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Exploring trail use and the health of students at a university in Canada
No full textThe purpose of this study was to understand trail use patterns and other factors that may
contribute to the health and well-being of university students in northeastern Ontario, Canada.
Students from Laurentian University (LU) were recruited to participate in an online
questionnaire that was distributed via the REDCap software. The questionnaire included the
Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Flourishing Scale (FS), and the Leisure Time Physical Activity
Scale (LTPA). A total of 1,367 students participated in the study which represented
approximately 15% of the student body. The findings indicated that students at LU had high
levels of stress and psychological well-being. Students who used trails were significantly more
likely to have improved mental health, physical health, and physical activity levels. The top two
facilitators to trail use were nature appreciation and outdoor recreation and the top two barriers
were intrapersonal factors and lack of knowledge. These findings have implications for health
promotion opportunities involving outdoor environments, such as trails, at institutions of higher
education
Assessing whole-body vibration transmissibility in children's bicycle trailers
No full textThe overall objective of this thesis was to assess whole-body vibration (WBV) exposure
in bicycle trailers to determine 1) vibration exposure characteristics associated with children
riding in bicycle trailers, 2) the effectiveness of the bicycle trailer seat in reducing vibration
transmitted to children riding in a bicycle trailer, and 3) to determine if gel seat cushions were
effective in reducing vibration transmissibility through the seat/gel cushion to the buttock of a
child in a bike trailer. These objectives were accomplished through a field study and a laboratory
study.
The first study, was conducted in the field with the primary objective to 1) to document
vibration exposure characteristics measure on the bicycle trailer frame, at the interface between
the seat and buttock of a seated child, and at the back of the child’s head, 2) to determine health
risks based on an ISO 2631-1 health guidance caution zone (HCGZ) analysis, and 3) to
determine if vibration exposure characteristics differed when riding on gravel compared to a
paved terrain. The findings revealed an associated health risk, with levels of vibration measured
at the buttock/seat interface consistently exceeded ISO 2631-1 health guidance caution zone
guidelines. Moreover, vibration exposure magnitude, and associated health risk, was higher
when the bicycle trailer was ridden on gravel terrain at higher speeds. When adjusted for a twohour exposure time, vibration experience by the children sitting in the bicycle trailer, for the
majority of the trials, revealed a moderate health risk according to the ISO 2631-1 HGCZ.
Additionally, all 12 trials had seat-to-head transmissibility levels above 1.00, indicating an
amplification in vibration from the child’s seat to their head when riding in the bicycle trailer.
The second study, was conducted under controlled laboratory settings with the aim to
determine the impact of independent variables terrain type, trailer type, and cushion type, on
dependent variable vibration magnitude measured at the interface between the trailer seat and
simulated buttock of a child. Terrain type had the largest influence on vibration exposure levels
(p<0.001), followed by trailer type (rigid-frame vs. suspension-frame) (p<0.001). Gel cushions
did not significantly influence vibration measured at the seat/buttock interface but were found to
reduce vibration measured at the rigid-frame trailer.
Findings from this thesis suggest that if children were to spend greater than 2 hours a day
in a bicycle trailer, they would exceed the ISO 2631-1 HCGZ, and ultimately be at an increased
risk for a vibration-induced injury. Children were also exposed to higher levels of vibration when
the bicycle and trailer travelled at a higher speed and travelled over rougher (gravel) terrain.
Laboratory analysis found the gel seat pad was not effective at attenuating vibration at the seat.
Additional research should be conducted with a larger sample of bicycle trailer types.
Furthermore, this study highlighted the need for additional research to determine health risks
associated with vibration exposure in young children as current international standards are
designed to determine health risks of vibration exposure for health adults in an occupational
context
Investigating the effects of calorie labels, caloric content, and food descriptions on consumer evaluations of restaurant menu items
No full textExisting literature has established a strong link between rising obesity rates and increased caloric intake, possibly influenced by the increasing tendency to eat in restaurant settings. Despite government regulations forcing restaurant chains to include calorie information on menu items, there has been little research conducted to see if this nutritional information has an impact on consumer choice. It is possible that consumers ignore the calorie information or are more influenced by the food item descriptions or images when they make their choices from the menu. The current study's aim was to investigate the effects of calorie labels, caloric content, and descriptions on consumer ratings of intent/desire to order, and perceived healthiness of food items featured in a mock restaurant menu. Overall, participants reported higher intent ratings when calorie labels were absent than when they were present. Additionally, participants reported higher desire ratings for high-calorie foods than low-calorie foods, and higher health ratings for low-calorie foods than high-calorie foods. Participants also reported higher health ratings for foods with "healthy" descriptions than for those with "appealing" descriptions. The current study has important implications, which could potentially lead to the development of marketing strategies used to help consumers make healthier, and more informed, choices when dining outside the home
Blurring the lines of an institution: intergenerational architectural interventions for a senior home in Chelmsford, Ontario.
No full textSocial Isolation
My grandmother, Janita (Trottier) Lamontagne, moved to Villa St. Gabriel
Villa (SGV) due to a physical disability at age 83. I am still uncomfortable
with the fact that she spent her last year in a 26 square meter room.
The senior home to me was (and still is) a barricade of sorts; it kept the
residents inside, along with my grandmother. The physical environment
surrounding SGV does not help, making it difficult for the residents to
take walks to neighbouring familiar places, even with the assistance
of a walker or a granddaughter pushing grandmother in a wheelchair.
Journeying out of the home is difficult for seniors.1
Thus, the senior
residents gradually become "prisoners" in their own space.
A Call to Action
The Global Watch Index has identified that the senior population is
expected to rise dramatically by 2050.2 Canada’s senior statistics show
a 40 percent increase from 2011-2021, and by 2031 the population will
nearly double.3 The City of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, is the only northern
city in Ontario projected to increase as others are projected to remain
the same or decline.4 The elderly will have fewer grandchildren as women
in Canada are having fewer children later in life.5 By 2050, there will
be more seniors on earth than there will be children.6 Susan Pinker has
stated that "social isolation is the public risk of our time" and Baroness
Sally Greengross regards "isolation as one of the greatest enemies of
old age."8 For this reason, socially inclusive and Intergenerational housing
for seniors is presently urgent.
Raison d’être
Two opposing theories are imperative to this architectural thesis. The
first is the theory of disengagement, and the second is the theory
of activity. The theory of disengagement is used to minimize social
disruption by preventing seniors from having a role in the community.
It gives the government authority to legitimize retirement based on
age.9 Retirement allows society to remain in equilibrium after the loss
of a member. Furthermore, seniors are gradually being disengaged from
society before their deaths by being placed in retirement homes, nursing
homes or senior homes as a measure to lessen societal disruption.10
Seniors have to cope with the challenges of ageing11 (Wahl 2001) but it
does not mean they should be withdrawn from society.12
Opposed to this ageist theory is the theory of activity.13 As Powell argues,
seniors must develop new sets of roles and activities in order to enhance
their life satisfaction.14 The concept of the theory of activity can change
society’s attitudes toward seniors and the ways in which they have been
housed. Indeed, ageing is often perceived as difficult, but there are
benefits.15 Older adults develop a sense of "generativity":16 a willingness
to invest in the future generation,17 which is beneficial to both bookend
generations.18 Thus, the implementation of intergenerational programs
in senior homes addresses the need for ikigai19 and socialization. By
creating an intergenerational village for seniors in northern communities,
this thesis aims to transform the Villa St. Gabriel Villa in Chelmsford
from a senior-only zone into an Intergenerational Community Hub. This
transformation aims to eliminate the stigma surrounding senior homes
by offering new ways of designing for diversity and social inclusivity
L’action de retrouver ce qui était perdu encourager les interactions sociales à l’échelle du quartier une nouvelle infrastructure architecturale et urbaine appliquée à North Bay
No full textCette thèse met en lumière l’importance des interactions sociales en personne pour la santé et le bien-être dans une société dépendante de technologie. Elle s’intéresse au potentiel de l’environnement bâti et de l’architecture pour retrouver une vie sociale informelle dynamique, plus spécifiquement dans le contexte de l’espace public de la ville nordique canadienne de taille moyenne et faible densité. Une analyse du rôle des différents types d’espaces publics à travers l’histoire a permis d’établir des principes de design afin de
concevoir une nouvelle infrastructure architecturale et urbaine publique/privée stimulant les interactions sociales à l’échelle du quartier – le centre-ville de North Bay, Ontario. Le bâtiment
s’articule autour d’un réseau de places publiques (périphérie et cours intérieures) connecté par un espace public informel intérieur accessible en tout temps (l’Espace positif) supportant une variété de programmes socio-culturels et commerciaux permettant à tous les groupes d’âge de se côtoyer, 24/7, été comme hiver
The (a, b, r) class of discrete distributions with applications
No full textIn the insurance field the number of events such as losses to the insured or claims to the
insurance company are an important aspect of loss modeling. Understanding the size of
claims in terms of numbers and amounts makes it possible to modify and address issues
related to creating insurance contracts. In general, certain counting (or discrete) distributions are used to model the number and amount of claims. There are situations where
the modelled probability of having no claim is high. Indeed this is a desirable case for the
benefit of insurance companies. An approach in modeling the number of claims in this
case is by using Panjer’s (a, b, 1) class of discrete distributions. In this thesis, we look at a more general case of this class of distributions where there is an
excess of claims at 0 to say r. We modify the existing (a, b, 1) model by assigning values
greater than 0 to p0 (the probability of no claims) all the way up to pr (the probability of r
claims). We then analyze this new model in terms of goodness of fit to actual claim data
and compare with the classical (a, b, 1) and (a, b, 0) class of discrete distributions. This
is done by using the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) in estimating the parameters of
each distribution discussed. In addition, the Akaike information criterion (AIC) is used to
choose between competing distributions. This new model will be called (a, b, r) class of
distributions, where r > 1
Studies on the unfolding and zinc status of thermolysin and carboxypeptidase A, and the design of a fret-quenched peptide for assaying thermolysin-like proteases
No full textThe chromophoric chelator 4-(2-pyridylazo)resorcinol (PAR) has previously been
employed as a probe to determine structural transitions during protein (un)folding in the zincdependent anthrax lethal factor protease (LF). Whether PAR can be employed more widely as a
zinc accessibility probe (ZAP) to study the unfolding of other zinc proteins remains to be
established. Using a combination of intrinsic tryptophan fluorescence spectroscopy and chelator
studies, the unfolding pathways and the influence of the protein fold on the metal status were
investigated for the zinc proteases thermolysin (TL) and carboxypeptidase A (CPA). These studies
revealed considerable differences in the unfolding pathways and the resistance to metal
dissociation for these enzymes. In addition, the observations reported herein demonstrate that
ZAPs might be of value in future investigations to gain further insight into the mechanisms
underlying the metal-mediated misfolding of proteins involved in a variety of neurodegenerative
diseases. Finally, this study describes a new fluorescence-quenched heptapeptide
(Dabcyl-FKFLGKE-EDANS), which shows the largest specificity constant documented for any TL
substrate
Forecasting COVID-19 with gamma model
No full textCOVID-19 is a highly contagiously atypical pneumonia attributed to a novel coronavirus. The global economy and people's lives have been tremendously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic since its outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. In this thesis, a non-linear model based on gamma distribution was built to verify
the accuracy of the forecasting of the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 two weeks ahead. The daily growth in cases of COVID-19 for different countries was monitored and compared with the forecasted values. The verification of the performance of the non-linear Gamma distribution model has been verified by the non-linear regression. The data for the 19 countries with the most total confirmed COVID-19 cases as of
June 22 was used. The data was sourced from the interactive web-based dashboard
developed by the Center for System Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. A web page has been developed to provide predictions generated by our models for individuals and public organizations to forecast the trends of COVID19
A road to conservation: understanding the dynamics of road-effects and road-effect mitigation
Get PDFGlobally, roads are one of the most ubiquitous forms of human infrastructure, and have
been identified as a serious conservation concern. Though roads impact wildlife in a variety of
ways, their effects are often negative. Perhaps the most concerning threats are habitat
fragmentation and mortality via wildlife-vehicle collisions. Attempts to manage the negative
effects of roads have had mixed results, and major gaps in our understanding of how roads affect
wildlife populations and the effectiveness of strategies to mitigate road-effects remain. Many
factors contribute to these gaps, particularly the logistical constraints associated with road-effect
monitoring and weak study designs that inhibit strong inferences crucial for effective
management. To this end, I approached road-effect mitigation in a holistic way. First, I
documented and analyzed the local-scale population and spatial ecologies of large mammals
around a newly twinned highway. I found that highway twinning, a common strategy to
accommodate increased traffic volume, had little effect on large mammals. Second, I focused on
the optimization and evaluation of road-effect mitigation (i.e., exclusion fencing and roadcrossing structures). I developed a procedure for identifying ideal locations for mitigation
features by comparing road monitoring data to landscape resistance models for both large
mammals and herpetofauna. Using this approach, I designed a mitigation plan for reptiles and
amphibians, which I evaluated using a robust 6-year Before-After-Control-Impact design that
included road surveys, trapping, and two methods of monitoring tunnel usage: trail cameras and
PIT tag scanners. I found that exclusion fencing was effective for turtles and amphibians but had
no impact on the number of snakes detected on the road. Crossing tunnels were well used by
reptiles and amphibians and I demonstrated that for turtles, tunnels effectively facilitated
connectivity at the population-level. Finally, I investigated the value of outreach as a long-term
conservation strategy in the context of road ecology. I demonstrated that outreach programs
significantly increase the perceptions of youth concerning their own likelihood to participate in
conservation. Further, using a mixed-methods approach, I identified the aspects of outreach that
were most effective at eliciting this change, creating broadly applicable guidelines to optimize
future outreach endeavors. By addressing knowledge gaps pertaining to each phase of road-effect
mitigation, I have provided a structural framework from which the field of road ecology can
continue to flourish. My findings have serious implications for wildlife management and
conservation because they increase our understanding of road-effects and importantly, how to
increase the success of road-effect mitigation
Exploring the impact of shared-book reading on school-age children’s understanding of emotions
Get PDFEmotion comprehension has been shown to have numerous benefits, many of these being
in the areas of social and academic functioning. Emotion comprehension starts to develop
in early childhood and because of its many advantages, studies have used various
interventions to try and teach emotion comprehension skills to children of different ages.
The few interventions in the literature were complex, not readily accessible, lengthy or
required much training for administrators. Some of these studies also combined a variety
of different strategies and tools, making it unclear which specific components are
effective. The current study looked solely at the effectiveness of shared book reading
with picture books created based on current models of emotion comprehension. Fortyfive children were divided into control and experimental groups. Over the course of seven
exposures, results revealed significant gains in emotion comprehension for both groups,
with gains from children in the experimental group being slightly greater than those in the
control group. These results give promising insight, suggesting that a short intervention
such as this one could be effective in future studies with the combination of strategies
oby isolating different strategies and looking at their effectiveness