on death-thought accessibility
No full textTerror management theory (TMT) claims that when people are reminded of death through mortality being made salient (mortality salience; MS), we experience increased death-thought accessibility (DTA) which must be managed by our psychological anxiety buffers (e.g., selfesteem) to maintain psychological well-being. While some TMT research claims these processes do not depend on the experience of negative affect, such as fear, other research claims that affect plays a central role in this process. The studies in this thesis test two hypotheses: 1) MS will increase fear among those with lower self-esteem, and 2) increased fear among those with lower self-esteem will result in decreased DTA, indicating that MS indirectly decreases DTA through the experience of fear in those with lower self-esteem. These studies also tested to what extent delay measures and order of presentation of downstream measures affect both fear and DTA. To test these hypotheses, I recruited participants from Prolific crowd-sourcing software and measured their self-esteem. I then randomly assigned them to respond to either an MS prompt or control prompt (TV salience and dental pain salience) and quantified the amount of fear they wrote about. Participants then completed self-report measures of affect and a word-fragment DTA task. Using a moderated-mediation regression model, I examined the direct and indirect effects of MS, selfesteem, fear, and other moderators on DTA. I found insufficient evidence to support either hypothesis; MS does not appear to indirectly decrease DTA through fear. Implications for TMT, future research directions, and limitations are discussed.Keywords: terror management theory, self-esteem, mortality salience, fear, death-thought accessibility.</p
Comparative analysis of cuticular compounds in Ixodes scapularis and Dermacentor variabilis ticks
No full textTicks, and the pathogens they vector, are a quickly-growing public health issue in Canada due to changing climate conditions, and diseases like Lyme disease pose an appreciable threat to the health humans and animals. Ixodes scapularis and Dermacentor variabilis are two species of ticks commonly found in Canada that have the potential to vector serious illnesses, and both are increasing in population size and range. Despite this, not much research has investigated an important aspect of their biology – cuticular hydrocarbons. Analysis of cuticular compounds can be an incredibly useful tool for collecting physiological data about arthropods – cuticular composition can provide information about diet, environment, age, sex, infection status, mating status and more in insects, but this field is relatively untapped in ticks. This thesis aims to build a better understanding of how cuticular composition differs between these two species as well as within each species between different sexes, as well as in ticks infected with Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. Cuticular compounds were extracted from individual ticks and analyzed by gas chromatography – mass spectrometry to identify differences in the composition of cuticular compounds. Tick extracts were also tested in behavioural bioassays to determine whether cuticular compounds may play a role in tick chemical communication. Notable differences were found in the cuticular profiles of the two different species when compared, as well as between males and females of the same species, though only minor differences were found between infected ticks and uninfected ticks. Tick cuticular extracts were not found to be attractive when tested in bioassays. This study offers new insight into the intra- and inter-species variation of cuticular compounds found in I. scapularis and D. variabilis ticks, as well as the effect of Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria on the tick cuticular composition.</p
Exploring the web of restlessness: fear of missing out, sleep problems, and well-being in undergraduate students
No full textFoMO (Fear of Missing Out) is related to anxiety and sleep problems and can have a negative impact on the well-being of young adults. Insight into the complex relationship between these variables is essential for the development of interventions for young adults. The present study explored these relationships using an online survey (N = 111). The results of the study revealed significant associations between FoMO, sleep problems, and well-being among youths. Higher levels of FoMO were correlated to poorer well-being (r = 0.32, p < 0.001), supporting our initial hypothesis. Additionally, higher levels of FoMO were correlated with worse sleep problems (r = 0.2, p < 0.05), and worse sleep problems were linked to poorer well-being (r = 0.21, p < 0.05), as anticipated. A mediation model was developed to capture the relationship between FoMO, mental health, and insomnia. Addressing these issues is crucial for the development of interventions aimed at promoting healthier online behaviours and improving the overall quality of life for young adults (ages 18-24).Keywords: Fear of Missing Out, Sleep Problems, Well-being, Young Adults, Mental Health</p
Stories that harm and stories that heal in novels by Joseph Boyden, Maia Caron, and Michelle Good
No full textMy thesis is about Indigenous historical fiction that heals and that harms. I begin with Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, a novel about Indigenous snipers in World War I that traps all of its Indigenous characters into stereotypical boxes. I discuss stereotypes that imagine Indigenous people as people of the past, and other ways in which Three Day Road is a novel that harms. In my second chapter, I discuss Maia Caron’s Song of Batoche, a retelling of the North-West Resistance that uses a fictional character to imagine allegorically what could have happened if the Métis had had a better leader in Louis Riel. The healing in the novel comes through in the love between Josette and Gabriel, and the love between Josette and her children. Finally, I discuss Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians, which tells the story of five different Indigenous people after they leave residential school and illuminates the healing power of community and love over isolation.</p
Exploring dietetics students' experiences of cultural competence and cultural humility education
No full textIntroduction: Cultural competence and cultural humility (hereafter referred to collectively as CCH) are foundational learning concepts of undergraduate and practicum dietetics programs accredited to train Registered Dietitians (RDs). CCH concepts are increasingly recognized in dietetics and emphasized in undergraduate dietetics education to combat racism, promote inclusive and respectful healthcare, and to equip future RDs with the ability to appropriately consider the diverse cultural identities of their patients/clients. Investigating dietetic students’ experiences of CCH education is an initial step in understanding and addressing their concerns. Methodology and Methods: I used an Interpretive Description methodology and collected qualitative data via semi-structured interviews with students enrolled in their third or fourth year of an accredited undergraduate dietetic program in Nova Scotia, Canada. I used convenience sampling to select eligible participants who expressed interest in the study. Results: In total, I interviewed four students. Results show that students are only superficially exposed to CCH content in the dietetic curriculum and are unsure of the real-world applications of CCH in dietetic practice. They express the need for a comprehensive understanding of CCH and interactive and practice-based CCH learning experiences. In addition, students’ experiences of and attitudes toward CCH education shape and are shaped by their identities, namely their race and ethnicity, as well as childhood experiences. Thus, CCH education is a personal and emotional experience for dietetic students. Conclusion: These results underscore the need for a more informed and safe integration of CCH education practices and pedagogical approaches into undergraduate dietetics education. Moreover, this research highlights the need for fostering a deeper understanding of CCH and bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application of CCH education, and, ultimately, toward creating a more inclusive and equitable environment within the field of dietetics and healthcare.</p