Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards recipients - 2018/19

"Sisters Rising is a community-based study with Indigenous girls, youth and young women, conducted in urban and rural communities in western BC. Sisters Rising responds to the urgent need for community-rooted responses to sexualized violence that support Indigenous wellbeing and sovereignty. Despite the calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Indigenous girls and young women are too often the object of deficit-focused research; few studies have explored the historic and systemic roots of sexual violence from their perspectives. Our focus is on challenging the victim-blaming climate of gender violence by recentering Indigenous teachings and linking body sovereignty to decolonization and land sovereignty.

I feel very honoured to take part in this study and to be able to conduct research with young people in my home community of Haida Gwaii, and in other Indigenous communities. This grant will support my undergraduate journey as well as my transition to graduate school. Working with knowledge holders such as Elders, our goal will be to recenter Indigenous teachings that honor young people of all genders. Participants will use land-based methods (i.e., storytelling, drumming) and materials (hide, cedar, wool, etc.) to explore issues of dignity, safety, sexualized and gender violence, and resurgence. Workshops will be documented through multimedia methods including digital collage and video. As a way of sharing across Nations, our research team will co-author peer-reviewed publications, host workshops and activities, and create resources on sexualized violence, all showcased on the Sisters Rising website."

"Graphs are the main modelling tool for online social networks and diffusion of information. Social media and networks can reach out to a large proportion of the population and spread out critical information in a very effective way. Businesses and other organizations have understood the huge potential of social media and networks and want to analyze the dynamics of social connections. In this project, we will conduct graph analytics and mining research using state-of-the-art systems for handling very large amounts of data distributed over clusters of commodity machines."

"This project will explore the benefits of continuous support and communication between students, teachers and parents throughout a student's education career. Using Finland as a case study, when studen's transition from elementary school to secondary school, information about interests, learning needs and personal information is transferred between teachers and schools. This ensures progress made in the previous school system is not lost and the student can be fully supported as they continue in their educational career. This project will explore ways to implement this continuity in support into the BC education system in an effective manner."

"Exploring how the onscreen vampire has evolved throughout time to reflect the changes within our society. Discussing the transition from the frightening ghoulish villain to the desirable superhuman hero as we move the focus away from the blood sucking narrative and onto the individual stories of the vampires themselves. Addressing which core elements have remained the same, been altered, or been removed altogether. Taking examples from films such as “Nosferatu” (1922,1979), “Interview with the Vampire”, and “We Are the Night” to show topics such as the humanization of vampires, a decline in society's fear of vampires, and the shift in vampire films from horror to action."

"In 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, a united Germany emerged. However, as you travel between the eastern and western parts of the country it is very evident that the country is still divided in terms of wealth, investment, and industrial production. It is noticeable in the pricing of goods between the east and west; the infrastructure in these areas; the social programs; and even a difference in average salaries between the east and the west. It is also abundantly clear that this division isn’t getting any better as time progresses—in fact, in some respects, it is like the Berlin Wall never fell. With this in mind, I will be conducting my research to find out why this phenomenon is occurring and its implications on doing business in Germany with regards to regional economics. To do so, I will look at three companies, from three major German industries, all of which are members of the Deutscher Aktienindex (DAX; the German Stock Index)."

"The purpose of this investigation is to explore some of the implications of Spain’s recent economic crisis, focusing on practices of overdevelopment and speculative demand during the period of 1998-2008. More specifically, how the economic, political, and cultural practices turned the building boom into a real estate bubble after the financial market crash of 2008. The burst of the bubble left Spain with physical remnants of developments that do not serve their intended purpose: both finished and unfinished residential areas as well as underused infrastructure now in decay. My interest in this topic is rooted in my own observation of one of those unfinished urban areas south of Madrid. Many of the sights and landscapes have a beauty to them despite their tragic narratives. This analysis will include several case studies from the crisis, including both  small and large-scale projects. The accompanying images often say more than the textual analysis. The deserted landscapes serve as reminders of the dangers brought by overdevelopment."

"For this JCURA I wish to study the Frontier Apostolate, a Catholic lay movement that brought around 4000 people to northern British Columbia from around the world to work and volunteer for the Roman Catholic Church between the mid 1950's and the early 1990's. I will discuss the legacy of the Frontier Apostolate, ahd its impact on the religious environment of northern British Columbia. As such, it will be important to address the colonial impact of the Roman Catholic Church in northern British Columbia, and consider how colonial practices were framed in this context. In this study I will analyze both primary and secondary sources, including newspaper articles, books, documentaries and journal articles. In addition to this I will also conduct interviews with members of the Frontier Apostolate community (for this I have contacted UVIC's Human Research Ethics, and will abide by their standards). Moreover, this study will tie these points of investigation into the broader conversation of religion and society in the bioregion of Cascadia."

"Extensive literature demonstrates the importance of CBX8 in progression of various cancers.  CBX8 is an epigenetic methyllysine reader, meaning it selectively processes methylated lysine residues in proteins, leading to diversified expression of the genetic code.  The methylation of such residues is one form of post-translational modification of proteins.  Currently there are no published inhibitors for CBX8 and the development of selective chemical inhibitors is necessary for understanding the specific biological roles of the protein.  These inhibitors will allow us to decipher the mechanisms through which CBX8 operates, and will further unveil the ramifications of rendering the reader protein inactive on the expression of certain genes related to cancer.  High-throughput screening of heterocyclic analogues has resulted in hit compounds that show promise for inhibition of CBX8.  Synthesis of additional analogues will allow for optimization of CBX8 inhibition and will give chemical tools that will allow us to study inhibition of the protein in cancer cells. The synthesis and characterization of such novel compounds will be investigated, and optimal synthetic routes to their design will be explored."

"This project will examine the phenomenon of youth migration from rural areas to megacities in contemporary Japan. The research will analyze how the movement of young adults impacts populations in both the countryside and cities with a particular focus on young workers and how rural areas cope with the increasing proportion of elderly residents. From this baseline analysis, the project will examine how youth migration is represented in film, literature and popular culture, and will consider if such depictions are having an impact in the decisions of individual young people in deciding where they want to settle. Where possible and appropriate, interviews with Japanese youth will be undertaken to compare their migration experiences to those portrayed in films, documentaries, manga and books to highlight any significant differences and similarities. Findings from this cross examination of evidence will be used to comment on perceptions of a youth crisis currently unfolding in Japan, and to consider possible solutions to the demographic imbalance between cities and rural areas."

"My work and art practice explores relationships of intimacy, sexuality, and the fragility of ambiguity. To further understand my own place within a LGBTQ+ art lineage I want to understand how sexuality and gender influences my work, how identifying as queer or gay can dismiss and undermine the validity of my work. This research project will combine a technical investigation into a sexual binary history and how that binary is breaking down. It will also involve discovering other contemporary work exploring similar themes and how they relate to my own practice. Within the confines of this research project I will explore and define how an object's history and it's process of creation influences the perceived value of that art object. The project will outline how the bias of “craft” and a connection to gender and sexuality can undermine a work's validity, importance, and power within a space. I want to create and continue a dialogue in art that defies these strong gender and sexuality biases, one that does not fully rely on monolithic masculine power but equally supports and admires feminine connotations and connections. The final accumulation of this research will result in a body of sculpture work. This collection will push contrasting perceptions of gendered objects and processes together by taking masculine objects and overwhelming them with woven, knitted, and crotched materials. These materials may change, grow, and adapt in response to the research."

"My research project analyzes species difference in relation to birds within medieval literary ecologies: i.e., how avian figures signify in various literary genres. I aim to examine the ramifications of transforming birds, normally associated with natural freedom, into literary subjects. Birds were appealing didactic figures to medieval minds: several "bird debate" poems, for example, have come down to the present day and demonstrate the rhetorical potential of the avian. However, birds could also function as receptacles for human knowledge, as in the case of St. Francis of Assisi's sermon to the birds, wherein he educates his literal flock about God's love for them. Other medieval texts, such as the Ch ster mystery play Noah's Flood, attend to the real relationships - some social, some merely functional - that existed between humans and animals. Several of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, notably The Parliament of Fowls and The House of Fame, emerge from this vibrant literary environment. My project, to be undertaken with the support of my faculty supervisor towards the  completion of an Honours graduating essay, presents several significant opportunities: it will advance my knowledge of later medieval culture, of avian relationships with their human interlocutors within literary habitats, and of current research surrounding medieval representations of birds in ecocriticism and animal studies. The research I would present at the JCURA research fair would explore how writers like Chaucer engage in interspecies dialogue, seeming to confirm human dominion over nature only to critique the human impulse to  control the environment."

"Under the supervision of Dr. Carolyn Butler-Palmer, of the Art History and Visual Studies Department, I intend to research and investigate the domestic life of the child during the Victorian era and within the local context. My research will take place at the 19th-century Victorian home and garden of Point Ellice House, a 150 year old National Historic Site, which retains its original collection and functions as a heritage museum in Victoria BC. I have been hired on as one of the two Canada Summer Works employees at Point Ellice House this summer, where they are keen in supporting my research and have given me the approval to work closely with the home’s collection over the course of the summer and into the Fall and Winter semesters. In addition to my research and work within the home, I plan to interview local historians and authors who have studied the O’Reilly family, to whom the Point Ellice House had originally belonged.

My primary goal with this project is to investigate the benefits of heritage museums, in regards to the cultivation of an increased interest in local art, and cultural heritage. Secondly, I intend to emphasize the historical importance of childhood at these sites within our local community, as experienced by the present day child who visits them. My goal is to create a relatable historical context in which children visitors may experience first-hand the world in which someone of their own demographic lived, and are given an opportunity to use their imaginations in coming to these realizations."

"The Harmful Algae Monitoring Program (HAMP) has been monitoring sixty-four sites in British Columbia to collect data of harmful algae species and related factors; factors included descriptive data such as date and location, and environmental data like water temperature and salinity.

We will use a generalized linear models (GLM) and possibly rotating panel designs to examine the correlations between chosen variables and the presence of the algae species. In addition, we will use these models to provide prediction of future blooms."

"The tomb of the Princess of Chen of the Liao Dynasty of China, buried in the 11th century, contains an unusually high quantity of amber. The Liao Dynasty, ruled and founded by the Khitan people, was in the process of adopting Chinese cultural practices, including burial practices, which differs greatly from traditional Khitan burial and death practices. The Princess of Chen was buried in a Chinese way, incorporating some burial practices of the earlier golden age of China, the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). Placing the contents of the tomb of the Princess of Chen in the context of the contents earlier Chinese Tang tombs, contemporary Chinese Song (960-1279 CE) tombs, and the relationship between the Khitan people and the Chinese Empires, I aim to answer two questions. First, what does the contents of the Khitan Liao tombs, with focus on the amber, tell us about the Liao culture with regards to adopting and adapting Chinese customs and holding onto old traditions? Second, what was the significance of the presence of the amber to the Khitan Liao people, and to the Royal court at the time of the death of the princess? I am focusing on analysing the contents of the Tomb of the Princess of Chen, while also analysing contents of other Liao, Tang, and Song tombs for comparison between cultures."

"Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) is well known today for the trenchant social critique of novels such as Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1894–95), which scandalized their initial readers by subverting Victorian sexual double standards and class hierarchies. These novels have become so well known for the political nature of their subversiveness, however, that they have overshadowed a contrasting type of social criticism in Hardy’s fiction that has gone largely unstudied: Hardy’s satire of Victorian reading practices and literary institutions. To bring further attention to this more lighthearted side of Hardy’s social criticism, this essay will analyze the novel in which that lightheartedness is most apparent: Hardy’s little-studied comedic novel The Hand of Ethelberta (1875–76), which I will argue is valuable not for the trenchant social critique we have come to associate with Hardy but rather for its coy satire of its own readers. In doing so, I aim to uncover the comedic side of Hardy that often goes unacknowledged in Hardy scholarship, as well as bring attention to The Hand of Ethelberta not as Hardy’s least representative novel, as critics have traditionally considered it, but as the novel in which Hardy’s recurring interest in satirizing the reader finds its fullest expression."

"The binding of organic pollutants onto ocean micro-plastics is strongly influenced by pH and salinity. This project will study how aqueous conditions affect the surface structure of polymers. I will use a combination of nonlinear vibrational spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and contact angle measurements to examine polymer surface structure and surface restructuring when exposed to solutions of varying composition."

"Nostalgia has important psychological benefits, but does the content of nostalgic memories make a difference? Does the content of nostalgic event vary across gender. The objective of the research is to examine the content of nostalgic memories of men and women, and the effect on well-being. Participants are invited to describe a nostalgic moment that involves playing with toys and identify toys that make them nostalgic of their childhood."

"Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) generates renewable electricity using the temperature difference between tropical surface seawater and cold deep water. Consequently, it lowers sea surface temperature as deep water is discharged near the surface. Mass deployment of OTEC power plants has been proposed to fill global energy demand, and mitigate global warming. However, this artificial surface cooling could disrupt the global energy budget and eventually exacerbate climate change. The goal of this project is to analyze the long-term consequences of OTEC using the UVic Earth System Climate Model to simulate its effects. This research could help determine if any
configuration of power plants may generate sufficient energy without further disturbing the climate."

"Sanfilippo type B syndrome is an autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disorder. It results from mutations in the N-acetylglucosaminidase (NAGLU) gene. The defective Naglu protein leads to an abnormal accumulation of heparan sulfate. Clinically, Sanfilippo B manifests in the central nervous system. Patients experience developmental delays, behavioural issues, and cognitive deterioration. The average lifespan of a Sanfilippo B patient is two to three decades.  We propose to use the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR associated endonuclease 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system to correct the causative mutations in our patient-derived Sanfilippo B cell lines. Simply put, CRISPR/Cas9 involves a guide RNA, which guides the Cas9 endonuclease to a specific genomic location, and a correction template. Once bound to the target locus, Cas9 cleaves the DNA. The DNA is repaired by the cell’s intrinsic DNA repair systems using the correction template. Our custom correction template will correct the mutations in Sanfilippo B. Initial CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing experiments yielded low rates of correction. Newly published methods outline the use of an asymmetrical single-stranded correction template, and a dual guide RNA targeting system to increase gene editing efficiencies. After CRISPR/Cas9 treatment, our cells will be screened using restriction fragment length polymorphism, lysosomal live staining, DNA sequencing, and Naglu activity assay. Any confirmed colonies will be expanded in cell culture for potential therapies."

"This series of studies will investigate the intersection between environmental issues and mental health as part of my psychology honours program. They will focus on the recently described cluster of acute climate change-related mental health issues, with a specific focus on eco-anxiety. This problem, rooted in fear combined with a sense of powerlessness, is becoming more widespread as more and more people realize the magnitude and impacts of this developing problem that even Barack Obama, who had to deal with many important problems, called “the issue that will chiefly define the 21^st century.” Eco-anxiety is newly recognized as a form of distress and intense worry among an increasing number of individuals, particularly as they feel hampered by a large of number of structural and psychological barriers from solving, or even feeling able to help solve, the climate problem. As climate change worsens, experts are concerned that the prevalence of climate-related anxiety will increase, especially among vulnerable populations. Consequently, the proposed studies will expand understanding of climate-related anxiety at this relatively early stage of its impacts. The research will assess, using both qualitative and quantitative methods, the current prevalence of climate-related anxiety among students, that is, those who will experience some of the heaviest impacts of the changes over the course of their lifetime. It will also consider and begin to develop new means of alleviating climate change-related anxiety, and examine their possible effectiveness."

"Each year, Le Dictionnaire le Robert publishes their annual list of the newly accepted words in the French dictionary. The list published in 2017 presents many new words that originally came from the English language, such as pop-corn and troller. This same year, L’Office Québécois de la langue française, a Canadian organization that offers an online terminological database, also accepted words borrowed from English such as grilled-cheese and cocktail. These newly adopted words caused reactionary press articles due to the inclusion of several words of English origin. The goal of my research is to explore the integration of seven of these newly accepted words in French and French-Canadian press articles. I chose three words relating to food (cocktail, grilled-cheese and pop-corn) and four words relating to technology (spoiler, youtubeur/euse, geek, and troller). My analysis aims to understand how these words are integrated into French discourse as seen in the press articles that constitute my corpus."

"Virtual reality and 360° films are a very new, emerging form of storytelling. So new, in fact, that we don’t really know how to tell stories with this medium yet. As a storyteller and a lover of technology, I want to explore this new medium. What works in 360° storytelling and what doesn’t? How does it differ from traditional film? Can we tell good stories with this medium, or is it even built for storytelling? Through a variety of small 360° film projects and experiments, I want to start finding answers to these questions."

"Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is associated with underlying brain pathology centered on the medial temporal lobes that leads to a progressive, neurocognitive disorder that is primarily characterized by memory impairment. Evidence to date has suggested that along with age, previous traumatic brain injury (TBI) may put individuals at risk for the development of AD. However, few studies have examined individuals with TBI for the biomarkers associated with AD. The proposed research will use a large publically available database containing neuroimaging and neuropsychological data from Vietnam War Veterans to compare those to sustained moderate/severe TBIs to healthy controls. Given that hippocampal atrophy on magnetic resonance imaging and memory impairments on neuropsychological assessment are most commonly seen in AD, we hypothesize that similar patterns of brain atrophy and cognitive deficits will be present in the TBI group compared to the control group. Ultimately, this work could lead to a better understanding of TBI as a risk factor for AD and inform the need for dementia prevention measures to be implemented for survivors of TBI."

"In the wake of the recently empowered Trump administration, a large-scale process of environmental and other deregulatory politics has begun, with significant implications for state-corporate relations and the field of White Collar Crime. Environmental pollution and destruction is both the most common, and one of the most damaging, forms of corporate violence, yet has received some of the least attention from criminologists in the past. Of particular significance, too, is the application or suppression of the media throughout the electoral campaign and into the Trump presidency, and its impacts on regulation and environment-based decision-making in politics. This research project aims to apply White Collar Crime Perspectives, in particular opportunity-based crime models such as routine activities theory, to the phenomenon of environmental deregulation under the Trump administration, to draw attention to and clarify the far-reaching implications these actions may have within and beyond the United States, now and in an environmentally troubled future."

"Since the 2008 Financial Crisis that nearly crippled the world economy, the Bank of Canada has taken the position of a stimulus monetary policy to encourage growth. This narrative has led the target overnight lending rate to fall to 0.5%. Due to this low cost of borrowing, Canadians have taken advantage of this opportunity by borrowing at a record pace. This increased borrowing has led to the overall household debt levels in Canada to reach new heights. As household debt has continued to climb over this period, wages have remained sluggish and are lagging the inflation data. Accompanied by the meteoric rise of housing prices in Canada, the landscape remains uncertain for the stability of these debt levels. In addition, the Bank of Canada has begun to shift its narrative towards an imminent rate hike in the near future. These market conditions potentially leave the Canadian economy vulnerable to negative adverse shocks. My research aims to analyze the credit risk of Canadian household debt in major cities. Specifically, I will be using empirical data from cities such as Toronto and Vancouver since 2008 to examine trends in household borrowing levels during a time where average house prices have risen exponentially year over year. Additionally, I will analyze how an intervention from the Bank of Canada may affect the debt levels of Canadians."

"Gold nanoparticles are being used as radiation dose enhancers in cancer therapy. I will be using gold nanoparticles encapsulated in liposomes as my therapeutic system for this study.  Breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) will be first incubated with the nanoparticle system. Once nanoparticles are internalized within cells, a radiation dose of 2 Gy will be given. Effectiveness of the treatment will be assessed using clonogenic assay. As an NSERC USRA student, I am studying the cellular uptake of this nanoparticle system. If I am given this award, I have the opportunity to test this nanoparticle system in radiation therapy."

"Pax6 is an important gene involved in many aspects of retinal and neural development. For example, it is expressed in a gradient in the subventricular zone of adult mice and plays a role in stem cell differentiation into dopaminergic neurons as they migrate to the olfactory bulb. It has been hypothesized that a complementary gradient of miRNA-7 serves to create this gradient and mediate the expression of Pax-6 protein in subventricular zone neural stem cells. miRNAs are small pieces of non-coding RNA that regulate the amount of protein produced at the post-transcriptional level, in a dose-dependent manner. miRNA-7 has targets on many genes, and so there are a couple of recently proposed target sites on Pax6. My research project will use knock-out mice for these proposed miRNA-7 target sites, followed by tissue sectioning and immunolabelling for dopaminergic neuronal markers, to further understand the mechanisms by which Pax6 is precisely and finely regulated in neural development."

"The attempted assassin of Louis XV was executed in 1757 by being drawn and quartered. This method of execution was expressly designed in order to inflct the most pain as possible. A mere thirty-five years later, during the French revolution, the guillotine became the only method of execution in France. The guillotine, contrary to previous methods of execution, was designed in order to inflict as little pain as possible. This paper will explore the decline of cruelty of capital punishment in France during the 18th century."

"A research project exploring the impact railroad development had on Aboriginal groups across  North America. Comparisons between agrarian and hunter/gatherer societies will be made to   draw inferences about how access to market and improved transportation may have impacted the lives of Aboriginal peoples."

"I will be assisting Dr. Karen Courtney and PhD student Marcy Antonio with their research applying the Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy to mobile health applications.  The goal of this project is to try to identify behavior change techniques that are being used in mobile health apps.  As part of this project, I will complete training in research ethics (Tri Council) and in use of the Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy.   I will be working with the research team to review and code a sample set of chronic disease management health apps.   If this project is successful, the taxonomy would provide a standardized way for people to describe mobile health app interventions and assist researchers in understanding which behavior change techniques are most effective in different apps and in different settings."

"Urban soundscapes play an important role in the social life of cities. Street performers are part of the ensemble that constitutes a city’s soundscape, which brings urban space to life through the performative enactment of place. Drawing upon a combination of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this study will examine how street performers produce “place” in the streets of downtown Victoria, British Columbia. Street performing is regulated by bylaws, but it is untaxed, irregular work. Street performers may therefore face certain economic or social challenges, and the degree to which they are marginalized or empowered in the context of Victoria is important to understand for both the performers and the city. The manifestations of power dynamics through land ownership, state regulation, and social interactions will be key elements considered in this research."

"I am interested in the idea of social choreography, a term scholar Andrew Hewitt uses to describe a tradition of thinking about social order that places its aesthetic ideal directly at the level of the body.  I am specifically interested in how this concept, very much rooted in the performative, is able to relate to the still life image and its place within contemporary art.

As part of my research I will be looking at the contested validity of the still life within art criticism and its connection to the social construction of gender.   Further to this I will be framing my arguments within both historical and present-day ethical concerns surrounding photo-based media and the status of the body as it has evolved since photography’s inception.

"Despite Western society’s best efforts, racism and oppression are still prevalent today and continue to affect people from non-dominant cultures worldwide. Affected communities are left with emotional scars and the reality of their histories are often buried by the dominant culture in society. Although schools and educational institutions teach that racism and oppression are “bad”, they continue to exist and conversations around them are considered taboo and delicate. Theatre, on the other hand, has the potential to explore delicate and tabooed subject material in a way that is emotionally safe and that allows audience members to engage critically. Therefore, I propose an initiative to devise a theatre piece that discusses, explores, and engages audience members on the topic of racism and oppression that is created with the support of and for a specific community group. I propose working with Ukrainian Canadians, as this is my ethnic background and is an ethnic community that has historically faced intense racism and oppression in Canada. Through the historical lens of my culture, the theatre piece will speak to the greater truths and commonalities experienced by immigrants and refugees of all cultural backgrounds. I believe that through theatre this community will be able to begin a process of healing and reconciliation which will be carried forward in future generations."

"This research project investigates ways in which North American Indigenous artists responded to contact with non-Indigenous peoples (traders and settlers) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indigenous artists creatively integrated new materials, methods and motifs into their artistic production. The result is a category of ‘hybrid’ objects that bring together elements from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous visual cultures. This category of hybrid objects is broad and I will likely focus on one of its many facets as my research progresses.

"The specific goal of the research project will involve using geochemical data on igneous rocks collected in the Fort St. James – Vanderhoof region of British Columbia to better constrain the geological history of the region."

"This research will examine the effects that advancements in media and technology, and the resulting cultural globalization have had on the evolution of Japanese street fashion. The project will focus on the punk and hippie inspired movements in the mid-20th century, through the "heyday" of Harajuku and ground breaking DIY fashion of the early 2000s, to the increasing popularity of big brand names in the most recent contemporary era. This research will be undertaken through visual, semiotic, and critical discourse analysis of Japanese fashion media, both digital and print. Targets of this analysis will include Japanese street fashion magazines in both their print and online forms, the social media accounts of Japanese street fashion celebrities, and the various websites dedicated to documenting photos of streetwear in Japanese cities. While the runway is often seen as the traditional conduit through which one views fashion, a key objective of this research is to illustrate how the intersection between globalization, new media and street fashion in Japan subjugates that traditional model."

"I will be working with Rhianna Nagel, Cam Owens, and (most likely) the Fernwood NRG to explore how urban agriculture and the community events supporting agricultural initiatives play a role in fostering inclusive and sustainable communities. I will be helping the Fernwood NRG in some capacity, and my final thesis will be partially comprised of a deliverable that can be passed on to the community partner to support their work in the community."

"The objective of this project is to characterize Ars2, an essential gene found in eukaryotes. This gene has attracted interest due to its ubiquitous presence across disparate species and its diversity of function. Ars2 is essential to mammalian development and is involved in retinal development, facilitating stem cell differentiation into photoreceptor cells. In fission yeast, Ars2, likely through it highly conserved C terminus, facilitates RA processing as a central part of the cap binding complex and is also involved in chromatin formation. Understanding this protein would give us mechanistic knowledge of a central player in the fate of RNA, and more broadly, the pathways underlying embryonic development. However, the exact role of the C terminal domain is unknown. This project will attempt to uncover the mechanism by which this C terminal domain mediates interactions with RNA processing machinery. To do so, we will generate sequential deletions of the conserved C terminal regions using PCR amplification and will clone the resulting construct into E.coli. Subsequently, we will attempt to rescue a yeast strain possessing only a dysfunctional Ars2 gene using the artificial constructions. Rescue will be confirmed using several readouts established in the Nelson lab, and a lack of rescue by any of the deletion constructs will suggest that the region deleted was essential to Ars2 interactions. Completion of this project will help us better understand the mechanism by which an essential gene exerts its effect on embryonic development and cell fate."

"I propose to examine how Charles Taylor constructs a phenomenology of value in Sources of the Self by repurposing Heidegger's concept of intentionality as world-disclosure in order to ontologically situate the value-disclosing dimension of selfhood. My goal is to draw on Husserl's arguments that all knowledge is derivable from self-knowledge in order to show how Taylor's expansion of the resources of phenomenological description best accounts for our true starting point as value-creating cognizers, and in doing so, forms an important addition to first philosophy as Husserl envisioned it."

"Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), known as MPEG-DASH, enables high quality media streaming over the Internet from conventional HTTP web servers. The key idea behind MPEG-DASH is to adaptively adjust bitrate based on current network condition, in particular, bandwidth and delay. Content delivery networks (CDNs) utilize cache servers to reduce the delivery distance to end viewers and relieve the heavy traffic load from the original content servers. Nowadays, CDNs have become the major media delivery platform and carry over 80% multimedia traffic over the Internet. Nearly all CDNs adopt MPEG-DASH to enhance the quality of experience (QoE) of end users. The control of MPEG-DASH, however, is under the control of CDNs, and as such the quality of service delivered to end users may not truly align with their demand. To avoid the problem, it is desirable to design an intelligent agent at the client side (i.e., end viewer) to inject more feedback to the web servers. For this purpose, we need to analyze the behavior of MPEG-DASH via monitoring and analysing the media delivery over a real CDN. This project is proposed for this purpose."

"Since 1993, the company, General Dynamics Land Systems Canada (GDLS-C) has been granted permission to export up to 3,000 light armoured vehicles to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through a legally binding contract. Regions of the Middle East have seen regional instability due to terrorism and conflict and this ongoing deal with Canada has the potential to further conflict in an already politically charged area.

In my research I will further investigate why Canada is still upholding this weapons deal even though NGO’s such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations Commissions have come out with reports stating that Saudi Arabia has been violating international humanitarian law. Canada, a country which is seen as safeguarding human rights in the international community, has formulated its foreign policy, which appears to disregard its values in favour of Canadian jobs and the defence industry, an alliance with a regional partner, or both.

Declassified government documents argue that these weapons have been sold to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s regional powers in order to counter attacks from ISIS in surrounding areas such as Iran and Syria, uprisings from Iraq and insecurity in Yemen. However, from a realist perspective, sending more arms to an already insecure area could make the area more prone to conflict.

My research to investigate this ongoing issue will include mixed methodologies of both qualitative and quantitative research data, official government statements, NGO reports and selected interviews with representatives of key players."

"Childhood psychological maltreatment (CPM) refers to both emotionally abusive (e.g., criticizing, threatening, or denigrating a child) and emotionally neglectful (e.g., denying a child affection or attention) caregiver behaviours. Previous research has demonstrated that CPM is highly prevalent, and is associated with numerous psychological and behavioural disturbances across the lifespan. Nevertheless, inconsistencies in how emotional abuse and neglect have been defined, measured, and analyzed continue to impede progress in the understanding of CPM. For example, due to the high co-occurrence of emotional abuse and neglect, many researchers have used variable-centered analysis to control for the effects of one sub-type when investigating the other—an approach which assumes emotional abuse and neglect are continuous dimensions of CPM (i.e., varying by degree). In contrast, other researchers have taken a person-centered approach to their analyses—a strategy which assumes that emotional abuse and neglect are categorical in nature (i.e., present or absent). Using taxometric analysis, the goal of this study is to determine whether data collected from two measures of CPM provide evidence for emotional abuse and neglect as continuous dimensions, or distinct categories of maltreatment. To supplement an existing dataset of 410 undergraduate responses, self-report data will be collected from 625 adults using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The results of this study will guide the direction of future CPM research, as evidence for a continuous versus categorical (or vice versa) conceptualization of emotional abuse and neglect has important implications for the theory, assessment, research, and treatment of childhood psychological maltreatment."

"Recent international accords such as the Paris Climate Agreement have established that climate change is a global issue that must be addressed by reducing carbon emissions. The question now turns to the best way for countries to do so. One option is to create a market for carbon emissions, however, recent failures such as the European Union’s emission trading system show that in practice releasing the right amount of permits is a difficult and potentially costly task due to imperfect information. If the regulator releases too few permits then the price of the permits will be too high and the cost of reducing emissions will be exceedingly expensive; if too many permits are released then the price will be too low and carbon reduction goals will not be realized. This project will seek to model an emissions trading program with a “safety valve” under uncertainty where the regulator promises to release an unlimited amount of permits at a specified price, and where the marginal cost of abatement and marginal damage are unknown. Models such as this seek to combine the best parts of a tax and an emissions trading program by reducing the potential cost of releasing too few permits. The paper will then go on to compare the loss of social surplus amongst different models to try and attempt to make an efficiency argument. Finally, the paper will discuss the policy implications of these results in the context of global and Canadian carbon emission targets."

"The unregulated and federally illegal cannabis industry in Canada is on the cusp of massive cultural changes and women are making unprecedented strides in taking on entrepreneurial and leadership roles in this industry as has never been seen before. The legitimate cannabis industry is in its developmental stages across North America leading many to claim that this industry will be a blue skies market for women to take on leadership roles and to challenge gender norms in this newly emerging sector. This dominant discourse suggests women have an unfettered opportunity to take on influential and entrepreneurial roles in the industry, suggesting women will not have to overcome historic gendered divisions of labour that characterize most other industries.  This discourse erases the reality of gender inequality in our culture that the cannabis industry is not apart from.  The “blue skies market” sentiment towards the industry is a discourse that I wish to complicate and explore throughout my research by situating women’s lived experiences of the industry within the context of the corporatization of the cannabis sector which relies upon the legitimizing power of white, heteronormative femininity to normalize cannabis consumption.  My research project seeks to evaluate how gender is operating in the cannabis industry and the role that gender is playing in moving cannabis into the mainstream."

"Mental health is a growing concern in Canada, specifically within minority groups, such as the LGBTQ community (Mule & Smith, 2014). As a result of the Civil Marriage Act passed in 2005, the number of same-sex couple families in Canada rose 42.4% between 2006 and 2011 (Statistics Canada, 2011). Therefore, this study will seek to address if children of same-sex couples exhibit differences in mental health according to their parents' marital status. To answer the research question, in depth interviews will be conducted with 4 youths between the ages of 12-14; 2 whose parents are married same-sex couples, and 2 whose parents are common-law same-sex couples. The proposed exploratory study will use narrative analyses while the coding process will use methods of grounded theory in order to gain a holistic understanding of the lived experiences of the participants. Moreover, the findings will be discussed in the context of their implications on further research as well as program and policy shifts."

"My project will begin by building on Greg Woolf’s 2015 theory in which he discusses ancient literacy as a technology rather than simple representation of speech. I will evaluate a selection of Hellenistic Greek coinage, dating between 323 and 31 BC, as a miniature form of monumental records of the various states that arose in the post-Alexander age. In addition, this will allow me to create a standardized and comparable baseline against which to re-examine Michael H. Crawford’s original 1975 interpretation and publication of legends inscribed upon Roman Republican coinage, dating between 280 and 31 BC."

"My research project will look at community-based marine conservation efforts in the Southern Gulf Islands, with a focus on rockfish conservation on Galiano Island. Of the 37 species of rockfish found in British Columbia (BC), 8 species are currently threatened or at risk. In BC, 164 Rockfish Conservation Areas (RCAs) have been established, which are closed year round to hook and line fishing in order to help rebuild plummeting rockfish populations. Galiano Island touches three separate RCAs. As part of my research, trail cameras facing these RCAs will be used to monitor recreational fishing activity. Interviews with people fishing around Galiano will be conducted in order to determine the level of public awareness of RCAs. Public outreach efforts, such as setting up booths at environmental events and giving brief talks around Galiano Island, the surrounding Gulf Islands, and Victoria, will be carried out in order to raise awareness for rockfish conservation and provide public education. These activities will all contribute to the Rockfish Conservation Project, which is an ongoing joint effort between the University of Victoria, the Galiano Conservancy Association (GCA), and Valdes Island Conservancy (VIC). As the GCA and VIC are both community-based non-governmental organizations, one aspect of my research will look into the effectiveness of environmental efforts that are rooted in and driven by community engagement. Another component of my research will involve co-authoring a scientific paper on the Rockfish Conservation Project in order to report on the effectiveness and status of the project."

"This project will investigate discussions of the compatibility of international law and constitutional democracy. Specifically it will investigate liberal cosmopolitan political philosophy and the conflict between the support of constitutional democracy and international law in the area of human rights and global distributive justice."

"'The Victorian Age saw the transformation of the madhouse into the asylum into the mental hospital' Andrew Scull, Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen

How and when did the conception of madness as illness begin? When did we cease to view madness as curse of genetic inheritance and start to understand it as treatable? I propose to research these questions by looking at depictions of psychosis in Victorian literature between 1840-1900. The Victorian Era saw a change in the criteria for insanity: not only was the definition of insanity transformed by medical advances, but society also changed in its response to madness itself (Scull 1981). The notion of lun·acy as a manifestation of racial inheritance (a model that we see in Bertha from Jane Eyre [1847]) transitioned into a model of it as a form of illness. As such, the very nature of madness cascaded from something dark and ominous­ incurable-to a treatable medical issue. I hope to  study several works for  background information on psychiatry during this time, such as Madness and Civilization (1961) by Michael Foucault and Madhouses, Mad Doctors and Mad Men by Andrew Scull (1981). These works will be used to pursue insights into the evolution of psychosis in works such as, George Eliot's Adam Bede (1859), and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862) and George du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson (1891). As I am completing a minor in psychology, this research allows me to tie in my psychology work regarding psychopathy and my primary interest in Victorian literature. By studying these texts, I hope to elucidate how the concept of madness in the nineteenth century transitioned to the forms of mental illness we perceive today."

"This intent of this research is to critically analyze the sociological effects of natural resource development, specifically, the economic, environmental and social impacts of resource extraction on surrounding communities. The sustainable management of natural resources is a highly important issue in British Columbia, yet the majority of existing research pertains to cumulative environmental effects and there is limited research analyzing this issue through a sociological lens. This project thus serves to identify social areas impacted by resource development projects, and explore sustainable solutions. Relevant concepts include sustainable development; urban-rural divides; Indigenous Resurgence and politics of recognition; and the impact of unsettled land claims."

"I will look at the body’s response to oral ingestion of sugar via blood glucose levels as well as if sugar has an impact on nervous system function, specifically the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. Sugars influence on the nervous system will be measured by looking at Heart Rate Variability (HRV), or the variability in time within each successive heat beat. Participants will come into the lab on two separate occasions in a fasted overnight state. They will receive a beverage with or without sugar. The amount of sugar will depend on their respective body weight. From here, students will lay down for 12 minutes with a heart rate monitor to collect HRV data. Following this, they will cycle for roughly 20-40 minutes, depending on their fitness level. After cycling is completed, participants will lay down for another 12 minutes to collect more HRV data. Blood glucose will be analyzed on four separate occasions, including before beverage ingestion, after beverage ingestion, after exercise, and after the final rest. The participants will ingest the contrasting drink (with or without sugar) from their first trial upon arrival for their second condition. From our results, we will look at sugars influence on blood glucose and HRV before and after exercise."

"Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among adults aged>65 years. Early and accurate identification of at-risk individuals is essential in providing effective interventions to decrease the likelihood of falling and subsequent injury. We recently determined a composite measure drawn from an extensive battery of common clinical mobility measures, postural sway and physiological tests as well as cognitively influenced gait parameters that retrospectively classifies fallers and non-fallers. This process involved data reduction using principal components analysis followed b logistic regression. The final model consisted of 5 gait measures with 92.3% sensitivity and 66.7% specificity (total model classification of 82.9%). Gait parameters were recorded as participants performed 10 cognitively loaded (continuing backwards aloud by serial sevens) and 10 unloaded walking passes (i.e. there and back) on a GAITRite instrumented walk way. Within each gait domain (length, width, timing, and velocity) there were variables representing the mean and variability for cognitively loaded trails and difference scores (unloaded-loaded trials). It is currently not known how many passes of gait data is required to produce this high level of specificity and sensitivity. It is would be clinically useful to use the fewest number of steps required, thus the aim of this project is to repeat this analysis using gait data from 1, 3, 5, and 7 passes in separate analysis to determine to the level of specificity and sensitivity of the resulting model."

"Rett syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder due to a spontaneous mutation in a gene (MECP2) on the X chromosome.  It is embryonically lethal in males while females expressing the mutation survive but manifest a constellation of severely debilitating symptoms after birth. Development is mostly normal during the first 6 months but then stalls and regresses resulting in individuals that lack motor coordination, have impaired speech, and exhibit Parkinsonian symptoms often accompanied by seizures. Mice with the same mutation have many neuronal dysfunctions including poor neural communication, some of which is due to improper signaling by the transmitter acetylcholine (ACh). The cholinergic system is critically involved in the generation of purposeful behaviours including voluntary motor acts, which correlate with some of conditions seen in Rett patients.  For my JCURA project, I will study the expression of the nicotinic type of ACh receptor (nAChR) in a mouse model of Rett syndrome.  I will use fluorescence microscopy to compare nAChR density in different regions and different neuron types in normal and Rett mouse brains to determine whether there is dysregulation in the expression levels of these receptors.  nAChRs are particularly dynamic and their densities are up- and down regulated in response to manipulations like nicotine exposure and sensory deprivation. Removing the whiskers for several days causes more nAChR to appear on neurons in normal mice. Thus, my ultimate goal will be to examine whether the density of these receptors is properly regulated in Rett mice in the brain region that processes whisker inputs."

"Are administrations with strong commitments to realist ideology more likely to intervene in human rights violations? Although realists suggest that ideology does not matter in terms of foreign policy, realists are more likely to favor government sponsored humanitarian intervention if that intervention serves their national interest. The Obama administration will be used as a case study of realist ideology, and contrasted with the administration under Bush Jr., which can be classified as a regime with liberal ideological commitments. Their underlying ideology will be illustrated through examination of their National Security Strategy. Through the consultation of various indexes including the Minorities at War and the SIRRI databases, I will analyze the past humanitarian interventions under Obama and Bush respectively, and contrast them with those instances of human rights violations, which did not result in external intervention."

"As one of the most under-reported crime in North America, sexual harassment has been deeply studied by psychologists, sociologists and jurists but rarely by economists. My research aims to analyse the individual's decision making process of reporting sexual harassment from an economic perspective. By adding to the small literature in economics, this research focuses on private reporting and future crime preventing. A two stage dynamic game theory model will be built and guide the analyze."

"I will provide the first estimates of the causal effect of economic inequality on prescription opioid use and overdoses in the United States. Exploiting longitudinal, county-level data administrative data on opioid prescriptions, data from the CDC on overdoses, and recently available annual county-level data on inequality, regression models will be developed to disentangle the effects of inequality from other determinants of opioid use, such as demographics and macroeconomic conditions.  A Bartik-style instrumental variable approach using interactions between lagged industrial structure and national changes in output prices will then be used to address unobserved confounders."

"I will be joining work currently underway using an animal model for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, through prenatal ethanol exposure in rats. I will be using immunohistochemistry to detect changes in hippocampal neurons, to determine the effects of ethanol on neural plasticity. This will help elucidate the ways in which alcohol affects learning and memory on a cellular basis."

"My research project will explore how outdoor adventure culture, and summer camps in particular, can contribute to the empowerment of LGBTQ+ youth. I will examine how queer environmentalism can assist in the creation of outdoor adventure programs which achieve these empowerment goals."

"As a means to research and understand inclusivity in every age group, I would like to create and facilitate a single, versatile workshop that is capable of finding commonalities from children in grade school all the way to adults. The workshop would become an expansion of a previous workshop created for a grade five classroom, utilizing the story of Giordano Bruno, a man sentenced to be burned for his belief that the sun was the center of the universe. Giordano’s story took place in 1600BCE; I would like to cross cut this true moment in history with a similar, modern day story. Performing the workshop without age restrictions will aid me to understand which theatrical techniques are most effective at promoting inclusivity as children grow. Before expanding the workshop, I would like to research interdisciplinary and inclusive facilitation methods in community engagement and classroom settings. I believe a single story can resonate with students and adults of all ages, and if so, can be a method of encouraging tolerance and acceptance as we move through life."

"This project will explore the acoustic and articulatory phonetics of sounds that are not well understood in SENĆOŦEN. Additionally, research will be done on how to initiate linguistic research within indigenous communities in a mutually beneficial, appropriate, and respectful manner, and conducted in such manner.

For this project, pronunciation of sounds will be done using acoustic recordings and ultrasound imaging. A native speaker of SENĆOŦEN will have their tongue imaged while they are speaking in SENĆOŦEN using ultrasound, and exploration of SENĆOŦEN pronunciation will be researched using this imaging. The pronunciations that will be explored will largely depend on what the SENĆOŦEN speaking community’s goals of pronunciation are and these will be evaluated continuously throughout the project. An outcome of this research will be a full description of these sounds including their phonology, articulatory phonetics, speech physiology, and a narrow description of the target phonemes using the international phonetic alphabet that best reflects their exact pronunciation. Ultimately, this will help language learners of SENĆOŦEN better understand and learn how to articulate different sounds."

"The project aims to create a textual play and live performance by compiling various forms of media and information (plays, poems, Wikipedia articles, statistics, policies, etc.) centred around rape and rape culture. The focus of the piece is on material that may aide a survivor of sexual assault in finding healing through paths of justice, reconciliation, and forgiveness. During the fall semester, the play will be compiled and refined in order to be performed during the spring Semester at the University of Victoria’s Phoenix Theater."

"On March 26^th, 2000, Vladimir Putin was formally elected as president of the Russian Federation. During the symbolic transfer of power, Boris Yeltsin insisted that Putin “take good care of Russia” (Colton, 437). Yeltsin’s request was highly symbolic, yet deeply relevant. Putin’s subsequent consolidation of power, characterized by political and cultural authoritarianism, may be symptomatic of Russian cultural attitudes regarding the state-citizen relationship. Putin’s style of authoritarianism has a paternalistic character, eschewing democratic values in favour of strong authoritarian leadership. We must consider what exactly Russian citizens expect from the Russian state. Does Putin’s paternalistic regime enjoy popular (if not democratic) support, or does the regime take an antagonistic relationship to the Russian citizenry?

Soviet communism may have had an influential role in shaping Russian cultural attitudes towards the state. Did Soviet communism, with its high degree of paternal care and practically non-existent democratic processes, lay the foundation of Putin’s Russia? If I am accepted for the JCURA scholarship, my research will examine Russian cultural attitudes towards the state, and how they have been shaped, particularly by Russia’s Soviet past. Health, quality of life, and political polling statistics will play a key role in my analysis as well as the history of life under the USSR and research on the social psychology of authoritarianism."

"The proposed research project will examine the development of neck-shaft angle of the femur throughout the growth period in two archaeologically derived skeletal samples of Holocene foragers. Using 3D model specimens of the proximal femora of juvenile skeletons from Indian Knoll, Kentucky (n=37; 4143-6415 BP), and Later Stone Age Foragers from Southern Africa (n=50; 9120-220 BP). Neck-shaft angle will be measured using measurement tools in GeoMagic Design X software, and examined across the age ranges represented in each sample. The neck-shaft angle has been chosen as the focal point of this research project because it is thought, in current paleo-osteological research to represent hip movement and load-bearing. The Indian Knoll foragers are described as semi-sedentary, who expertly utilized a small resource set through hunting and gathering, and lived along the relatively flat topography of Green River, Kentucky. The Later Stone Age foragers also utilized hunting and foraging, as well marine resources along the coastal region Southern Africa, which presented this population with a more diverse terrain (varying altitudes) than the Indian Knoll Sample. This research project hopes to determine whether the femoral shaft angle during development may be affected by the different ecological contexts and subsequent loading patterns experienced by the individual, and whether, in two populations with similar lifestyle strategies, an observed difference can be observed and attributed to their environment or activity patterns."

"Post-translational modification of proteins in biological is a key driver of disease states. To further investigate these diseases, protein diversity must be expanded beyond the 20 proteinogenic amino acids. My project involves the generation of new alkyl halides to mimic biological post-translational modifications. Working in conjugation with CBX proteins to phage-display generated peptide sequences.

My project also involves the synthesis, development, and testing of selective inhibitors for CBX proteins."

"Firefighters’ decision making must be performed under extreme stressors: time pressure, high temperature, and physical exertion. This study will investigate (a) the impact of maximal exercise in full turnout gear on firefighters’ performance on a decision making task, (b) if the magnitude of this impact is correlated with physiological stress markers (cortisol, IL-6, CRP, HRV), and (c) if performance is marked by changes in ERP components (DAP & Rew-P)."

"This project aims to explore the tumultuous and complicated history of the Cholas, a group of Indigenous Ayamaran women in Bolivia. Easily recognizable in their traditional dress of bowler hats and colourful skirts, I intend to research and deconstruct the history of the unmistakable Cholas. A term once used pejoratively to classify and discriminate Indigenous women in Bolivia, Chola is now used by politicians and the tourism industry as a representative of Indigenous nationhood. I aim to explore how these women, are used as a commodity to promote indigenous culture and authentic Bolivian tradition. My research on the commodification of the Cholas will be largely done by examining Cholita Wrestling. This weekly event, charges audiences of over five hundred people to watch as Ayamaran women in full traditional wear, wrestle one another in the ring. Often described as a platform for Indigenous female empowerment, the fighting cholitas is an extremely popular event. My research will examine the event’s popularity, to determine if there is a legitimate shift from gendered racism to empowerment or rather, the commodification of the traditional oppression of Indigenous women."

"The Allee effect is a biological phenomenon that predicts a decline in population productivity at low density, which can increase the risk of extinction in a vortex-like process. Recently, the concept has been modified to include the exploitation of populations by humans (i.e. hunting, fishing). The anthropogenic Allee effect (AAE) model suggests the large monetary cost, associated with killing individuals within rare populations - though counter to economic logic - actually increases demand, thereby leading to increased exploitation and eventual extinction. An assumption underlying the AAE is that the rewards for killing rare species outweigh the costs associated with locating and hunting them.

Little is known about what rewards hunters seek to motivate their willingness to pay high costs. Recently, however, Darimont et al (2017 Biology Letters) suggested that contemporary trophy hunting evolved via ‘costly signaling’; male hunters target costly prey (i.e. rare, dangerous animals) to signal to competitors and potential mates that they can absorb the costs. These days, costly prey can be defined by the financial costs to acquire through travel, guiding and governmental fees.

I will test AAE and costly signaling hypotheses. I predict that rare species are more costly to hunt and that the hunters that kill these same rare species receive more prestigious awards from hunting organizations, such as Safari Club International (SCI) and Boone and Crockett Club. Testing these hypotheses could unite these bodies of work and identify heretofore unrecognized routes towards conservation of endangered prey."

"The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism (REM) is an encyclopedia of entries relevant to the study of modernism. The encyclopedia contains 2,900 curated essays about people, movements and places that contributed integrally to the Modernist  period. A companion site, the Linked Modernisms Project (LMP), is an ongoing project at the University of Victoria which aggregates metadata from REM and provides tools for browsing and viewing this metadata. LMP provides graphical tools for visualizing the relationships between subjects as well as locations, periods of time, political and artistic movements, etc.

Each relationship is stored' as a subject, object, predicate (SOP) triple, otherwise known as a semantic triple. Semantic triples are the data entities of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model. For example, searching the site for subject "Alan Turing" returns semantic triples such as ("Alan Turing", "has Birthdate",1912) and ("Alan Turing", creator Of, "Computer Science").

The problem of extracting semantic triples from articles in the REM is a typical problem of computational information extraction (IE). IE refers to the task of extracting information from an unstructured document (in particular plain text) and transforming the content into a formal relationship which is understood by computers. In this instance, the formal relationship is specified by the RDF data model.

The database of relationships is currently incomplete, with only a small number of the REM's subjects containing relationship data. The objective of this project is to utilize natural language processing information extraction techniques in order to finish populating the database with semantic triples that could be extracted from the REM.

The techniques utilized in this project represent an effective and pioneering method for doing literary and historical research. In addition, the methods have potential applications for research in other areas, such as biological sciences and social sciences. We believe that computational IE could represent a revolution in academic research."

"The Magellanic Stream is a trail of gas that emanates from the Magellanic Clouds and traces their orbit around the Milky Way. It is heavily lopsided, lagging behind the Clouds in their orbital path. This one-armed feature, together with the lack of stars associated with the  Stream, have raised question about its origin. If caused by Galactic tides, then one would expect a two-armed tail structure and the presence of stars. If caused by ram-pressure onto a tenuous halo of hot gas then its spatial distribution would not trace accurately the orbital path of the Clouds. We intend to address this puzzle using cosmological simulations of the formation of the Local Group of Galaxies from the APOSTLE project. Preliminary work has shown the presence of a number of one-armed features emanating from satellite galaxies in APOSTLE runs. Their detailed analysis should yield invaluable clues to interpret the properties of the Stream and to elucidate its origin."

"My research focuses on the Korean Society of Women Composers as a way of studying the development of educational opportunities for women in music throughout the latter half of the twentieth-century. I will focus on the first educational institutes in Korea and the graduates who formed the first generation of female composers as a microcosm of broader trends. In the male dominant field of music and society of Korea, these composers set a precedent in signifying female presence. Currently, the Society advocates for Korean composition globally and for educating and discovering promising future female composers."

"This project looks at code meshing and code switching as a challenge to traditional assessment models in the high school classroom. Advocates of code-switching tend to emphasize the practical value of learning to switch between different Englishes in a world that does not accept nonstandard Englishes in professional contexts, while advocates of code-meshing argue that Standard English has been arbitrarily given precedence over other Englishes and is a result of a fundamentally racist and classist system. Drawing from observations and anecdotal evidence collected in a high school classroom in 2017, the project explores the attitudes, successes, and challenges of students allowed to use code switching and meshing in their assignments."

"This project aims to improve the effectiveness of Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT), a new treatment that bolsters the patient’s immune response against their cancer through the infusion of large numbers of tumour-reactive T cells. Despite the great clinical success of ACT in some settings, there remain significant challenges that limit the effectiveness. In particular, there is a need to develop in vitro T cell expansion protocols that yield fit and active T cells rather than exhausted, terminally differentiated T cells. Traditional T cell expansion protocols use high concentrations of the T cell growth factor Interleukin-2. While this yields high numbers of T cells, they are often near the end of their functional lifespan. We hypothesize that using different combinations of growth factors that promote the formation of long-lived “memory” T cells will result in a less terminally differentiated product that is better suited to recognize and attack cancer when infused back into the patient’s bloodstream. Specific populations of T cells from the product will be classified based on their T-cell receptor variable β chain (TCR Vβ), which examines population clonality. T cell expansion products will then be analyzed by flow cytometry to determine how memory and exhaustion phenotypes vary among specific TCR Vβ populations. T cell expansion products will also be tested for reactivity against primary tumour samples. By evaluating different growth factor combinations, we hope to create an improved protocol that yields more potent T cells for use in ACT, leading to better patient outcomes."

"PLPH is a community-based research project in BC being conducted by the Pacific AIDS Network (PAN) in partnership with the University of Victoria. PLPH is investigating the relationship between housing experiences and health outcomes for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV). With the identification of housing as a critical health determinant for PLHIV, the study examines Prince George, Kamloops, and Vancouver communities using a case-study approach, exploring how housing experiences have interacted with the health and well-being of PLHIV. The study seeks to investigate how current housing and HIV programs, services, and policies have informed the health outcomes of case-study participants, and identify best practices for housing services and policies to better meet the needs of PLHIV. The study has interviewed policy makers and service providers in the three communities, and has interviewed people living with HIV at two time points, using qualitative interview, timeline and home mapping techniques. The JCURA research student will provide qualitative data analysis support and assist with the production of a community presentation and web content on study results."

"The purpose of my research is to explore the violent world of gladiatorial games in Roman society through Pompeian epigraphic inscriptions. In order to investigate the social importance of such practices in C1 AD Italy, both official dipinti and the more colourful graffiti will be explored, thus giving voice also to ordinary people.

Furthermore, in a broader territorial perspective, my analysis will try to focus on the local chauvinism that such contests fostered, and the spread of violence outside of the arena, as occurred in 59 AD.

Particular attention will be given to the new monumental epigraphic discovery recently found near Porta Stabia in Pompeii, soon to be open to the public. It is the case of a funerary tomb with an inscribed epitaph revealing new insights on the social aspect of the gladiatorial games and on historical events in Pompeii."

"Iron doped TiO2 nanocrystals, a UVic grown photo-catalyst, have been developed, tested and proven to oxidize organic material for water purification applications. The nanocrystals act as a photo-catalyst when in contact with organic material, water and visible light. The nanocrystals remain inert and do not degrade in this environment through photo-catalytic operation giving them a theoretical infinite lifetime. This research aims to study the nanocrystals’ ability to oxidize bacteria and viruses by measuring the reproductive success of gram negative E. Coli. Should the experiment prove successful, applications of the nanocrystals could be useful in reducing the transfer of diseases by creating germ free environments with TiO2 based paints with specific applications within hospitals."

"During the Archean eon, the Earth received only ~75% of the solar energy it receives today. There is no evidence, however, for the presence of an ice age during this time, which implies a immense greenhouse effect. One greenhouse gas candidate in a reducing atmosphere is ammonia. The goal of this study is to quantify the ammonia in the Archean atmosphere and to understand the extent to which the species contributed to a warmer Earth-surface temperature. We will consider both long term forcing and climate feedbacks involving ammonia."

"This paper examines the impact of the Polish government’s desire for energy security on the state-owned energy infrastructure firm, Gaz-System. The project discusses historical and political context, analyzes recent strategy and developments, and examines possible courses of action."

"With this project, I seek to analyze how Canada’s war memorials have aided in constructing historical narratives of Canada’s involvement in military conflict from the Boer Wars, through the First and Second World Wars, and finally to the Korean War. By studying memorials from each of these conflicts, I hope to understand how they reflect Canadians’ views of military conflict and the role of the military in society at the time in which they were built. I will explore how these memorials have been constructed to depict Canada, Canadians, and war in a certain way. My project will focus specifically on memorials in Victoria and Ottawa to compare how depictions of war differ across regions in Canada and, in particular, how Victoria’s military narratives differ from the larger Canadian depiction of war. Some of the secondary sources I will be using include Death So Noble (1997) by Jonathan Vance, Mystic Chords of Memory (1991) by Michael Kammen, and Blood on the Hills (1991) by David Bercuson. I also hope to utilize primary sources, such as the Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, as well as archival resources at the Military Museums in Calgary and personal observation of the memorials."

"Polymer thin films are widely employed to inhibit the adsorption of organic compounds, such as asphaltenes during the processing of crude oil. The prevention of fouling of heat exchanger surfaces is of great industrial importance for the sake of energy conservation and cost benefit. This project will investigate the structural characteristics of the polymer-oil interface in the presence of dissolved and precipitated organic species, including model asphaltene compounds."

"Victoria’s Jewish community forms an integral part of Vancouver Island heritage, including the oldest continuously operating Synagogue in Canada. As part of one of the oldest Jewish communities in Canada and the West Coast of North America, the Emanu-El Jewish Cemetery is the subject of UVic Anthropology’s Dr. Erin McGuire’s practical field course in Heritage Archaeology. At the Emanu-El Cemetery students gain hands-on experience mapping the cemetery’s burials. Through data collected by the Field School, in tandem with archival research, this research project aims to build profiles of known burials for use by the Emanu-El congregation and larger community. With such important characters as Samuel D. Schultz, the first Jewish-Canadian judge, and David Oppenheimer, second mayor of Vancouver buried at Emanu-El, compiling detailed and accessible profiles is key to disseminating knowledge of this important part of our heritage. By first identifying a group of people throughout the cemetery’s history – from pioneers to Holocaust survivors – and then building online profiles, community engagement and accessible heritage is promoted. In this growing age of internet connectivity, having ready access to heritage resources drastically increases knowledge and engagement in the wider community. The results of this project, attained through archival research, would produce detailed profiles and accessible online resources, thus engaging the community on this marginalized part of our heritage. As it is Canada’s Sesquicentennial, acknowledging all aspects of Canadian heritage, and making them easily accessible to communities everywhere, is vitally important."

"The term "civilizing mission" has been expressed as one of the primary rationales of, and justifications for, Great Britain's imperial expansion in the 19th century. This research project will attempt to unpack the meaning behind the shorthand "civilizing mission" by using the technique of "text-mining" on the collection of 19th century British literature digitized by the British library. By examining the frequency of the use of this and related terms, and exploring the main uses, I will answer the questions: What did the terms "Civilizing Mission" mean to 19th century Britons and who were the main targets of this "mission"?"

"Ferramonti di Tarsia — the largest Italian internment camp for Jews. An example of various aspects of the history of Italian Fascism which is largely unknown internationally."

"A closer look and performance of Maya, a chamber music work written by contemporary composer Ian Clarke. Maya has become a popular new standard amongst flutists world wide owing to Clarke’s influential and unconventional techniques and beautiful melodies."

"Sexualized violence affects communities throughout Canada at alarmingly high rates; however, a lack of accessible and representative data sampling, combined with a culture of silence and disbelief has limited the accuracy of data collected by states and institutions. This creates a significant gap in understanding of the structural roots of sexualized violence and its prevalence within communities, especially those that are disproportionately affected. For my project I propose that a new method, rooted in community-based and intersectional practice, will serve to produce a more holistic understanding of how sexualized violence appears in community and the extent of its impact.

This project will engage an ethnographic study here at UVic, rooted in an intersectional community-based framework. With the help of the Anti Violence Project (the on-campus sexual assault centre) I intend to work with focus groups of survivors to build a data collection model that centres the stories and safety of those who have experienced sexualized violence. From these focus groups I will build a tool (e.g. surveys, reporting frameworks) that can be used on campus to better understand the root causes, pervasiveness and impacts of sexualized violence. I strongly believe that a more intersectional and holistic understanding of how and why violence is happening will lead to better prevention and education frameworks for institutional response.

This project is also a personal endeavour. I am a survivor of sexualized violence, and I have dedicated the last 5 years of my life to engaging in anti-violence work and advocating for survivors."

"Within the scope of the larger-scale project of transforming a bacterium with an entire bacterial chromosome, we aim to find the most efficient method of recombination in vivo with the red/gam λ phage recombination system. To optimize this system, we will be testing multiple different Escherichia coli background strains and counter selection agents. Since different strains of E. coli have different efficiencies of both taking up exogenous DNA and degrading exogenous linear DNA, and both of these features are likely to affect efficiency of “capture by recombination”, it will be important to test and determine these features to inform our decision of strain selection. Counter selection elements provide selective pressure when one is isolating recombinant DNA that lacks an antibiotic marker. This project will compare recombinant capture of Thermus thermophilus DNA into a BAC using different E. coli strains (recA, recJ, recD, etc.) and with different plasmids expressing red/gam functions. Additionally, we will compare the efficacy of CRISPR/Cas9, homing endonuclease I-SceI, and sacB (+sucrose) at enhancing the identification of BAC recombinants."

"In the spring of 2017, the Canadian government announced its plans to end the prohibition of the recreational use of marijuana by the summer of 2018. This marks the end of nearly 100 years of governmental control of the drug, which began in the midst of the 1920s drug panic document by Catherine Carstairs and others. Opium was generally the substance in question, and while there were others, such as morphine and cocaine, which were publicly condemned, marijuana was largely unknown. Yet in 1923, it was added to the list of scheduled substances with little fanfare. Why did this occur? Carstairs suggests that the roots of marijuana prohibition can be found in Mackenzie King's attendance at international events on the opium trade from 1909-1912. This is particularly significant as the scheduling of marijuana occurred under King's government. The initial causes of the prohibition of marijuana remain unclear and appear somewhat separate from the broader drug panic; the first seizure of marijuana did not occur until fifteen years after its prohibition, in 1937, and it was not targeted by the anit-drug campaigns of the 1920s. I would like to more closely investigate the potential sources of marijuana prohibition by examing the House of Commons debates that saw its introduction, the report of the 1909 commission and the subsequent Hague Opium Conference, as well as Mackenzie King's personal diaries during those years. Hopefully, by the end of prohibition, I can shed some light on its beginning."

"This research project argues that Katherine Dunn's carnivalesque Geek Love (1989) rewrites Shakespeare's The Tempest by privileging female characters and matriarchal power. Instead of comparing characters (Shakespeare's Miranda and Dunn's Miranda, for instance) or focusing on familiar themes (such as normalcy and monstrosity), I foreground how the colours blue and green correspond with power dynamics in both texts. Through an emphasis on colour and colour patterns, my reading centres on how the aesthetics of Geek Love reveal a subtle spectrum of gender politics at play in key moments of conflict. While existing scholarship on Dunn's work reduces Geek Love to a product of 1990s subculture, or it stresses the novel's tendencies toward vulgarity and "freakishness," no journal articles or monographs attend to how Dunn repurposes The Tempest through her use of colour, let alone how colour operates in relation to gender and power. To support my argument, I am interpreting colour as a symbol in the early modern and contemporary periods, and I am reading Color Codes (Riley 1995) and The Key of Green (Smith 2009) to historicize my inquiry through cultural studies of design and perception. I am also reading colour as both an allusion and articulation of gender, consulting publications such as Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare/s Plays (Adelman 1992) and Prospero/s Island (Cobb 1984). Finally, to position colour as a signifier of difference, I responding to Weese's "Normalizing Freakery: Katherine Dunn's Geek Love and the Female Grotesque" (2000), one of few compelling articles about Dunn's novel. Ultimately, my research expands scholarly attention to Dunn's work beyond its association with 90s era "freaks and geeks" by introducing a reading that focuses on Geek Love's canonical influences and demonstrating (through interpretations of colour) a significant shift in notions of female power between the renaissance and the late twentieth century. I will present this research in poster format, which is conducive to sharing observations about the politics and aesthetics of colour."

"Sisters Rising is a community-based study with Indigenous girls, youth and young women, conducted in urban and rural communities in western BC. Sisters Rising responds to the urgent need for community-rooted responses to sexualized violence that support Indigenous wellbeing and sovereignty. Despite the calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Indigenous girls and young women are too often the object of deficit-focused research; few studies have explored the historic and systemic roots of sexual violence from their perspectives. Our focus is on challenging the victim-blaming climate of gender violence by recentering Indigenous teachings and linking body sovereignty to decolonization and land sovereignty.

As a proud mother of five and a Nuu-Chah-Nulth student, this study will support my undergraduate success and future application to graduate school. I will facilitate hands-on, arts-based research workshops with Indigenous girls, youth and young women in their own communities. Working with knowledge holders such as Elders, our goal will be to recenter Indigenous teachings that honor young people of all genders. Participants will use land-based methods (i.e., storytelling, drumming) and materials (hide, cedar, wool, etc.) to explore issues of dignity, safety, sexualized and gender violence, and resurgence. Workshops will be documented through multimedia methods including digital collage and video. As a way of sharing across Nations, our research team will co-author peer-reviewed publications, host workshops and activities, and create resources on sexualized violence, all showcased on the Sisters Rising website."

"My research project will be a comparative analysis of the impacts of climate change on the food security of Indigenous peoples on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada, and Aotearoa (New Zealand). While in two different hemispheres, the central coast of British Columbia and New Zealand have similar latitudes, climates, and ecosystems, and will likely face similar impacts from climate change. Through the the lens of food security, this project will therefore analyze how the impact of climate change on Indigenous peoples may also be influenced by the cultural, political, and socioeconomic environments that they are in. Thus, it will lead to a greater understanding of how differing human forces may influence Indigenous peoples ability to respond to the pressures imposed on them by global climate change in similar environments. It will also help create an understanding of the experiences of Indigenous nations in these areas regarding climate change and food security, and how they perceive future solutions, and current limitations to these solutions. The project will build off of my previous work in Heiltsuk territory on the central coast of BC, where I worked with community members and researchers to learn about their relationship to the land and ecosystems of their territory, and how they have witnessed and experienced climate change through these relationships."

"Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the world has been considered to be ‘Unipolar’ – characterized by the United States enjoying an unparalleled level of military, economic, and geopolitical prowess. In my research I will be attempting to ascertain whether this period is coming to an end. My research question is: Will the present system of US Unipolarity persist, in spite of challenges from Russia and China? This question will be answered by not only looking at military and economic indicators, but I will also investigate (through discourse analysis) how the United States perceives these threats from Russia and China."

"In the 2014/2015 school year, British Columbia accepted 18,700 international students in the K-12 school system and this number is only growing. Districts are happy to offer space to international students as they bring in tuition dollars and create jobs to run and support international student programs. Most of these international students, as well as the increasing number of immigrant students, are English language learners (ELL) and must learn English while integrating into the Canadian curriculum to try to be successful in their classes. Through my experiences teaching Biology 11 on practicum, speaking with practicing teachers, and working with ELL students I have recognized a shortfall in successful learning opportunities for ELL students in the science classroom. International and immigrant learners struggle to take away meaning and context from their science lessons taught in English when they are faced with the new uncommon vocabulary of the language of “science”.  This project focuses on instructional and relational strategies to increase success of ELLs in the science classroom. Research based on adaptations and modifications to improve the experiences of both teachers and international and immigrant students with consideration to science curriculum will be showcased."

"Peatlands cover only 3% of the global land surface but play an important role in the global carbon budget because they store more carbon per unit area than any other terrestrial ecosystem. There is concern that carbon stored in peatlands may be released through accelerated decomposition caused by atmospheric warming and that this process will further accelerate warming. Previous studies have shown that the amount of carbon stored in peatlands depends on the type of peat that accumulates. In order to understand the possible impacts of climate change on these important carbon sinks, research on how past changes in plant communities and climate have influenced peatland carbon storage is needed. In this project, I will analyze a peat sequence collected from a fen located on central Vancouver Island that spans the last 13,000 years. I will determine the type of peat (moss, sedge or ligneous peat) that has accumulated at this site using plant macrofossil analysis. This analysis will show whether changes in plant communities over the last 13,000 years have resulted in the accumulation of different types of peat. These data will be combined with carbon analysis to determine the relationship between changes in peat composition and carbon storage through time. Documenting changes in peat composition and carbon storage on long timescales will help improve our understanding of peatland dynamics and is essential for identifying the potential impacts of future climate change on these important carbon sinks."

"The Willerth Lab uses stem cells to engineer neural tissue.  Stem cells have the ability to differentiate into any cell type in the body.  This tissue engineered from stem cells can be used to streamline drug screening and in organ transplantation increase supply and negate the risk of tissue rejection. However, tissue engineering still faces challenges.  Many cells need to grow in three dimensional (3D) aggregates to communicate and differentiate properly. Cells at the center of the aggregate interact less with molecules in the surrounding media while cells on the outside of the aggregate interact more with molecules in the surrounding media.  Additionally, morphogens must be added to the media on a regular schedule, making the entire process exponentially more labour intensive.  Microspheres are a potential solution because they can be incorporated into cell aggregates and degrade over periods of up to 100 days, allowing continuous and evenly distributed morphogen delivery.  Biodegradable scaffolds can also be used to support the cells and mimic the biological environment. In the future these scaffolds can be bioprinted in order to streamline the entire differentiation process.  This experiment investigates differing morphogens incorporated into microspheres, with 3D cell aggregates embedded into biodegradable scaffolds."

"Alcohol is a teratogen that can lead to a range of developmental problems in offspring known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs). Ethanol exposure during pregnancy, known more formally as Pre-natal ethanol exposure (PNEE), especially affects an infant’s ability to learn and form memories, which are functions commonly associated with the hippocampus, a subcortical structure. The efficacy of neural transmission and synaptic plasticity in the brain is determined by both increasing and decreasing synaptic strength of neurotransmission, known as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD), respectively. Using in-vitro electrophysiology techniques, I will be carrying out high-frequency stimulation (HFS) and low-frequency stimulation (LFS) protocols in the medial perforant path of the dentate gyrus, within the hippocampus, to analyze differences in LTP and LTD of male and female pair-fed rats."

"Our research will be investigating subjects brain activity prior and during a written test completed by the participant; brain activity will be recorded using a portable FFG device. Ultimately we would work towards predicting academic performance analyzing the EEG data."

"My project will explore how nationalist rhetoric was employed by feminists to advocate in favour of eugenics in early twentieth century Canada. The creation and implementation of sterilization legislation will be specifically examined, to show the connections between nationalism, eugenics and women’s advocacy.

Growing concerns around the "racial degeneration" of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), gave WASP women an opportunity to fashion themselves as mothers of the race, and the nation. In doing so, suffragettes were able to justify their participation in politics, often specifically in areas of social and moral reform. 

The platform for women's suffrage was built on racial anxiety, and the notion that motherhood was intrinsically connected to the health of the nation. Therefore, when reformists turned their efforts to eugenics, women and racial minorities became targets of the resulting sterilization legislation."

"Idealist, innatist philosophers (e.g., G. W. Leibniz, C. A. Campbell) considered human beings to be both active agents within, and single, distinct perspectives on, a greater social reality. Symbolic Interactionists (e.g., E. Goffman, C. Cooley) investigated social development by imagining individuals as simultaneously reflective and creative of social reality. Within this backdrop of innate perspectivalism, I intend to investigate the notion that there are features common to all people, and thus to their societies, that might inform sociological accounts of human activity. The study of such features would contrast the empiricist approach dominant to sociology. I raise this topic through a focus on conspiracy theory."

"Indigenous communities are distinct communities within Canada, with their own cultural beliefs, practices, and languages. These communities are viewed as some of the economically poorest communities in the country, but arguably they are some of the wealthiest in terms of culture and kinship connections. In economics, well-being is often measured using income, life expectancy, education, and income. In Canada in particular, the well-being of Indigenous communities is often evaluated using a composite index called the Community Well-being Index (CWI). I believe that this and other measures do not fully encompass what it means for Indigenous communities to be “well-off.” Using my home community of K’omoks First Nation as a case study, I will look at currently available measures of well-being such as income, life expectancy, and the CWI and evaluate how tightly they relate to traditional and current ideas of well-being. I will then propose and construct other indicators of well-being, such as cultural retention and life satisfaction, which may be more useful in evaluating the effectiveness of policies and programs."

"This project will scan review the scope of technology use in the technology and society classroom. We will delve into how the technology and society coursework provides students theoretical opportunities and digital skills use. Juliet and Janni will also scan other similar courses in the province and survey former students. This will require ethics approval and will offer Juliet the opportunity for familiarity with qualitative and quantitative research."

"I have completed a scoping review of the literature examining intergenerational music-based interventions between children or youth and persons with dementia. This research is in support of Dr. Debra Sheet's ongoing research of a choir here in Victoria, Voices in Motion, composed of high school students, persons with dementia, and their caregivers."

"Sediments are a crucial component to the aquatic ecosystem of estuaries and coastal wetlands, as they influence the biotic and abiotic exchanges and morphological transformations that occur (Levin et al., 2001). The Skeena River, a watershed in Northwestern British Columbia, at its delta mouth, deposits millions of tonnes of dissolved, suspended, and bedload sediment into the Skeena estuary (Kelson, 2012). However, there is little available, long term data records on sediment load transported by the Skeena River. In order to address this gap in knowledge, public and open source data were used to estimate sediment load and river discharge over a thirty year period at the mouth of the Skeena River using the Hydrotrend model. These results were compared with observed river discharge station data along the Skeena River in order to assess model accuracy. Trends apparent within the long term sediment load estimates are contextualized in terms of their current and posed future implications for the estuary. Moving forward with this research, a successful model could be used to estimate sediment load at the river mouth into the future using predicted climate scenarios or supplement further studies on the sedimentation within the Skeena estuary.

Keywords: Hydrology, Watershed, Modelling, Sediments, Discharge, Estuary, British Columbia 

References:

Kelson, J. (2012). 2011 Skeena Estuary Study (Rep.). Retrieved January 20, 2017.

Levin, L. A., Boesch, D. F., Covich, A., Dahm, C., Erséus, C., Ewel, K. C., ... & Strayer, D. (2001). The function of marine critical transition zones and the importance of sediment biodiversity. Ecosystems, 4(5), 430-451."

"We will study a parameterized family of area-preserving maps of the torus (related to the "standard family"). The Lyapunov exponent measures the rate of stretching of microscopic regions as they are iterated under the dynamical system. There are many unresolved questions about coherence of unstable directions, existence of stable periodic points etc."

"This is a pilot study focusing on the attitudes, skills, and practices related to oral health care during pregnancy. The objective is to identify baseline knowledge of general dentist and dental hygienists when working with pregnant patients. The second objective is to define the barriers and facilitators to accessing oral health care as identified by general dentist and hygienist. This pilot study is affiliated with a larger program of research being conducted and is in partnership with Island Health."

"A combinatorial design is, roughly speaking, a family arrangements of some objects which enjoys various `balance’ properties.  An example is a completed Sudoku puzzle, in which every row and column uses all symbols exactly once each.  Hill-climbing is a standard algorithm used for constructing combinatorial designs on computer (among many other uses).  Some exciting recent work gives randomized constructions of combinatorial designs using an `iterative absorption method’.  However, these methods are theoretical and have no chance of generating a practical-sized example.  This research aims to explore the possible computational benefit of using absorbers in hill-climbing algorithms for designs."

"Women migrants in China’s big cities are increasingly well educated white-collar workers. Portrayals of the experiences of such migrant women in popular culture have raised awareness and shaped public perceptions. This project will explore representations of the lives of women migrants in Shanghai through an analysis of the hugely popular TV drama series Ode to Joy. The series revolves around the stories of five unmarried professional women on the same floor of a residential block in Shanghai. Focusing on all aspects of their personal and professional lives, the series has raised many issues about the experiences of young women in China, and especially of migrant women in large cities. The way in which these experiences are portrayed and represented in Ode to Joy will be critically analyzed in relation to key findings and debates in the academic literature, including differential treatment of migrant women, changing gender relations norms, balancing career aspirations with traditional expectations around marriage and children, and the tensions between female migrant identity and urban status. A key objective is to highlight where popular representations of migrant women are confirmed or not in the academic literature, and to comment on the possible impact of such portrayals on public perceptions in general, and on government policy in particular. The research will raise further questions about the relationship between the actual experiences of migrant women in Chinese megacities and how these are represented in contemporary popular culture in China."

"On board computer (OBC) on UVSD’s Homathko satellite handles with sensor processing, communications system, and payload deployment. OBC has to operate in harsh radiation enviroments in low earth orbit. The duration of the mission is approximately two years. UVic’s astronomy department and ALTAIR project requires multiple LASERs in orbit for telescope calibrations. Homathko fires multiple LASERs to a telescope for measuring distortions in upper atmosphere. Distortion information allows astronomers to get better images of celestial objects. Homathko requires a 2º attitude determination system for the LASER. OBC is required to be able to recover from soft errors induced by cosmic radiaiton. The system is also required to operate in extended range of temperatures from -20ºC to +70ºC. The physical size is constrained to 10 cm by 10 cm, which will require surface mounted components and a multiple layer printed circuit board. OBC will have a ham radio repeater. OBC will have RF and magnetic shielding to protect the instruments OBC will undergo extensive hardware and software testing. TRIUMF will induce 5krad of TID to OBC for testing."

"During a recent co-op work term, I became aware of the acute implications salary and hiring freezes can have on a firm's short-term operations. Lacking the ability to remain competitive in the labor market, and without the discretion to develop new positions, firms under salary and/or hiring freezes are limited in their ability to keep up with industry growth. Moreover, inefficiencies spawn from such policies and are costly; therefore, firms need to appropriately factor in all the indirect costs associated with such policies before implementing them. In my research study, I propose to explore the long-term effects of these temporary policies on corporates and public sector institutions.

I plan to develop a model based on microeconomic theory that explores the relationship between the short-term savings decisions of firms (focusing on hiring and salary freezes) and the long-term effects those decisions can have. Typically, firms have numerous choices at their disposal to control or cut costs. Are they making the optimal one when choosing labor?

With the model, I would like to answer practical questions applicable to the private and public sector. For example, under what scenario is choosing an alternative method to control costs optimal? In a short-term liquidity crunch is a firm better off cutting production or foregoing merit increases? What type of impact will a hiring freeze have on long-term productivity or innovation at the firm level? Are the effects different across the public and private sector?

"This research project will explore how marine protected areas (MPAs) might help promote marine mammal protection from underwater noise. This will involve using GIS to help identify areas on the west coast where important marine mammal habitat overlaps with high noise levels, and proposing potential sites where establishing MPAs could help protect marine mammals."

"Previous electrophysiological research has shown that the electro-excitability of hippocampal circuits can change in response to traumatic brain injury (TBI). My honors project will study the effect of repeated minor TBIs on the structural plasticity of the hippocampus in rats. Structural plasticity, or neuroplasticity, is the brain's ability to change and adapt due to experience. The hippocampus is responsible for the formation of long-term memories and upon TBI, can be damaged and reasonable for cognitive and memory deficits. Specifically, I am interested in the effects seen in the performant pathway which extends between the entorhinal cortex to all fields of the hippocampus, including the dentate gyms. By stimulating this pathway, the excitability of post-synaptic neurons can be observed by recording the resultant excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP). Long-term Potentiation (LTP) describes an increase in the strength and efficiency of neuronal communication and can be represented by an increase of the quality of the EPSP in a pathway. The formation of LTP can be produced in vivo by sending rapid and short bursts of electricity through a pathway of neurons. This project compares the quality of resultant EPSPs following LTP stimulation between rats that have incurred minor TBI and healthy control rats. The results of this study will isolate the effect that minor TBI has on the structural plasticity of the hippocampus and, therefore, the ability to perform its normal cognitive and memory functions."

"In order to help characterize the protein Streptavidin, I am seeking to research and identify the time-constant between open and closed transition states of the proteins binding mechanism by utilizing optical trapping data. These transition states are a theoretical model of how the protein binds and if a characterization is extracted from the data, it can be used extensively in both research facilities and industry.

By analyzing data of the protein trapped in gold double-nanohole samples from the lab, I will develop a Matlab program to help identify the state transitions through signal processing techniques such as filtering, autocorrelation, Golay-smoothing, etc."

"With the increase in ocean levels and global warming, there is a desperate need for renewable and clean energy at this time, more than ever before. Although the economic development of technologies such as wind and solar power is improving, these energy sources are intermittently available in nature. A reliable energy storage technology could bridge the gap between the supply and demand of electricity.

The osmotic energy storage system would store energy by separating a water-based solution, creating a chemical potential. Energy is retrieved by mixing the solutions. The research would involve optimizing such a technology and would show the practicality of an osmotic energy storage system."

"Germany has become a focal point for human trafficking. Many factors have contributed to the rise of this problem, including under-investigation and underreporting of the issue. It is also partly the result of legislative changes, such as the removal of the main methods of victim identification through the legalization of prostitution and the 2007 expansion of the Schengen agreement which allows for travel in Europe within the Schengen zone without passport controls. Sex trafficking has increased in Germany in the wake of the refugee crisis. Germany has accepted over a million refugees in 2015. Officials involved in refugee camp protection have openly admitted that exploitation is probably occurring, but are not looking into it. This may be due to officials and social programs being overstressed from the magnitude of the refugee crisis, racial biases, fear of potential terrorism, and the temporary nature of the camps. There also seems to be little pressure from the German public or legislators to increase investigations of human trafficking in the refugee camps.

In my JCURA project, I wish to research how and why human trafficking in refugee camps in Germany is occurring. I want to study what obstacles officials face, and how these obstacles are essentially facilitating human trafficking, and I will focus in particular on examining to what extent racial and cultural biases may be contributing to the under-investigating of human trafficking in German refugee camps. I will also be applying for a short-term research grant through the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) to conduct some on-site research for this project."

"Predation by Arctic foxes is the primary cause of shorebird nest failure on Coats Island, Nunavut. Vegetation in certain tundra habitats provides excellent concealment for nesting shorebirds. Yet paradoxically, data from an artificial nest experiment shows that habitats with the greatest concealment also face the highest predation rates. I hypothesize that this is the result of foxes targeting habitats typically preferred by shorebirds, thereby optimizing their foraging. To determine this, I will conduct research at a well-established research camp on Coats Island, in the north end of Hudson Bay. Throughout the shorebird nesting season, I will place trail cameras among the island’s four dominant habitat types: sedge meadow, dry heath, gravel ridge and scrub willow. I will use a combination of trail camera data and observational records to determine whether foxes concentrate their nest searching efforts in certain habitat types. I will also determine the primary habitat types favoured by nesting shorebirds by searching for nests throughout the season and broadly categorizing the habitat types they are found in. I will then relate variations in fox search intensity between habitats to shorebird nest site selection. Understanding fox nest searching strategies and shorebird nest site selection will help provide information on complex predator-prey interactions."

"Growing up in Saskatchewan, I’ve always had a healthy appetite for local legends and folklore. Candle Lake is named for its mysterious lights that sometimes appear on the lake’s surface, like candles, with earliest reported sightings going back to the Cree tribes that inhabited the area. As a writing student, my studies have focused on fiction and non-fiction. Folklore’s blend of truth and mystery makes them compelling content to tackle. For my project, I intend to bring this legend to life as a short comic, an ideal story-telling form for oral histories, which are often image-based and rarely in print."

"According to electronic music composer and feminist scholar Tara Rodgers, “sounds and audio technologies are crucial sites of representation through which such historical shifts and associated cultural politics were imagined, expressed, and legitimated.” In the history of electronic music, the contribution of Daphne Oram’s “oramics machine” has been largely overlooked.

Developed in the early 1960s, oramics was an approach to musical composition that would allow composers to establish the parameters of individual sounds using an alphabet of hand-drawn symbols on synchronized strips of film. These symbols would then be fed into the oramics machine to produce the desired sonic output. Oram’s inspiration and research for the oramics machine was largely influenced by Pierre Schaeffer’s concept of the “sound object,” an individual sonic entity ontologically distinct from its source that Oram illustrates in her out-of-print 1972 work, “An Individual Note: Of Music, Sound, and Electronics.”

"A lack of positive role models in the school may contribute to decrease a student’s self-efficacy, especially in academic and career-related motivation. For example, recent studies have shown that the lack of women in professional roles depicted in public school textbooks in the United States most likely is a contributing factor to the lack of representation of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields (Ceci et al., 2015, Styles, 2015). 20% of Canada’s population is comprised of new settlers, introducing diversity in the Canadian classroom that extends beyond gender to include language, ethnicity, religion, affiliations, sexual orientation, abilities and economic status. With such a diverse set of students in the classroom, it is important that each student feels represented and observes positive role models at school in order to maintain high self-efficacy and succeed academically and socially. This project will consider the representation and self-efficacy of varying ethnicities in general school-created media (posters, newsletters, yearbooks, website) and perceived self-efficacy of student populations. Interviews will be conducted with students of all/random ethnicities of several high schools in Victoria to record their perceived representation as well as academic self-efficacy and media from these high schools will be analyzed to record representation of the considered ethnicities. The goal of this research is to determine if there is a correlation between representation by the school of particular students and students’ perceived self-efficacy. The results of this research may motivate schools with a diverse student population to properly maintain strong self-efficacy among its diverse student body.

Ceci, S., Ginther, D., Kahn, S. & Williams, (2015). Women in science: The path to progress. Scientific American Mind, 26 (1): 62-69.

"The argument of civil and criminal cases before the bench is a highly performative process, wherein barristers provide persuasive arguments on the interpretation of laws, evidence and fact. These performances, and their legal outcomes in the form of jury or administrative tribunal decision-making, serve not only to resolve a conflict between two parties, they can also establish or reinforce social norms of behaviour and thought when performed in front of an audience or jurors and spectators.

This research will explore in what ways did the legal performances of barristers (1858-1889) impact the early cultural and social norms of the new town of Victoria BC?"

"This research project aims to explore diverse methods of timekeeping, and how they can be minded and navigated within the secular state. Using holiday and calendar as the focus of inquiry, this research project will explore how the Canadian state and body of politics/institution/organization approach timekeeping that deviates from the “secular” Gregorian schedule. Necessarily, this research will be first grounded with the history of the Gregorian calendar within Canada, and its privileging as the “secular” and official measure of time. Aiming to be as inclusive as possible, while negotiating the realty of scope and language within academia, the project will focus on the “world religions” and their presence in Canada. Historic and contemporary calendars and methods of timekeeping will be considered as being pertinent contributors to the current landscape of “official” Canadian time. Research will include inquiries and dialogue with experts and practitioners in the field, predominantly through the University of Victoria’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society (which will be the venue of RS403, Studies in Religion and Society – whose coursework and academic relationships will contribute to the proposed JCURA research project). The final poster project will feature an analysis of how diverse methods of timekeeping are currently regarded and employed, as well as a proposal for needed considerations based on findings."

"Despite the harsh repression imposed by the counter-revolutionary regime led by President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, the nature of the Egyptian revolution that began in 2011 remains indeterminate. Whether or not historians will even label it a revolution remains to be seen. The ideological and institutional battle between the new regime and any remaining opposition has managed to drown out the diverse voices of the revolution that challenged the status quo in Tahrir Square and around the country. In the name of promoting “stability” in the region, the regime manipulates inter-communal differences to produce fear of uncertainty and characterizes any one who disagrees with its policies as a threat.

Revolutionary theory is marked by a distinction between what is known as third generation scholarship that focuses on state-based, structural factors and fourth generation scholarship that takes an interdisciplinary approach accounting for a multitude of further socio-political factors. The unfolding conflict in Egypt is an exceptional case study for comparing the merits and limitations of these two approaches. Using them comparatively to examine recent Egyptian history, a range of crucial questions emerge: how, if at all, has the paternalistic relationship between a military autocrat and the Egyptian people, associated with President Gamal Abdel Nasser, changed due to the events of 2011? How, if at all, did the revolution of 2011 affect how individual Egyptians understood themselves in relation to the state and each other? I intertwine my study of this uncertain history with the ongoing historiographical debate on the nature of revolutions."

Being a tripartite analysis, this project requires in depth examination of these three individual areas of study as a starting point in order to accurately grasp the background contexts of each. As such, I will be consulting sources such as Le Territoire imaginaire de la culture (Morin, Bertrand 1979) and “The New Quebec Culture” (Morin 1980) to help understand the sociocultural background that fueled the separatist movement in Quebec. I will also look at primary and secondary source political analyses such as and Nationalism and Literature: The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States (Corse 1997) to grasp the academic understanding of the separatist question. Finally, to advise my understanding of the role that irony plays in literature, I will consult analyses of the role that irony plays in literature, such as Linda Hutcheon’s Irony’s Edge (Hutcheon 1994) and Cynthia Willett’s Irony in the Age of Empire (Willett 2008).

"I will complete two five by ten foot abstract paintings, both composed of very small and somewhat uniform marks.  In order to avoid an overly busy piece, I will keep a nearly monochromatic palette and restrict the materials used to one brush and type of paint for each piece.  The first work will be painted with soybean resin and the second will be with graphite.

The work, ‘Many Lemmas,’ will be a time consuming and laboured task: it will require mechanical discipline.  This will allow me to make art as if I were a robot without the option of creative ambition.  On the other hand, even with these heavy restrictions I will be forced to decide whether it is compositionally favourable to make a mark or leave a space blank with every moment I am drawing.  In mathematics, a lemma is a step within a proof that only solves one pieces of a larger problem.  For this reason, I consider the two works to be pieces composed entirely of lemmas.

"During the late-medieval and early-modern period, increasing travel, trade, and contact with peoples of different cultures, religions, and ethnicities brought Western European understandings of the human body into question. My research investigates whether such contemplations and fears, as established in the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, were a reflection of changing conceptions about bodies. I consider how the legend reinforced the superiority of ‘appropriately’ human bodies which conformed to Caucasian, Christian, masculine ideals, and argue that representations of the dragon reflected expanding cultural notions of the racialized, feminized, and pagan ‘monstrous’ Other.

Within Europe, the Christian church was the ultimate authority for determining and controlling what was considered ‘normal.’ Religious, biological, and cultural judgements became problematic for those with non-normative bodies and, thus, were considered beyond redemption. Within the legend, immoral female desire is symbolized by the denigrated dragon being penetrated by the saint’s pseudo-phallic lance and female purity through the princess’s girdle and virginity. Over fifty known representations depict the dragon with a vagina and/or breasts, further feminizing and reducing its power. Ethnic differences were also used to establish political and religious assertions of authority based on culturally perceived physical characteristics and skin colour. The dragon’s dark skin and monstrous form clearly distinguished it from Christians. Ultimately, the dragon symbolized those human bodies deemed unqualified for belonging to ‘humankind’ and, therefore, ineligible for religious conversion and salvation, as part of a normative process of representation—which was anything but neutral, as this study suggests."

"The prolific author of Gothic and sensational tales designed to unnerve and mystify his Victorian readers, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73) published his works in numerous popular periodicals. Though he vehemently rejected ties to the genre of sensation fiction, his lurid stories nonetheless titillated the public imagination, inspired contemporaries like Charles Dickens and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and regularly haunted the pages of periodicals such as All the Year Round, Belgravia, and The Dark Blue. Yet, as Nicholas Rance writes, “of the sensational triumvirate of Collins, Braddon, and Le Fanu, it was the relatively conservative Le Fanu who attracted the least audience” (166). Perhaps best known today for his sexually charged vampire tale “Carmilla,” a story that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Le Fanu is today largely overlooked by scholars; Simon Cooke notes this “critical neglect,” emphasizing “the lack of any sustained analysis of the rich field of illustration” (“Haunted Images”).

For my JCURA project, I will address this lack, examining the original periodical illustrations for four of the five tales that comprise Le Fanu’s 1872 collection of short stories, In a Glass Darkly: “Green Tea” (All the Year Round 1869; unillustrated), “The Familiar” (Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery 1851), “Mr. Justice Harbottle” (Belgravia 1872), “The Room in the Dragon Volant” (London Society 1872), and “Carmilla” (The Dark Blue 1871–72). Drawing on Victorian illustration studies, I will analyse how text and image function together to produce different effects in different stories and publication venues despite the stories’ connection through the recurring character of occult detective Dr. Martin Hesselius."

"The retreat and downwasting of glaciers flowing from the Andrei Icefield in the Boundary Ranges in northwestern British Columbia is exposing the remains of forests buried during Holocene glacier advances. My research will focus on a dendroglaciological analyses of radiocarbon-dated wood remains collected at eastward flowing Forrest Kerr Glacier. The intent is to construct radiocarbon dated floating chronologies from these archived samples to describe the late-Holocene behavior of the glaciers. The research will document discrete advances and allow for a description of the accompanying paleoclimate."

"My research project aims to characterize the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) at the heliospheric distances of Mercury, Earth and Mars using magnetometer data from MESSENGER, ACE and MAVEN, respectively. The observations will span from September 2014 until April 2015, which is the period of overlap when all three spacecraft were operational.

I will look at the three vector components of the IMF, in the radial-tangential-normal (RTN) coordinate system, as well as its magnitude and how these all vary with heliospheric distance. I will also compute the direction of the IMF, in terms of the azimuthal and polar angles, and look at how they vary with heliospheric distance. The results will then be compared to theoretical predictions (e.g. Parker, 1958; Totten et al., 1995) and other empirical results (e.g. Khabarova and Obridko, 2012; Khabarova, 2013).

"Language functions as the currency of nationalism. I wish to explore questions related to how language assimilation and negotiation can affect the identities and experiences of people and groups in Canada that have first or traditional languages that are not English or French. Language is a crucial component of identity and culture that informs how the very world is interpreted. Drawing from a Lacanian analysis of coming into subjectivity through language, it becomes crucial to examine how subjectivities become translated and how language is used to demarcate the boundaries of national subjecthood and citizenship.

I hope to denaturalize the myth of English and French as the true and sporadically occurring languages of what is now called Canada, and the naturalization of their dominance and hegemony. I also wish to use this discussion of language to focus attention on the myth of Canada’s idyllic multiculturalism, as a reminder that the imposition of English and French and the suppression of other languages is not a gentle or benign process, but one that continues today and has created a situation in which at times there literally is no language to be able to express what has been lost. It is crucial to acknowledge that, while we are all agents and may choose to learn dominant languages to gain access to various things, we are also all located in unequal configurations of power that are historically rooted."

"I define gratitude broadly in terms of self-awareness, appreciation for oneself, others, and the world around us. Gratitude as a value, and an attitude, is closely connected with self-reflection and ways in which we view and use time. Cultivating gratitude among students within the new BC curriculum means addressing social justice issues and Indigenous worldviews in meaningful ways, ultimately fostering dispositions of responsibility, respect, and active membership in community. I am completing my second practicum with the Institute of Global Solutions at Claremont Secondary and hope to explore ways in which the teachers, who are propelled and inspired by teaching environmental-based solutions, also address ecological relationships as quintessential to changing the world, paying attention to relationships and epistemologies appropriate to these global matters. Much like the case of climate change, where the industrial and neoliberal models that are driving much of corporate decision-making but is fundamentally unsustainable, I am examining individualistic notions of what is ‘best for me’ and addressing the failure of this mindset to acknowledge the various levels of privilege we hold and the potential impact of relationships with elders, teachers, parents, and peers in community.

My questions include: How can self, and community, reflective gratitude enhance ecological literacies and learning in students? How can educators support and cultivate gratitude in learners? And why is gratitude important in today’s world, and to future generations?

I will draw on the work of Paulo Freire, Shawn Wilson and Lorna Williams to more deeply understand the issues related to working on ecological mindshifts with students, and will then develop a two-part inquiry: 1) developing and implementing a unit of study focused on gratitude as a way to better understand ways to interact meaningfully and collectively in the world, observing students’ reactions and responses; and 2) conduct follow-up interviews with selected students in the class and with mentor teachers I have been working with."

"My research will explore the use of the societal Other in the concept musicals of the 1960s and 1970s (particularly Cabaret, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Company). Concept musicals (also called “bookless musicals”) revolve around a metaphor or idea rather than a linear narrative/plot, and often comment upon societal values or trends, while also defying unifying structural elements. While elements were used as a means to experiment with form (Bob Fosse, for example, used concept musicals to explore the possibilities of intertwining dance with the story), other concept musicals reveled in exploring the use of morally or sexually ambiguous characters on stage without automatically villainizing them. This lead to a proliferation of characters that defied societal restrictions placed on sex and gender—the Emcee in Cabaret, whose ambiguous sexuality controls the “underground” Kit Kat Klub; Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, whose “alien” proclivities cause ruptures in polite society; and Bobby in Company, a polite, perfectly ordered man coming to terms with his sexuality. The heroes of concept musicals are ambiguous, created from the moral fears of the dominant society of the time, produced as Other even as they captivate (and titillate) the audience—and these characters change with the whims of directors, shifting to continuously represent the antithesis of the hegemonic values of the time."

"TeenWork supports youth with disabilities who seek meaningful, part-time paid employment, providing comprehensive support and guidance from the moment of first interest and continuing if needed to adulthood. Ninety-three percent of TeenWork participants achieve paid employment during participation and 85% exit the program with paid employment. TeenWork staff suggest that the strengths of the program are: youth-to-youth support; individualized and long-term support; flexibility in program design; extensive communication with participants, guardians, and employers; and voluntary participation.

TeenWork is an example of a class of employment support programs; the criteria of success and the program practices in these programs vary widely. The objective of this project is to use TeenWork as a case study for assessing the usefulness of the criteria.

The activities of this study are:

a)     to locate in the evaluation literature the common criteria of success and contributors to success for supportive employment programs for youth;

b)     analytically compare those with current TeenWork practices; and

c)     use those criteria to pilot/test a data collection tool with a sample of participants, guardians, and employers."

"During the war, the Vichy regime aided Nazi Germany in deporting approximately 76,000 Jews from France, including children. Until very recently, public access to documents was extremely limited. Examining both current research and past documentation, I will research the extent of the collaboration with Nazi Germany and how it affected daily life in both France and Germany during the Second World War."

"When the Russian Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich commissioned twelve compositions to mark the 70th birthday of his friend, conductor Paul Sacher, he did far more than inspire a tremendous addition to the solo cello repertoire. In enlisting musical luminaries as varied as Benjamin Britten, Luciano Berio, and Pierre Boulez, Rostropovich brought about a confluence of works by artists whose field had been maligned as being disparate beyond aesthetic comprehension. The resulting 12 compositions amount to a nexus of currents in contemporary art music that demands the attention of a wider audience.

My study will begin by looking at the influence of Sacher and Rostropovich on the trajectory of modern music by examining how they came to affect the lives and careers of the 12 composers involved in the project. Turning to the composers themselves, I will provide an overview of their various styles, and situate the ‘Sacher' works in their broader outputs. An analysis of the set of pieces - covering, among other subjects, the composers' treatment of the name 'Sacher' as a melodic theme, and how each composer uses the technical resources of the cello to unique musical ends - will provide a means of experiencing the similarities among the works while understanding the expressive possibilities offered by the different compositional techniques. Through this combination of historical and analytical investigation, I aim to generate renewed interest in these wonderful and diverse pieces while putting to rest unfounded notions of the aesthetic discordance of modern compositional practice."

"Sometime after it became okay to make lesbians have children on TV, it became all they ever do. Having babies has been a staple of lesbian characters’ storylines through mainstream 1990s hits like Friends and NYPD Blue, through queer-focused shows of the 2000s like The L Word and Queer as Folk. And still, in 2016’s everexpanding network of queer women characters, it seems inevitable to have a lesbian conception/pregnancy/ birth storyline. Can the writers think of nothing else? This trend has roots in a wider social pressure for women to be mothers and to portray motherhood as essential to womanhood; an attempt to homonormalize queer portrayals for mainstream audiences; a laziness in digging deeper for queer female stories; and a reflection of reality. I will examine different cases of this frustrating trope across different TV shows, blending film production, film theory and gender studies to produce a stylized supercut video – a re-edit of existing footage that will serve as both entertainment and cultural commentary. This draws inspiration from previous socio-culturally aware supercuts such as Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” and Dylan Marron’s “Every Single Word Spoken By a Person of Colour in the Entire Harry Potter Film Series” (both on You Tube)."

"In early 2016, the World Health Organization deemed Zika virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. There is currently no preventative vaccine, nor specific treatment for the virus. As communities throughout South America have discovered, when Zika spreads from a pregnant woman to her fetus, there exists the grave possibility of the baby being born with microcephaly – that is, an underdeveloped brain.

The overwhelming response of South American governments has been to suggest that women abstain from getting pregnant for the foreseeable future. However, given the inaccessibility of contraceptives, combined with the illegality of abortions, more women are challenging dominant health law norms around the continent. 

Ultimately, this project will examine the ramifications of Zika virus on health law norms in Ecuador by answering the following question: How is Zika virus affecting sexual and reproductive health norms in Ecuador, both within a health law and sociopolitical context? I will discuss the historical and cultural factors that have shaped Ecuador’s health law into what it is today, and consider the contemporary debate surrounding sexual health and reproductive rights through both human rights and legal lenses.

"Soniferous fishes like the plainfin midshipman use sound to communicate with conspecifics. The behavioural response of the plainfin midshipman to anthropogenic noise will be assessed in order to examine the potential impact of the changing soundscapes on the ocean's wild populations of soniferous fishes. Additionally, the dependence of this behavioural response on habitat complexity will inform the relevance of ecological context in the laboratory."

"The purpose of this project is to analyze media and court documents to identify the impacts of Super InTent city on its residents. This will take into account health, safety and wellbeing of the super InTent city residents."

"How can community projects and place-based learning work together to help students not only gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for their local community but also a voice in that community? How can educators facilitate positive relationships between students, local landscapes, knowledge holders and other key community members? In a world that is globally connected and in constant transit, how important is the development of place-based community and localized knowledge?

Place-based and site-specific projects for me are about responding to the environment and deepening my connection to a landscape. I have been inspired by art educators such as Lorna Reid (retired) at Esquimalt High and Sue Garat, currently at EMCS in Sooke, in terms of how they have incorporated community projects into their teaching practice. More recently my knowledge of local histories has been transformed through the stories and teachings of local indigenous knowledge holders J.B. Williams, Earl and Nick Claxton and local artist Chris Paul.

My research methodology would take the form of reflective self-study as well as the incorporation of narratives and documentation created by students (photos, journals and other media inspired by their experiences). Key texts that inform my thinking about community connections are “Saltwater People,” by Dave Eliot Sr. and “Photovoice: Sharing Pictures, Telling Stories and Changing Communities,” by Beverly Palibroda with Brigette Krieg, Lisa Murdock and Joanne Havelock."

"My research project will examine the social, political, economic, and cultural impact of the Euromaidan Revolution that took place in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2013/2014. Through this research, I will seek to analyze and explain the factors leading up to the demonstrations, the issue of corruption, the importance of European integration for the country of Ukraine, and how the revolution has manifested itself in the arts. I also wish to explore the phenomena of popular revolutions and demonstrations and the reasons as to why such events occur, why they grow, and why they often turn violent. More important, I would like to look at the consequences of the Euromaidan—did the new Ukrainian authorities manage to get rid of the corruption and establish political transparency? Street art will be crucial component of my project; I plan to highlight it when preparing my poster."

"I will be reviewing methods for crime data analysis, and writing software to provide meaningful visualizations and statistics. Analysis methods will include regression and principal component analysis. The software will include functions to help spot trends by examining crime types, time of day, weather, geographical location, and other external factors. Tools will also be provided to produce visualizations relating to these factors. The final report will include statements on the limitations of these methods and the nature of the data used."

Hypothesis: Tumor-specific CD8⁺ TIL in some ovarian cancers are trapped in tumor stroma and are therefore spatially separated from tumor cells bearing their cognate antigen.

Objective: To localize tumor-reactive CD8+ T cells and their cognate antigen-bearing tumor cells in the microenvironment of HGSC tumors.

Methods: We are developing an in situ polymerase chain reaction (isPCR) protocol to amplify the DNA sequences of tumor-specific T-cell receptors (TCRs) and their cognate tumor antigens within whole tumor sections. These PCR products will be visualized by chromogenic detection. We are currently developing this protocol in a mouse mammary tumor model system (NOP23), in which we are targeting the DNA sequences of both a model tumor antigen (OVA) and the TCR of cognate CD8+ TIL (OT-1). Once this protocol is optimized, we will develop a parallel isPCR protocol to detect human CD8⁺ T cells specific for the cancer-testis antigen, NY-ESO-1, in HGSC.

"I am interested in the relationship between metaphor and truth-- specifically, the type of truth which metaphor allows. If metaphor follows the form “X is Y”, but only holds as functional if “X is not Y” is true, then it can be said that metaphorical truths do not abide the rules of strict logic, and are simultaneously assertions of identity, as well as assertions of difference. They are, in the words of the Poet Charles Simic “part of the not-knowing aspect of art”.

I would like to question the mechanics of metaphor and further my understanding of visual art’s reliance on a similar, though not necessarily linguistic, mode of comparison. I am fascinated by the capacity of art for uncanny juxtapositions that prod the mind into new territories of thought.

As this will be an arts-based research project, an important element of the process will be the making of a body of work, and will necessarily hold as evidence both theory and practice. On the side of theory, I will take as a point of departure Jan Zwicky’s Wisdom and Metaphor and Lyric Philosophy, as well as Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Complementing these texts I will be reading poetry, specifically concentrating on the hybrid work of BP Nichol. I will be following this line of thinking into the realm of visual art with a focus on early conceptual artists Joseph Kosuth and John Baldessari.

The outcome of this research will be a video/sculpture-orientated series of work."

"This study will help researchers to better understand the influence of social connectedness on the health of young adults. Research suggests that social connectedness is an important factor related to health. Abundant literature is available on the relationship between social connectedness and self-rated health (SRH) for older adults and adolescents, but little research on this topic has been done with young adults aged 18-34. This type of information is important in order to inform policies and programs intended to support young adults’ health and wellness."

"Given a stack of n pancakes, all of different sizes, a pancake flip consists of removing a smaller stack from the top of the stack, inverting it, and replacing it on the original stack. The nth pancake number is the minimum number of flips required to sort n pancakes in the worst case. Currently only the first 13 pancake numbers are known, although lower and upper bounds of n and 2n-3 have been established for all unsolved n. A related problem is the burnt pancake problem, where each pancake has one burnt side which must face down once the stack is sorted. The burnt pancake numbers are known to be bounded by 3n/2 and 2n-2.

The burnt pancake problem can be represented by a graph with 2^n * n! vertices, each representing a different state of the stack and edges connecting states that differ by exactly one flip. Because every stack has n substacks removable from the top, this graph is n-regular. Each path in the graph represents a sequence of flips, so the diameter of the graph gives the nth burnt pancake number. Since this is the Cayley graph generated by the set of flips, its paths can be used to study ways of writing all permutations of any n-set as a composition of prefix reversals. The pancake problem can also be used to model genetic mutations as compositions of inversions.

We would like to investigate higher pancake numbers and other applications of pancake flipping."

"Speech from medicinal users of cannabis will be compared before and after the consumption of prescribed cannabinoid medication. The objective of this comparison is to identify potential vocal/acoustic markers that can be used to distinguish cannabis-intoxicated speech from sober speech.

The legalization of cannabis for recreational purposes has been suggested by the current Canadian government, therefore, developing accurate roadside methods to detect cannabis-impaired drivers is a growing priority; currently there is no roadside method to detect cannabis-impairment aside from a blood-test which is not feasible in most situations.

Acoustic analysis has been shown in previous research to accurately distinguish intoxication from a variety of substances, including alcohol. Algorithms have also been trained to discriminate sober from intoxicated speech with high accuracy. To date I have been unable to locate an acoustic analysis of cannabis-intoxicated speech. Therefore, the proposed analysis has the potential to further the state of knowledge in addition to solving a current problem for frontline personnel in medicine and law enforcement.

This research will advance upon current research that my advisor is involved in, which utilizes audio archives from the band KLÖ as a test-bed for exploring the pedagogical opportunities such archives can offer for audio engineering programs. As a composer and technology developer, I hope that this research will provide me with insight into my own consumption and practice of electronic music and inform future research opportunities in the creation of new instruments and music.

[1] Théberge, Paul. Any sound you can imagine: Making music/consuming technology. Wesleyan University Press, 1997.

[2] Peeters, Geoffroy. A Large Set of Audio Features for Sound Description (similarity and classification) in the CUIDADO project. IRCAM, April 2004.

"More options are available than ever before for sharing scholarly work as historians enter the digital age. The internet offers new possibilities for publishing research because of its dynamic and increasingly accessible format, multi-media capacity and facilitation of increased user interaction and user-generated content. While website content and layout can mimic that of historical monographs and articles, the attributes of the internet encourage exploring new approaches to sharing historical information.

Working with files from Landscapes of Injustice, a multi-year research project on the dispossession of Japanese Canadians during World War II, my research project will explore theoretical and practical possibilities for sharing historical research on the web. The project will work with a small sub-set of the archival material collected by Landscapes of Injustice, relevant secondary sources on the dispossession of Japanese Canadians during World War II and ideas of public and digital history.

"The set of all edge-weightings of the complete graph K_n is a vector space of dimension n(n-1)/2. Consider the triangles in K_n, which we regard as zero-one vectors with ones on the edges of the triangle. Taking all linear combinations of these triangles with nonnegative constants, we obtain a polyhedral cone. This cone is very complex and connects with several other topics in discrete mathematics, including the metric polytope and graph decompositions. Fortunately, this cone also has a lot of symmetry due to the large automorphism group of the underlying graph. The cone also has a recursive structure, although presently this is poorly understood.

This project will study the symmetries, recursive nature, and other properties of the cone. One goal is to discover more connections with other geometric or algebraic structures. Another is to improve computations of the face structure of the cone. Indeed, having a good description of the cone by halfspaces is useful for edge-decomposition questions such as the Nash-Williams conjecture."

"When I think of Foxconn I think of working conditions so horrific that employees would rather jump out of factory windows than work another grueling shift. The company, which is the third largest private employer in the world, is infamously known for incidences where this took place in their Chinese factories. The mainstream media covered the story closely not only because it was alarming, but because of what the factories were producing: iPhones.

So, with that being my only knowledge of the electronics manufacturing giant, I was shocked to learn that they had two factories less than an hour’s drive away from where I am currently studying. The Kutna Hora and Paradubice factories in the Czech Republic act as the center of Foxconn’s European operations.

This led me to ask a few questions. Why would the largest electronics manufacturer in the world choose to run production facilities in the Czech Republic rather than China? What are the working conditions like in the Czech factories in comparison to those in China? How does the Czech business environment impact Foxconn’s operations? And who in their right mind would want to work for them?!

I will delve into the questions above in greater detail throughout this paper. Based on everything I know about Foxconn I hypothesize that there are slave-like working conditions in all of their factories. How else would they achieve such outstanding efficiency and speed in their production? Perhaps, throughout the course of writing this paper, I will be proven wrong."

"Statistically, elders and youth represent the highest percentages of our population having unprotected sex and are in the most need of effective sexual health education. The rise of Sexually Transmitted Infections and Diseases over the past two decades clearly indicates that action must be taken to educate and promote healthy sexuality. Therefore I propose a joint health initiative between elders and youth in Victoria to discuss, learn, create, devise, and share the importance of sexual health. I believe that sexual health through Theatre in Education is an innovative initiative that has the ability to deconstruct social stigma and provide an embodied learning experience that will create lasting change."

I will search for traditional melodies from different parts of China, and transcribe simple melodies which are well suited to serve as practical study material on the fundamentals of brass playing, similar to the Bel Canto pedagogy which brass players have adapted from Italian vocal tradition, in which purity of sound is emphasized. In accordance with Western Brass pedagogy, and with guidance from my supervisor, these melodies can then be expanded and developed into exercises which focus on many fundamental musical skills, such as transposition, rhythm and articulation.

"Chronic pain management tools, support and advocacy are increasingly being provided online through web-based campaigns. If granted a Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award my research will seek to explore the relevance of local, provincial and national web-based campaigns for chronic pain management for populations experiencing structural vulnerabilities. Specifically, I am interested in assessing and appropriateness of these campaigns and tools for people who live with chronic pain and intersecting oppressions such as colonialism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, poverty and housing vulnerabilities, substance use issues and ableism. A content analysis of leading local, provincial and national campaigns will be conducted based on a suite of indicators defining trauma informed, cultural safety, contextuality tailored and equity based approaches to health services. The findings from this analysis will highlight examples of accessible and appropriate supports, gaps, and recommendations for improving web-based services for people with chronic pain to be more equitable and accessible for people who are commonly marginalized and living with chronic pain."

I propose to examine this cycle as the The Mystic Ark’s function using Abbot Suger’s Anagogical Window as a comparative, extant artwork. By comparing and contextualizing these works, this cycle can be understood as their activating function. Both programs streamline cognitively-generative art by providing organization and structure for students. This is applied today with adult colouring books promising mental clarity, and the generative possibilities of Buddhist mandalas. They are planned lines along which meditation is sustained, but specifically they are about generative memorization and the transmission and generation of complex ideas. They are vital educational tools developed by Hugh and Suger, and are still applicable as mental expansions productively engaging with concepts in defiance of passive representation."

“Technologies to Support Community-Dwelling Older Adults with Compromised Health and Independence
Community dwelling older adults with complex health conditions often experience a decline in independence and need support from family members (informal) or paid (formal) caregivers. In-home monitoring technologies offer great potential in reducing caregiver load. Effective caregiving support will arise from highly integrated systems that make intelligent decisions based on continuous, multidimensional data collection that captures variations in health, behavior, mobility and cognition. Modern computational methods can use the data to predict adverse events, detect unnoticed deterioration, and even intervene in the caregiver’s absence. The present study is unique in that it matches continuous sensor-based activity data from the home to gold standards of day-to-day functioning and cognitive function. We will gather sensor data in the homes of four at-risk clients. Patterns in the sensor data will be correlated with RAI-Homecare and independent measures of cognitive functioning and more immediate adverse events (e.g., delirium, falls, wondering). This study pilots a crucial step in the evolution of technology-driven caregiver support. It identifies algorithms that will be validated in the next study. Once validated, technology becomes a partner in caregiving.”

"This year I will be tackling one of the most important and renowned pieces in the violin repertoire, Bach’s Ciaconna. A work for solo violin lasting fifteen minutes, it is  technically challenging with long and demanding chordal passages that require vast attention to detail, particularly voicing and left-hand gymnastics that have to be executed with utter precision.  As a result not only does the product have to be completely accurate – it is impossible to hide your mistakes, however minimal – but the performer alone has to also emotionally carry the audience, taking them on a journey that will remain fascinating throughout the length and intimacy of this solo work.

In order to achieve a high standard in its presentation, I propose a harmonic analysis of the Ciaconna as well as historical research regarding the era of its composition, with special focus on the performance practice of the time. This summer I participated in a two-week seminar with the renowned Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik. This gave me a platform from which to begin my research and achieve a historically informed rendition the Ciaconna. By March 9^th I will be ready to present my research in a performance of a piece that has remained integral to the violin repertoire for four hundred years."

"Thomas Heywood (ca 1570-1641) may have been the most prolific of all early modern English playwrights; he claimed to have had “an entire hand or at least a maine finger in two hundred and twenty plays.” Only a few of these plays, however, are available in well-edited modern textbooks, much less regularly studied by undergraduate students. Even the few that do receive attention, however, such as A Woman Killed with Kindness, suggest that he was strongly interested in wide-ranging women’s experiences.

A first edition of Gynaikeion (1623), Heywood’s treatise on historical and mythic women from the classical period to the seventeenth century, is available in UVic’s Special Collections. By reading a selection of Thomas Heywood’s plays, as well as the obscure Gynaikeion in its entirety, I aim to answer the following questions: Which common or obscure themes link the different women in Heywood’s plays? What is in Gynaikeion that can deepen my insight into female characters in Heywood’s plays? And, finally, how are the ways women are portrayed in Heywood’s plays similar or different to other early modern plays?"

"Reconstructing sea surface salinity change in the western North Pacific over the last ~18,000 years, using Operculodinium centrocarpum process length variation
My research project tests a method of quantitatively reconstructing past sea-surface salinity change in the North Pacific, using dinoflagellate cyst process lengths from the sedimentary record. Dinoflagellates are a group of marine plankton that produces resting stages or cysts. I will complete biometric measurements of cysts Protoceratium reticulatum (Operculodinium centrocarpum sensu Wall & Dale 1966) from a sediment core representing paleoceanographic change over the last 40 ka in the northern Japan Sea. Mertens et al. (2012) have shown that the average process length variation of Operculodinium centrocarpum can be related to seawater density or salinity. This work will use the proposed method for paleoenvironmental reconstruction and it has potential to reconstruct oceanographic conditions and document its variability well beyond the existing instrumental records at a sub-millennial scale resolution."

"Recent research suggests that queer individuals are at increased risk for depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide, substance abuse, and other serious mental health issues. Moreover, several studies indicate that queer people face unique barriers to accessing mental health services and receiving appropriate care for their mental health. The University of Victoria has recently affirmed its commitment to supporting student mental health by implementing the UVic Mental Health Strategy. A study on the accessibility and inclusivity of on-campus counselling services for queer students could potentially contribute to this larger project, especially in relation to its stated goals of eliminating barriers and building more inclusive campus services. In our study, we will conduct semi-structured interviews with queer students about the ideas they may have to make on-campus counselling services more accessible and inclusive. We will also interview counsellors at UVic Counselling Services to determine what policies and practices currently exist to promote a safe and inclusive environment for queer clients. The results of our study could potentially inform future counselling practices at UVic Counselling Services."

“How did Japanese Canadians challenge their dispossession during World War II?: Inside the case files of the Custodian of Enemy Property
Following the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, the Canadian government began enacting “security measures” against Japanese Canadians living on the west coast of British Columbia. These included the immediate seizure of more than 1000 fishing boats owned by Japanese Canadians and the internment of male Japanese nationals. Japanese Canadians of all ages and origins were quickly classified as “enemy aliens” under the War Measures Act and, beginning in February 1942, 23000 were forced to leave their coastal homes and communities for internment camps in BC’s interior or for destinations east of the Rocky Mountains. During this displacement, Japanese-Canadian property, possessions, and finances were placed under the control of the Custodian of Enemy Property, which mediated access to property and held the power to dispose of it without consent.

The records of the Vancouver Office of the Custodian of Enemy Property offer insight into the experiences and mechanisms of this displacement and dispossession. Each case file contains correspondences between the Custodian and Japanese Canadians, mainly concerning access to finances and the status and sale of property and possessions. These records provide detailed narratives of family and economic life that can inform us on where displaced Japanese Canadians went and what was important to them. Most importantly, they reveal a dialogue between Japanese Canadians and the government that can deepen our understanding of how power functions. The dynamics of these correspondences were diverse, affected by factors of gender, class, time, and space, and they unfolded according to certain rules of argument that could enable Japanese Canadians to strategically gain access to possessions and freedoms by appealing to the practical, economic, and moral sensibilities of the Custodian. Analysis of these records can lend us a better understanding of how power operates and allow us to consider Japanese Canadians not simply as victims of oppression, but as agents of their own lives.”

"Working with Margaret-Anne Story and the CHISEL Group we are building innovative tools for the visual analysis of big data. I hope to help analysts make sense of large data sets by helping them identify the key concepts and structures expanding their knowledge from the bottom up. The tools will be centered around three domains.

• Cyber Forensics — including network analysis and malware analysis.
• Social Media — including data from Twitter and Reddit over time as well as geographic data.
• Assembly Code — including malware disassembly and identification.

The tools developed will aim to support discovery, documentation, backtracking and collaboration over these data sets. In particular, these tools will attempt to bridge the gap between the machine and the analyst — allowing the machine to leverage its computational power and the analyst to leverage their decisional and intuitive powers. Another goal for the tools will be to assist the analyst in identifying starting points for their bottom up investigation, previously a pain point for large data sets."

"For my Honours research project, I will focus on the deployment of instrumentation for the assessment of submarine slope stability in the Kitimat Arm Fjord, British Columbia. The project is an extension of research that I began during a Co-op work term with the Geological Survey of Canada at the Pacific Geoscience Centre, and it will contribute to a larger-scale geohazard assessment of waterways in northern British Columbia.

The Kitimat Arm Fjord is vulnerable to submarine slope failures that may cause tsunamis. In 1974 and 1975 dock facilities at Kitimat were impacted by significant tsunamis generated by submarine slope failures. Future failures remain a concern, especially given the extensive development at the head of the fjord.

Submarine slope stability is strongly affected by marine sediment pore pressure. If the pore pressure is greater than the hydrostatic pressure the slope may be unstable. Groundwater leaching into the slope can cause heightened pore pressure. Monitoring of slopes affected by groundwater leaching will provide critical data on conditions leading to slope failure.

My objective is to analyze available data, including multibeam sonar, seismic reflection data, and marine sediment cores, to determine ideal locations for the deployment of instruments in submarine slopes of the Kitimat Arm Fjord. Locations of possible groundwater leaching will be identified and targeted for deployment of piezometers, which will provide measurements of marine sediment pore pressure for submarine slope stability assessment. The project will also involve instrument testing to determine optimum deployment strategies."

"Predictive validity of gait parameters and gait initiation for prospectively identifying fall risk in older adults.

Gait has been investigated in order to assess whether it can be useful as a way of predicting healthy older adults at risk of falling, however, there is little information with regards to this and gait initiation. The objective of this study will be to investigate the differences in gait parameters and initiation in healthy older adults with no history of falling, and healthy older adults with history of falling, and to investigate if these characteristics can be used to make predictions about future falls in older adults.  Participants will be 25 healthy older adults (aged 70+) with no history of falling, and healthy older adults (70+) who have fallen at least once in the last year. A history will be taken of the participants to track any fall incidences in the past and the participants will track any falls that may occur in the future for a period of one year. Outcomes measures will be CoM, CoP, step variability, and velocity. Data gathering procedures will be done with two force plates and gaitRite mat. Participants will perform gait initiation on the force plates 10 times and on the gaitRite 20 times, both cognitively loaded and unloaded. This study aims to identify whether gait can be used as a prospective fall intervention method, allowing for early prevention and thereby reducing the expenses and increasing the quality of life of at risk adults."

"The purpose of the research project is to design and optimize the mechanical and controls systems of an experimental small wind turbine. Wind power is an integral part of the quickly expanding renewable energy industry and small wind turbines can be used to provide power to residential areas, cabins, off grid developments or large ships. Preliminary testing has confirmed that the essential systems of the wind turbine are operational. The next step is to design and integrate a yaw drive controller to continuously track the wind direction and adjust the turbine accordingly to maximize efficiency and power harnessed from the wind.

The preliminary results revealed that there may be laminar separation bubbles forming along the airfoils, negatively affecting the lift coefficient. Methods to avert this, such as tripping the flow at the leading edge of the airfoils, will be investigated. This is projected to dramatically improve performance.

Once the yaw controller is installed and the separation bubbles are mitigated, steady state tests will be conducted to study the turbine under known conditions. Once the data from the initial tests is analyzed, the turbine will be stationed in normal environmental conditions where data will be collected to determine how the turbine functions in routine operating conditions."                     

Phase 1:  (1 month) Review existing results on domination critical graphs beginning with the original paper by Sumner and Blitch from 1983, the forthcoming survey paper by Fujita, Furuya and MacGillivray, and finally the recently submitted manuscript on structural properties of dynamic domination vertex-critical graphs by Klostermeyer and MacGillivray.

Phase 2:  (1.5 months) Search for constructions and examples of dynamic-domination edge-critical graphs, bounds on the number of vertices required in the dynamic dominating set, and a characterization of the graphs where the number of required vertices is small. The starting point will be the results of a similar flavour as those reviewed in phase one.

Phase 3:  (1.5 months) Investigate which of the structural properties of domination critical graphs (such as Hamiltonicity) may also be properties of dynamic domination edge-critical graphs.

Phase 4:  (1 month) Prepare a poster for the research fair and a manuscript detailing the research done."

The student will support and review qualitative coding of service user interviews regarding their experiences in supported housing programs. This will allow the student to become familiar with the study, the prevailing issues in each agency, and to gain skills in qualitative data analysis.

In partnership with the research team, the student will incorporate results from the service user interviews into program logic models that each agency is developing for its programs.

The student will be responsible for creating a standardized logic model format or infographic to be used for each of the four agencies involved in the project. Standardizing logic models will allow the research team to draw conclusions about a final outcomes measurement tool."

"If my application is successful, I hope to explore the student experience of navigating religion and/or spirituality while at university. I think that spiritual life is an oft-neglected piece at university, and I hope to draw more attention to this vital component of wellbeing and stimulate dialogue. I believe that this topic could speak meaningfully to many students of various religious and spiritual journeys.

I am involved with MultiFaith Services in the creation of a survey for students. This survey will aim to find ways to improve their services for students. I have been given permission to consider the results of the survey in my own research explorations. I would like to embark on a study of existing literature on the topic of university and religious and spiritual life, and incorporate what I have learnt through my work with MultiFaith services into a comprehensive report/presentation. I hope to have student voices woven throughout my project. If possible, I would like to create an informal platform—such as an anonymous blog—for students to share their stories regarding this topic. I think this platform could serve as a meaningful site of qualitative research, and ultimately, social support for students."

"Playing with the Past: Video Games, The Great War and Popular Memory

As Robert Rosenstone argued for historical film in 1988, historians cannot simply use the same methods and standards for games as they would in the analysis of a historical monograph. Using video games which represent the Great War (1914 – 1918), my thesis will argue that while historians can and should analyze games in terms of their visual and textual representations of history, the most important aspect is a game's procedural rhetoric – i.e. how a game makes arguments about (past) reality through the rules that it imposes on players.

While my thesis will consider the entire corpus of the Great War's video game historiography, it will focus its analysis on three games in particular: Valiant Hearts, Verdun and Commander: The Great War. Each of these games will be analyzed for its portrayal of a certain aspect of the Great War: Valiant Hearts for its use of artifacts to tell stories, Verdun for its simulation of trench warfare through game levels and Commander: The Great War for its emphasis on the grand strategy in the war."

"This research award will provide me with the opportunity to explore the creative applications of new technology in a cross-disciplinary practice, combining visual art and music. I will be able to work with the physical media necessary for sculptural installation, as well as hardware and software that allow for interactive control in my work. My purpose as an interdisciplinary artist is to create a subjective experience for people to become conscious of their existence through the perception of sound-related phenomena. My work inspires an awareness of self, space, and moment, and those who experience my work become educated about our physical and perceptual relationships with sound.

By working between the disciplines of visual art and electronic and computer music, my practice is liberated from a singular, defined context. Instead, I am able to embrace the various creative and technical approaches that these disciplines offer, while speaking to different artistic traditions from a new perspective. Working with Dr. Schloss and Professor Walde on a research-based sound art project will be a successful and transformative learning experience."

"Garden of Déduit: The Influence of Byzantine Gardens on the Roman de Ia Rose

The Roman de Ia Rose is a 13th century French poem, written by Guillaume de Lorris and later completed by Jean de Meun, about a young man's dream of a guarded garden and his conquest of a rose. The allegorical themes and literary devices employed by the poets have led scholars to attribute the renaissance of the Hellenistic romance genre in 12th century Byzantium as the source of literary inspiration. However, little attention has been paid to the accompanying illustrations of the manuscripts in regards to this thesis.

This research proposes to examine the poem's illustrated garden setting, the Garden of Déduit, in the light of Byzantine garden representations. Byzantine illustrations are related to the ambiguous perception of a garden as an Edenic space and an earthly pleasure place. I argue that French painters made use of that Byzantine-derived ambiguity as a thematic device that strengthens the poem's allegorical nature. I will locate this project within the relationship between France and Byzantium after the siege of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. This was a catalytic event that brought Byzantine and earlier Greek traditions into the French arts and literature scene, and one  that is  becoming an area of academic focus.

This project aims to situate Byzantine aesthetics into the artistic and cultural changes in medieval art that later brought about the European Renaissance."

"Assessing the state of icefields in the Rockies is an important component to predicting the trajectory of water resources into the future. Several major Canadian and US rivers rise in the Canadian Rockies, yet field measurements from the source icefields and glaciers are rare; particularly measurements that go through the winter accumulation season. Another important component that is missing from many analyses is the impact that day-to-day weather events have on icefields that feed the valley glaciers. It is evident that the frequency of unusual weather events is increasing; one major event has the potential to change the course of a melt or accumulation season. These need to be factored into the more traditional, seasonally averaged climatology-based assessments that relate glacier response to atmospheric drivers on the broad scale.

This project will make use of a new data set gathered at a weather station located in the Canadian Rockies on Columbia Icefield, operated by Prof. Atkinson, and relate it to day-to-day weather events using weather maps. Of interest is determining where moisture comes from, the frequency of summertime snow and melt events, and the relationship between high and low pressure systems with surface melting response. I expect to improve my use of spreadsheets and I am hoping to learn some more advanced programming, perhaps using R language."

Regarding student development, working with JBI would provide invaluable learning and a chance to expand my knowledge by exposure to strong relationships between academic, research, practice, and policy partners. Specifically, I will focus on how the research review approach supports evidence informed practice and how it contributes to knowledge translation. Additionally, I will learn about the process of developing and conducting a systematic review with the focus on intradisciplinary collaborative relationships. Furthermore, this project will enable me to participate and learn how to search for relevant and appropriate research studies through team collaboration. Finally, I will learn to facilitate the review process of research papers. Overall, this academic project would be an incredible opportunity for learning, where knowledge and skill in academic inquiry can be challenged."

"This research project will provide an in-depth examination of the pre-Christian deities of the Slavic people, both etymologically as well as textually, through surviving works of the period in both English and the vernacular tongue. Due to the relative scarcity of surviving sources, little is known about the deities of the pagan Slavs, and the amount of academic work on the topic, especially in English is very little. Despite this, there is an obvious desire to determine the origins and meanings of these gods as evidenced by the quickly-growing neo-pagan cult in not only Russia, but Canada as well, headed by such influential men as Lev Sylenko and Volodomyr Shaian, both of whom were Ukrainian residents of Ontario. So great is the need by modern historians and neo-paganists alike to discover their Slavic heritage, forgeries such as the infamous Book of Veles have been created in an attempt to forge a national identity, which up until the late 20^th century, was still being used as material in Slavic high schools.

This project not only hopes to explore and reveal the mysteries associated with the topic, but also to add to the body of English scholarship, making it more accessible for future students and enthusiasts to better understand the religious views of the pre-Christian Slavic people."

We hypothesize this operon encodes proteins involved in human extracellular matrix component “mimicking”, thus facilitating a novel mechanism of immune evasion.  This mechanism could explain, at least partially, why Treponema pallidum can remain latent, with no associated host response, for up to 50 years following initial infection. 

My honours project will encompass three goals:

1. In collaboration with Dr. Boulanger, design primers to amplify regions of the ORFs that have the highest chance for successfully producing soluble protein upon heterologous expression.
2. Clone these PCR fragments into appropriate expression vectors, and express and purify the corresponding recombinant proteins.
3. In collaboration with Dr. Moriarty, design primers to amplify the full length ORFs for heterologous expression in a non-infectious strain of the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi.  These constructs will then be used in Dr. Moriarty’s artificial bloodstream model and for intravital microscopy within a living mouse, to determine the gain-of-function conferred by heterologous expression of these treponemal proteins within the non-infectious spirochete.

These investigations are expected to uncover a completely novel and highly exciting mechanism of successful host evasion."

"“Unless the stone bursts with telling,” explains the narrator of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, “there is in my life no living word.” Kogawa's appraisal of the silencing force of Japanese-Canadian internment on both bodies and the environment echoes contemporary political scholar Glen Coulthard's theory of “grounded normativity.” As decolonial praxis, “grounded normativity” refers to the “modalities of Indigenous land-connected practices” that reflect the land as a “system of reciprocal relations and obligations” (Red Skin, White Masks, 13). Political wrongs, for Kogawa and Coulthard, affect not only human actors but also the environmental objects that inhabit the land. While new materialist thought and long-standing Indigenous epistemologies discuss the ethical and ontological relationships between humans and land, contemporary diasporic criticism tends to deconstruct concepts of land. Notions of a “homeland,” for diasporic scholars, are often discussed as discursive productions of the West which fail to address complex questions of belonging.

Marie Clements’ play Burning Vision sets the stage for a critical encounter between diasporic, ecological, and Indigenous thought. Set during World War II uranium mining on Sahtu Dene lands, Burning Vision questions the entanglements of colonialism, capitalism, diaspora, ecological crisis, and political apology. Informed by scholars such as Larissa Lai, Leanne Simpson, and Jane Bennett, my reading of Burning Vision unsettles two material actors that animate the ecology and the contemporary politics of land—rock and water— to ask two major questions: how does decolonizing ecological and diasporic thought affect understandings of land and how could land function as a technology of reconciliation?"

"The current state of modern (or stabilized) rammed earth structures in BC is unknown. It is unclear whether modern rammed earth will experience the same longevity as the ancient structures remaining today such as, the Great Wall of China. This research aims to address the following question: have the two modern rammed walls at the University of Victoria’s First Peoples House felt the effects of environmental weathering over the period of it’s 7 year life? A rebound hammer, infrared camera, and a new method developed to quantify surface deterioration were used in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). The results provided insight into the compressive strength, thermal envelope and surface condition of the walls. Relationships between wind direction and wind speed are presented. It is postulated that the wall that is most exposed to a combination of both effects will exhibit the largest forms of deterioration. This hypothesis was addressed using results from NDT and local wind data.

Currently, little literature is available on the longevity of modern rammed earth. It is intended that this research provide the public with literature that will aid in the development of future modern rammed earth technology."

"New communication tools used by mass media are concurrently emerging through the medium of software development. The efficiency and availability of these communication technologies (online advertising, user data analysis, instant messaging, etc.,) are influencing trends in popular culture and shaping the ways in which we communicate to one another, formulating a brand new culture that I am committed to exploring. I am passionate about investigating how popular culture is affected by the manipulation of mass media and software development, and how these entities influence the way in which we communicate.

Mass media has been majorly influencing popular culture through new communication technologies for the past century. 1Grossberg, Wartella, and Whitney explain in their article about popular culture that it is important to continue to question the way in which communication technologies affect popular culture, because the context and use case of these technologies will always correlate with forever changing historical and cultural situations.

1. Grossberg, Lawrence, Ellen Wartella, and D. Charles Whitney. Mediamaking.
Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1998. Google Book Search. Web. February 25, 2015."

“Characterizing the Mixed Severity Fire Regime of the Sinclair Restoration Area, Kootenay National Park

The Sinclair Restoration Area, in Kootenay National Park would have historically been typified by an open grassland Douglas fir ecosystem ideal for winter and transitional habitat of the provincially blue listed Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. This landscape structure was likely maintained by a mixed severity fire regime that included low severity decadal grass fires and high severity centennial stand replacing fires. Due to a policy of fire suppression, the last burn in the area likely occurred in the late 1880s. This management strategy resulted in a dense forest structure now unsuitable and undesirable for wildlife. Parks Canada managers are restoring this area by emulating the natural disturbance dynamic, maintained by fire in the past, through prescribed burning.

This project will directly aid mangers in determining objectives for prescribed burns by informing them of the recurrence interval of prehistorical fires and the historic forest structure. Tree cookies with fire scars will be collected from Douglas fir trees to describe the year and frequency of past fire events. Increment core samples will be collected from a minimum of 20 neighbouring trees to determine stand in-fill dynamics. Dendrochronological methods will provide insight on climate variation, historic fire frequency, return intervals, and the effects of fire on forest composition and structure, over length of the tree-ring record. To assist with ongoing management initiatives, recommendations will be made as to the desirable fire return interval needed to restore the natural forest structure.”

"Lamps from the Viking Age

When discussing artefacts from the Viking Age, there has often been a focus on more ornate and detailed objects such as weapons, brooches, or pendants; however, common domestic objects are often left out of the spotlight. The objects found in the domestic sphere help to provide opportunities for us to learn more about the habits of a Viking person as they went about their daily lives. One such object that is frequently overlooked is the lamp. These lamps are constructed of steatite, clay, or metal and were used as a source of light and heat in the dark dwellings of the Vikings.

Experimental archaeology provides an actualistic approach to archaeological research. Drawing on both published accounts of archaeological experiments and relevant excavation reports, it is my goal to design and implement a series of replicative experiments to examine Viking Age lamp technology. In doing so, I hope to achieve a number of research objectives. First, I will explore the construction process for the lamps. This will include the relative ease in which they are created with the tools Vikings would have had available to them. Second, I will experiment with several different lamp shapes, wick types, and fuel sources based on archaeological finds to discover which types, if any, are able to produce more light or heat, (and less smoke), and thus be considered a more useful product overall. Finally, I will explore options for the use of these lamps to discover if they were used for more than just light and warmth. This project will contribute to the growing body of literature associated with experimental archaeology."

"My honours’ project will be jointly run in the Hof and McIndoe groups. The impact of this work will be to develop ‘smart’ sensors that give unprecedented chemical understanding of life processes important to human development and disease.

Calixarenes are bowl shaped molecules that can strongly bind cationic molecules in their open cavity. The Hof research group has found that calixarenes decorated with fluorescent appendages are quenched through self-aggregation. This phenomenon suggests that these molecules can be used as sensors for certain biomolecules (called trimethyllysines), which bind to the sensors, disaggregate them, and restore a bright fluorescence.

1. My plan is to prepare the appropriate calixarene, functionalize it with a fluorescent tag, and examine the self-quenching behavior of the fluorescent calixarene at various concentrations. I will also synthesize peptides containing a lysine residue that is modified such that tri-, di- and mono-methylated lysine products are isolated. I will then determine which degree of methylation expresses the best binding affinity for the calixarene pocket by monitoring the increase in fluorescent activity upon addition to a self-quenching fluorescent calixarene system.

2. Additionally, I will monitor the loss of fluorescence upon addition of demethylase enzymes. The enzyme JMJD2a causes demethylation of lysine residues, and is linked to the development of aggressive cancers. The processing of peptides by JMJD2a will be monitored in real time by both fluorescence and Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS)—the area of expertise of the McIndoe group. Both analyses are unprecedented for this class of enzymes, and the combination of both methods in a single analysis is a specialized kind of analysis being developed by the McIndoe group that will help us to understand the individual steps in the reaction in minute detail."

"Drawing on queer theory and feminist discourses, I will be examining and constructing practical ways that educators can foster queer-affirming spaces – spaces that positively acknowledge the diversity of gender and sexual identities both through curricular learning and school atmosphere.  I am interested in learning about various barriers teachers face to integrating knowledge of gender and sexuality in their classrooms. I believe that overcoming these obstacles will enable educators to better support LGBTQ* learners.

In my research so far, I have investigated the idea of consciousness-raising – the sharing of personal stories – as a means for fostering and strengthening community bonds.  I now wish to develop consciousness-raising techniques that teachers can apply in their classrooms – lesson activities that bridge curriculum expectations with conversations about gender and sexuality.  In this research project, I would apply my understanding of consciousness-raising while teaching English on my upcoming practicum.  Before introducing this material, however, I would gauge the school’s attitudes and knowledge about LGBTQ* identities through administrating surveys to staff and students (following UVic’s Human Research Ethics).  After applying consciousness-raising methodologies, I would follow up with the students and staff where possible and with consent, to see if attitudes and understandings have shifted at all.  I anticipate this research to be purely qualitative – based on observations, interviews, and surveys."

"Kiritimati, Kiribati is a remote Pacific atoll whose citizens are faced with challenges such as climate change and overfishing which threaten the local fish stocks that most residents rely on for subsistence fishing. In addition to these stressors, a storm unprecedented in size and vigour hit the atoll in January 2015. My research project aims to understand how this storm affected coral reef benthos communities on Kiritimati. As extreme weather events are becoming more common, this research could provide essential information for island and coastal nations that have or will experience large storms. This project will be done by analyzing the coral reef composition and cover in photos taken of the coral reef benthos before (August 2014), during (January 2015) and after (May and July 2015) the storm at various sites around the atoll. Subsequent steps include statistical analysis and formal reporting of the findings. This project is especially interesting to me because I had the chance to volunteer on two intensive trips to Kiritimati this summer during which much of the data I will be using was collected (May and July 2015). It will allow me to experience all aspects of conducting scientific research including preparing for a field season, collecting data, analyzing data, conducting statistical analyses and writing a formal report."

"Canadian culture is often identified as having a strong connection to the environment in its northern condition. Starting in the early twentieth century, Canadian artists sought to create art that could build Canadian identity apart from European styles and subject matter. Though clearly evident in Canadian culture, the grandeur of environment appears to be more romantic and mythological than true representation. These artworks have created the look and feel of an environmental state thought to be 'natural'. I am interested in how the experience of a 'natural' place can influence ones thoughts and emotions. Experiencing artworks that are influenced by place therefore has insight into the experience of the artist.

I would like to investigate such art forms that have contributed to the Canadian mythology of environment and create art that is inspired by the myths themselves rather than the actual land. My research will involve exploring different visual art, performing art, music and literature inspired by 'Canadian' landscape. Such research will not be limited by political 'Canadian' borders but rather geographical areas in order to explore the tie between place and identity. I will primarily use painting and sculpture to convey my interpretations of the land that the researched artist experienced. The art work created will bypass the traditional way of pictorially representing landscape and enter an abstracted realm using geographical inspired artworks as the source. In addition to the JCURA exhibit, my proposed research will seek to exhibit in local galleries and public locations around Victoria."

“In the age of digital supremacy, where an infinite amount of music is available at the click of a button, there has been a resurgence of formerly obsolete musical formats.  Vinyl records, a medium thought to have faded into oblivion when CDs were embraced as the industry standard, have since seen a resurgence among underground music labels and their major label counterparts, selling over 4 million units in 2014.  Physical media in the age of the MP3 is rare, yet both independent and major record labels have embraced the vinyl medium.  Interestingly, in tandem with the vinyl revival, cassette tapes have become the medium of choice for independent bands interested in distributing their music and ideas on the cheap.  While many online platforms allow the free distribution of music, cassette tapes can be found on merchandise tables of independent Victoria bands whose music spans the underground spectrums of folk, punk rock, garage, noise, metal, and indie rock.  This project will seek to understand why Victoria bands, record labels, and consumers prefer the physical medium of the cassette tape in the MP3 era and the importance that cassettes play in Victoria’s underground music communities.

This project’s methodology will consist of a literature review, interviews with bands, labels, record shop owners, and consumers, and deep hanging out at venues where cassettes are bought and sold, namely concerts and record stores.  As this research involves human subjects, I will seek ethics approval from the University of Victoria’s Human Ethics Board.”

"Meth pipes: An exploratory study of harm reduction services for users of methamphetamine in Victoria, BC
Needle exchange programs that offer sterile needles and syringes have been implemented by service providers as a harm reduction practice in response to high rate of HIV, Hepatitis C (HCV), and other blood-borne illnesses among people who are injection drug users. More recently, some service providers have begun to offer safer smoking crack pipe kits. The intention behind these harm reduction measures is primarily to reduce the risk of the transmission of blood-borne illnesses by the practice of sharing consumption equipment. AIDS Vancouver Island (AVI) operates the primary needle exchange for the greater Victoria area and also provides safer smoking crack pipe kits.

The Centre for Addictions Research of BC (CARBC) has found that the rate of crystal methamphetamine use in so-called Victoria has steadily increased from 2010-2015 through The BC Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Monitoring Project’s High Risk Population Survey. Recognizing these trends in the community they serve, AVI implemented a meth pipe pilot program in June 2014.

In this exploratory research project I aim to investigate the needs of crystal methamphetamine users in Victoria and assess how their needs are being met and risk is reduced by the pilot project. To do this I will conduct a survey of clients who use crystal methamphetamine to create a small sample from which to draw preliminary findings. This information will inform service implementation at AVI as well as provide insights for much needed further research to best support the emerging needs the trend towards crystal methamphetamine use requires."

"Post-translational methylation (PTM) is understood to have a very important role in proteins. The pre-enrichment of methylated proteins is essential for identification, however current techniques are not very effective. During my research I plan to pre-enrich methylated proteins using a supramolecular methyl-affinity column, which will be optimized to increase selectivity for methylated proteins over unmethylated proteins. Proteomics analysis on these pre-enriched methylated proteins is expected to give improved identification of methylation sites over the non-enriched protein samples. This analysis is intended to increase our understanding of PTM in proteins, confirming known methylation sites and identifying unknown methylation sites."

"I will be examining how Japanese society is dealing with the issues that have arisen as a result of urbanisation and the increasing dependence on urbanised spaces in Japan. The issue that I will be concentrating my research on is alienation as a result of living in an urban environment. Alienation is a central theme in contemporary Japanese horror, which generally takes place in an urban setting. My research project will provide a historical overview of urbanisation in Japan to allow for a better understanding of how the contemporary issue of alienation has arisen. There will be an analysis of a number of texts from the contemporary horror genre to examine how the general public is reacting to these issues, including common fears and concerns."

"I am investigating the differences in nutrient excretion between multiple morphological variants of the three-spine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, which can result in ecosystem-level impacts on nutrient cycling. The morphological variation that I am interested in are the distinct phenotypes that determine body armour level, with full, partial and low being the different possible phenotypes. My honours project for my undergraduate degree will focus on two local populations of stickleback, one from Swan Lake (freshwater with low armour level), and the other from Gorge Waterway (marine with full armour level)."

"Anglophones experience certain pronunciation challenges in learning French as a second language (FSL), due—among other things—to differences in the phonological inventories of the two languages. Both research and my own learning experience have shown that certain French vowel sounds present great difficulty for English speakers. Researchers (e.g., Levy 2004; Garrott, 2009) have provided evidence for possible cross-linguistic interference in this regard— findings that are supported by research on FSL acquisition among Japanese and Spanish L1s (e.g., Kamiyama & Vaissière, 2009; Pillot-Loiseau, Antolík, & Kamiyama, 2013; Kartushina & Frauenfelder, 2014). However, research on FSL vowel production in L1s other than those mentioned is scanty.

This study will examine the relationship between the existence of certain sounds (/y, ø, ɛ̃, ɔ̃, ɑ̃, ʁ/ and/or nearby phonemes) in a person's L1 phonological inventory and that individual's successful production of certain L2 French sounds. Through a web-based survey and collection of oral samples, it will involve four groups of participants: one English-speaking and three non-anglophone FSL groups. The languages involved will be determined by the backgrounds of students undertaking an L2 French program who indicate willingness to participate in the study. The web survey will collect background information such as duration and frequency of French exposure, age, gender, and so on. Word lists containing the target sounds within a carrier sentence will be used to elicit the French L2 oral samples, which will be evaluated for intelligibility (i.e., proximity to L1 French sound) by three L1 French speakers.

The findings of this study could have implications for the teaching of French pronunciation, helping instructors identify which phonemes may present the most difficulty for students with a particular L1. It will also contribute to the body of research on cross-linguistic interference, particularly involving speakers of L1s other than English, Japanese, and Spanish.

L1= first language or mother tongue
L2 = second language"

"In my proposed research project, I will examine the social factors that inhibit the successful treatment of depression and anxiety disorders and to what extent fictional and non-fictional media contribute to upholding these social barriers."

"The tau protein is a microtubule-associated protein, which facilitates tubulin assembly into microtubules and is essential for structural integrity as well as axonal transport. When tau becomes hyperphosphorylated, it aggregates into neurofibrillary tangles disrupting proper cellular functioning. These neurofibrillary tangles are seen dispersed throughout Alzheimers diseased brains, as well as those with neurodegenerative diseases resulting from repeated traumatic brain injury. Understanding the upstream cause of tau phosphorylation is critical in the fight to develop new treatments against tau-mediated neurodegeneration. My project will look at determining the relative phosphorylation levels of tau protein following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), as well as quantifying activities of two tau-associated kinases, GSK3-β and CDK5, to determine if changes in these accompany changes in tau protein phosphorylation. Relative levels of tau phosphorylation and activities of GSK3-β and CDK5 will be measured by Western blotting for phosphorylation of tau residues shown to induce microtubule disassembly, and post-translational modifications shown to activate or inhibit GSK3-β and CDK5.

By comparing animals that have received a single concussion with those that have received multiple concussions we will be able to determine the threshold and additive biochemical effects of multiple concussions on kinase activity and tau hyper-phosphorylation. Measuring these at different time points after the final concussion will allow us to create a better picture of what is happening biochemically within the cell to cause these changes, and observe the duration of these changes."

“The phrase “spiritual but not religious” has commonly been used by researchers seeking to understand the spirituality of individuals who have shifted away from institutionalized religion. However, the meaning of this category has evolved in the millennial generation, insomuch as many have spiritual experiences very similar to their “spiritual but not religious” counterparts, but intentionally avoid identification with the term “spiritual”; consequently, these individuals are going undetected in academic literature. In an effort to clarify contemporary understandings of spirituality for non-religious millennials, I intend to administer a three part survey using Survey Monkey and a snowball sample to persons in Canada born in 1980 or later. This survey focuses on: personal non-religious identification; emotions, practices and settings related to experiences of interconnectedness or something transcendent; and the personal significance for such experiences. The survey’s design makes no direct reference to the terms “spiritual” or “spirituality” (though that is what is being investigated), going beyond contrasting categories of “religion”, “spirituality”, and “spiritual but not religious” to create an opportunity to hear from individuals who do not perceive these terms to be appropriate descriptors of their experience. Implementing this survey will require approval of a Human Research Ethics Application. This research is important given the incredible growth of the non-religious population in Canada, predominantly in British Columbia over recent years. It will contribute to clarifying the attitudinal trends of millennials towards religion and spiritual practices, and may offer insight into future shifts of religious establishment attendees in cities such as Victoria BC.”

“I will explore what we may learn from media and how identity is constructed, and reinforced within it. I will specifically look at the various representations of Asians in film and TV shows as well as interview people on their ideas of them. I intend to research the Asian stereotypes such as the model minority, the exotic hyper-sexual female, the effeminate funny  man, the Kung Fu fighting master as well as the development of those roles over the last few decades. My research will be concluded in an experimental documentary where I explore different identities with regards to films, TV shows and even Youtube channels we watch. I want to challenge and question how much media influences society as well as our identities. 

As a young woman born in Canada with parents who emigrated from South Korea there is a hard feat trying to identify with many of the Hollywood movies playing today. I realized growing up I put these stereotypes onto myself and allowed other people to place them onto me because that is what I learned from media. I would like to uncover what makes someone like me "exotic" and what types of conventions Hollywood uses to create an ideal world. I would like to continue with my anotherfansview website by placing myself into current films but also research and write in a critical view what roles minority groups in particular play to create meaning within a film.”

“Since time immemorial, the Heiltsuk have developed and maintained sophisticated laws, known as Gvi’ilas, to govern our territories, manage relationships, and resolve disputes. Despite the imposition of the Canadian legal system over Indigenous peoples and territories, our Gvi’ilas have persisted. According to my late great grandfather, Hemas Mauxmisa’gami, Gvi’ilas refers to our “power” or authority over all matters that affect our lives.

My project explores Heiltsuk Gvi’ilas, with a focus on marine stewardship and governance. I will examine Heiltsuk creation stories that embody our Gvi’ilas. I will implore a methodology that mirrors the legal rigor of the Canadian judicial system to analyze our creation stories. This methodology is similar to case briefing that law students use to analyze and synthesize Canadian court cases, however it includes truth grounding from my Heiltsuk worldview. This research is timely in light of the recent conflicts between the Heiltsuk and Department of Fisheries and Ocean (DFO). On March 29, 2015, a Heiltsuk delegation occupied a DFO office to insist on the recognition of Heiltsuk authority to regulate commercial fishing activities in our territory. This action is a prime example of Heiltsuk people abiding by our Gvi’ilas, protecting herring from the threat of over-fishing. As a result, the DFO agreed not to open the waters to commercial gill-net fleets and promised to hold talks to avoid another confrontation next year. My project will illuminate the Heiltsuk Gvi’ilas that should be guiding these discussions and any activities across Heiltsuk territory and waters.”

"The field of paleopathology, study of health and disease in the past, has its origins in Medicine, and continues some of the traditions of that field, such as the publication of case studies. Case studies outline a particular case of a disease, trauma, or anomaly in an individual, with little attention paid to what it means to the population. Yet, paleopathology has evolved since the mid 20th century into a discipline aligned with Bioarchaeology and taking a more holistic, population-focused perspective. Why then are paleopathological case studies still prevalent in the literature? What role do they serve? Are they a critically engaged component of the literature that serves to align diagnostic approaches in Medicine with Bioarchaeology’s focus on paleodemography and biocultural perpectives? This research will address these questions through a literature review of relevant paleopathological journals – such as The International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, and The International Journal of Paleopathology. I will examine the frequency of case studies in these journals through time and track when and in what contexts case studies are cited in other bioarchaeological studies. Given the similar origins of medical and paleopathological case studies I will compare their approaches, focusing on how diseases are diagnosed, and to what degree the biocultural perspective informs their interpretations. The goal of this research is to provide a critically reflective examination of the factors underlying the prevalence of the case study in paleopathology and how they have shaped and been shaped by the evolution of the discipline at the divergence from its medical origins."

“The Malaysian government recognizes the refugees and forced migrants within its borders as illegal immigrants. Despite this, the state acts as transit country for increasing numbers of refugees from surrounding regions looking for temporary (and undocumented) work while awaiting relocation. My research as part of this JCURA grant will examine how the Malaysian state and the international community respond to forced migrants in Malaysia, particularly in terms of their 'illegal' status. In particular, I will examine how these responses and systems materially affect migrants, and how various characteristics of migrants (e.g. class, language, religion and/ or gender) may influence their experiences as migrants. My research will involve both secondary and primary research, the latter based on my work as an intern at the Malaysian Social Research Institute (MSRI) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in the summer & fall of 2015. This internship will allow me to collect empirical data of the region's migrants and carryout interviews with individuals working with MSRI such as the Institute’s teachers, nurses, translators and facilitators, many of which are refugees themselves. My research will then be available to MSRI for their databases and used to develop an honours thesis. Under Dr. Xu’s supervision, I will submit an ethics application and develop interview questions. Dr. Xu’s extensive experience with primary research and her expertise in migration and Asian politics will support this project, and will help me strengthen my own research skills.”

"Since the 1940’s, anthropogenic chemicals have been released into the environment in increasing amounts. Endocrine disrupting chemical (EDC) pollutants became a public concern from the global decline of avian populations in the 1950’s-1960’s, publicised by Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring. EDCs affect the production, metabolism, and action of natural hormones in an organism.  Notably, EDCs can perturb thyroid hormone signalling responsible for regulating vertebrate growth, development, and metabolism including the metamorphosis of a tadpole into a frog. Recently, studies using bullfrog tadpoles uncovered the endocrine disrupting activity of triclosan and ibuprofen on thyroid hormone action, but there are many consumer products whose endocrine effects are unknown. Sucralose is a non-nutritive sweetener 600 times sweeter than sucrose and a persistent aquatic pollutant at concentrations up to 1 μg/L. The biological inertness of sucralose for human consumption has been questioned, and herein we predict sucralose to be an EDC. Using an American bullfrog model, we exposed tadpoles to relevant human dietary concentrations of sucralose for 48 hours and studied thyroid hormone sensitive gene readouts as biomarkers of endocrine disruption. An understanding of the biological activity of sucralose is important to guide consumer choices, setting the acceptable daily intake, and regulating environmental concentrations."        

"Recent scholarship commends the pedagogical potential of theatre, encouraging communities to use it as a tool. In a 2017 article, Katherine Steele Brokaw examines the ways that community productions of Shakespeare can address and align with the concerns of said community. She goes on to cite Mark Weinberg’s definition of community-based theatre as that which “closely allies itself with a particular community, develops performances about that community's concerns, and involves some level of participation from community members” (446).

My project embraces the aforementioned definition of community-engaged theatre and examines how a text can align with the needs of a community. I want to do so by conducting a case study of a Victoria-based program. Williams Head on Stage—the only program of it’s kind in Canada—allows inmates of the Williams Head Institution in Metchosin to create and participate in theatrical productions. Interviews with program staff will contribute to my study of the plays previously produced by WHOS (notable titles include Macbeth, and The Hobbit).

To supplement my research on the community-engaged productions of the WHOS program, I intent to compare and contrast other community-engaged productions such as the verbatim theatre of Anna Deavere Smith and Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project’s The Laramie Project. By studying the plays as texts, as well as examining where and by whom they are performed, I will attempt to understand the formal way in which a community can align itself with a particular text."
   
   

"Block co-polymer nanoparticles have great potential to act as targeted carriers for drugs such as anti-cancer agents. Microfluidic chip technology can allow for the synthesis of monodispersed nanoparticles ideal for DNA delivery applications, but the physical effects (e.g. shear forces) of this technology on drug integrity have not been thoroughly examined. Thus, using gel electrophoresis of various plasmid DNA samples as analogues for anti-cancer agents, the physical effects of on-chip polymerization on anti-cancer agents will be tested."        

"Examines the points of continuity and discontinuity in form and content between Soviet avant-garde film of the 1920s and socialist realist films of the 1930s."  
    

"Often when the topic of cultural appropriation comes up in conversation, the tone becomes tense and aggressive. This tension stops effective communicate in it’s tracks, having the opposite of the intended affect. So I want to flip the script from appropriation to appreciation. Since clothing is an important indicator of culture, I intend to use the kimono as a lens to look at Japan’s cultural history and its connection with Western culture. Kansha is the Japanese word for appreciation, which I believe is the perfect title for this research project. I will be facilitating the creation of a devised theatre play with the same name with support from the Department of Theatre and the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies. The central research question at the heart of the show will be: “How do we respectfully appreciate another person’s culture?” Kansha will last around 40 minutes with a 10 minute talkback session. The performance will include many elements of Japanese culture, including Japanese folk tales, odori (Japanese folk dance), taiko drumming, origami, and Japanese wood block art. The performance will be created based off of interviews with the Japanese community in Victoria, images, academic resources, and some of my family stories. The performance will take place as a part of Intrepid Theatre’s YOU Show Series on November 2 and 3, 2018. As the Japanese community in Victoria will be central to the creation of this show and this research, they will be invited to the performance."
    
    

"Attending university can be a difficult period of transition, and often times new undergraduate students experience stress and anxiety in this new environment. This project aims to investigate the effects of mindfulness meditation on academic performance, particularly in the developmental context of emerging adulthood. Specifically, the project aims to explore the impact of mindfulness meditation on stress and attention, and further examine how these two factors may mediate exam performance."        

"Gay and bisexual men (GBM) are at greater risk for adverse mental health outcomes (e.g., anxiety, depression). Minority stress theory, the psychological mediation framework, and the unified conceptual framework each provide important insights into the consequences of social stigma and the mechanisms through which stigma manifests as psychopathology. The present research integrates these models into a comprehensive framework to examine the effects of family-based heterosexism on current psychological wellbeing and experiences of shame in gay and bisexual men. Importantly, this research examines the moderating role of parental reactions to children’s disclosures of sexual orientation in conjunction with the mediating variables of internalized heterosexism and perceived sexual stigma, factors which have been implicated in adverse mental health outcomes and experiences of shame in sexual minority men. Participants were recruited through the University of Victoria’s psychology research participation website as well as through online reddit communities. The desired sample size is N = 400. Two moderated mediation models will be tested using conditional process analyses. We predict that parental acceptance will result in more positive outcomes (i.e., less internalized heterosexism/perceived sexual stigma, decreased psychological distress and experiences of shame). We further predict that perceived sexual stigma and internalized heterosexism will partially mediate the association between family based-heterosexism and psychological distress. Finally, we hypothesize that internalized heterosexism will partially mediate the association between family-based heterosexism and experiences of shame.

Graham Berlin, Lauren Matheson, MSc & Erica Woodin, PhD"

"KZ Hersbruck was a satellite camp of KZ Flössenberg, with another satellite camp close by in Happurg. How has this tiny camp been remembered and memorialized in comparison to much larger, well known camps? How did this camp impact the citizens of the small town of Hersbruck? How was the memory of the camp taught or not taught in schools, in combination with the teaching of the Holocaust as a whole?"
 
 

"My proposed research project seeks to examine the effect of rock climbing on an individual’s brain wave activity. Specifically, I hope to compare the frequency and amplitude of the P300 and N200 waveforms during pre- and post-climb conditions, in both indoor and outdoor environments. To obtain data, 15 participants will participate in two indoor and two outdoor climbs, with the MUSE device being used to collect brain wave data. In performing this research, I hope to determine whether participation in an activity with inherent risk elicits similar N200 and P300 waveform responses when performed in a relatively controlled indoor environment, compared to a less controllable outdoor environment. My proposed research has implications for individuals who choose to engage in activities that may occur in distinctly different environments (i.e., outdoor vs. indoor). If brain wave activity is seen to differ between the two conditions, it may indicate a need for an individual to undertake different physical and mental preparations in order to ensure optimized cognitive function, while simultaneously minimizing performance error and injury risk."
      
      

"My research project will probe the politics of food preparation in early modern England, focusing on seventeenth-century cookbooks and instructional literature targeting housewives and domestic servants. Through the investigation of these prescriptive texts, including Cookery Refin’d. Or, the Lady, Gentlewoman and Servant-maids Useful Companion (1697), The Queens Closet Opened (1684), and The English Hovse-vvife (1631), I hope to discover some of the interactions between class, gender, status, and cooking. These texts offer rich insights into the seventeenth-century home through their descriptions of foodstuffs and the labour necessary to transform these into acceptable meals, creating a picture of the domestic expectations and activities of women. This study of recipes, meals, ingredients, and methods of preparation and presentation, in combination with an analysis of recipes’ language, aims to reconstruct an image of the gender and class structures involved in early modern daily life. This is an important topic because it allows us to examine intricate and revealing issues of gender and status through the seemingly-mundane lens of food and cooking. While I will attempt to access the complexities of class structures in early modern homes, I am starting with the simple question: what’s for dinner?"

"Eosinophils are a population of immune cells that have been highly studied in the context of allergic disease. Many of the hallmark symptoms of allergy are a result of the release of inflammatory mediators from eosinophils. Eosinophils, of course, did not evolve for the purpose of causing allergies. Instead, eosinophils provide defense against extracellular parasites, and recent reports suggest that they contribute to the maintenance of homeostasis in the intestinal tract.

Eosinophils are present at steady state in the intestinal tract of healthy individuals. Our intestines are home to thousands of species of mutualistic bacteria, as well as being continuously challenged by potentially pathogenic bacteria. The role of eosinophils in regulating immune responses to pathogenic intestinal bacteria is unknown, and is the focus of this project.

How eosinophil deficiency alters susceptibility to enteric pathogens will be investigated by conducting controlled mouse experiments. Lab techniques such as flow cytometry and cytometric bead arrays will be utilized to study eosinophils abundance, activation, and secretion of inflammatory signals during enteric bacterial pathogen challenge. As a complementary approach to in vivo experiments, eosinophils generated in vitro from bone-marrow stem cells will be analysed upon exposure to Salmonella endotoxin. In total, this project will contribute to determining a clearer role of eosinophils at the interface of the gut mucosa."        

"Due to an aging population and gender imbalance, China's government finally ended the one-child policy in 2015 allowing Chinese couples to have a second child. The expectation of the new policy was an immediate increase in the birthrate. However, the baby boom did not happen and the birthrate has even fallen. This project adopts a female perspective to examine why the change in policy has not resulted in more births. The phenomenon of the Chinese traditional son preference and the lack of a universal social welfare system are considered obstacles preventing Chinese women from having higher fertility intentions. Chinese women’s burdens of family and work will intensify if they have a second child. This research will examine how the Chinese traditional son preference negatively affects women’s education level, opportunities in the workplace, and status in households, and thus decreases fertility intentions of working mothers. It will also analyze how the reduction of childcare programs caused by the reforms of China’s economy in China discourages working females from having more babies. The key objective of this project is to examine the issue from the perspective of gender which will help explain why the two-child policy does not seem to have been successful, at least at this stage, and to make suggestions about how the policy could be modified."
      
      

"My research is an attempt to put the theoretical traditions of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory in conversation with Indigenous-generated theories from across Turtle Island (North America) in order to illuminate any potential for radical “constellations of co-resistance” (Simpson, 2016) to colonial, gendered, and racialized oppressions. It will also seek to expose any historical and ongoing limitations of critical theory in addressing the particular mechanics of oppression within the settler-colonial context."        

"I will examine how ketogenic diets and intermittent fasting impact synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus to try and better understand this process before proceeding to work in mild traumatic brain injury. Having spent the summer working in the lab as a USRA student, I am uniquely positioned to make significant progress with this project."
       

"Dendroclimatological and dendrohydrological reconstructions use the information contained in tree-rings to produce annually resolved hydroclimatic records that provide insight into long-term natural climate variability. In the British Columbia Coast Mountains, the climate sensitivity of several tree species offers the opportunity to develop records of environmental change spanning centuries. My research focuses on developing proxy records from a remote high elevation site in the Mt. Waddington area. The research objectives are to: 1) construct representative tree ring chronologies from samples collected adjacent to Waddington Glacier; 2) employ dendroclimatological methodologies to reconstruct a summer (June-July) air temperature record spanning the duration of the chronologies; 3) use dendrohydrological methodologies to reconstruct the Little Ice Age mass balance history of Waddington Glacier; and, 4) document any interannual and multidecadal relationships between these proxy records and large-scale climate patterns in Pacific North America. Field sampling in July 2017 enabled collection of core samples from subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) and mountain hemlock trees (Tsuga mertensiana) located at the local treeline. The cores will be prepared for ring-width measurement and the individual series combined to produce master tree-ring chronologies. Transfer functions will be used to reconstruct records of the climate variable with the strongest relationship to each, and linear regression models will be employed to predict the past values. It is expected these proxy records will provide the first detailed insights into hydroclimatic changes at Waddington Glacier, potentially spanning the Little Ice Age interval."        

"For this project I will research the intersections between poetry and fiction. I would like to focus the first half of my project on research and the second half on writing my own multi-genre work. I’m particularly interested in writing narrative pieces that could be considered works of fiction, but that also exist very much in the world of poetry, with a strong focus on the individual line. As far as themes, I’m interested in identity and in the relationships between people. Over the course of the project, my goal is to write between two and four pieces, each between 1000-6000 words. I hope that this self-directed project will allow me the time and space to more deeply explore multi-genre work in a way that is not always possible or available in a workshop context."
               
               

"Retreating glaciers in the British Columbia Coast Mountains are exposing the remains of forests buried during Holocene-age glacial advances. Despite recent progress in discerning the extent of these advances in many regions of the Coast Mountains, almost nothing is known about the character of these advances for glaciers draining into the Klinaklini River from the Mt Waddington areas.  My research project focuses on describing the Holocene activity of Bell Glacier. The research has three objectives: 1) to use dendroglaciologic and radiocarbon analyses to describe Holocene glacier activity; 2) to employ tree-ring and lichenometric analyses to detail the Little Ice Age behaviour of these glaciers; and, 3) to use dendroclimatological analyses to develop proxy reconstructions of climate and mass balance relevant glaciers draining into the Klinaklini River. Field sampling will be completed in July 2018. Exposed subfossil wood exposed by erosion and/or glacier retreat will be collected and dated to identify when it was killed by an advancing glacier. Tree-ring samples will be cross-dated to living chronologies or sent for ¹⁴C analysis to establish kill dates. Reconstruction of the Holocene behaviour of these glaciers will contribute to our understanding of long-term responses of glaciers in this region to climatically-driven mass balance fluctuations over the Holocene. The research will assist in developing an understanding of the recent and Holocene behaviour of glaciers in this remote region and provide information crucial for resource managers charged with managing water supplies in coastal B.C. in the face of accelerating climate change."       

"The human body lies at the intersection between constructed identities and the construction of identities. It is both the site of lived experiences and a means of communicating those experiences. As product of both nature and culture, it can be modified to fulfill, challenge or rebel against ideals of beauty and expectations related to age, gender, and social status. One of the ways in which humans modify the body is through the use of personal ornaments (i.e., modified or unmodified objects that are worn on the body, often as beads, pendants, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, diadems, rings, or piercings). One of the oldest types of personal ornaments is ostrich eggshell beads that date back to at least 70,000 years ago. This project will take a taphonomic approach to the study of more than 450 ostrich eggshell beads from Grassridge, a 7,000-11,500 year old site in South Africa. Many of the beads from Grassridge have been exposed to fire. Caitlin will expose unmodified ostrich eggshell (purchased in Cape Town, South Africa) to heat, varying the temperature and length of exposure, in order to reproduce the range of colors (and other transformations) visible in the archaeological assemblage. This data will then be linked with stage of manufacture (there are 7 stages from preform to complete bead). The results of this study will allow us to address questions related to craft production and decision making among these early Holocene peoples (e.g., Is it more likely the beads were accidentally or purposefully exposed to heat? Does exposure to heat change/ameliorate properties of ostrich eggshell that might make it more less difficult to shape? If purposeful, was there a specific point in the manufacturing process when beads were heated/burned? Did these practices change over time?). The results of this experimental work will be added to a general analysis of the manufacturing stages of the beads, residue analysis, sourcing of the ostrich eggshell and other specialized studies. It is anticipated that at least one jointly authored paper will result from this work."
        
        

"Activists have argued that burlesque offers an opportunity for fat women to enjoy and celebrate their full bodies while simultaneously engaging in radical subversive performance. Through this research I aim to explore burlesque as a potential space for fat people to embody the theoretical and political aspects of “fat liberation” and to subvert norms of sexuality and beauty. I will conduct interviews with a number of self-identified fat burlesque performers in order to better understand the experiences and motivations of people who participate in “fat burlesque.”

Research of this type is important because it adds the voices of actual burlesque dancers to ongoing debates about the potentials of burlesque and contributes to a growing body of knowledge on experiences of fatness in a society that idealizes thinner body types.

Please note that I am using the term “fat” as part of work to reclaim it as a neutral descriptive term which does not make judgments about what a “normal” body or weight should be."

"This project will focus on Canadian composers and why it is important to play music written in our own country. Specific composers will include Kathryn Cernauskas and will focus on her work as not only a Canadian composer, but also as a performer and a publisher."

"The modern women’s movement of the 1970s ushered in a new era for women: women gained access to the contraceptive pill so that the number of unwanted births declined, and it became socially acceptable for women to go to work. The increase in women’s welfare that occurred throughout this period leads one to assume that a corresponding rise in female happiness took place. However, in 2011, Stevenson and Wolfers produced a provocative study, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” that shows women have actually become less happy since the women’s movement took place. One theory used to explain this paradox is that a “double shift” has occurred as women have entered the labour market and also retained their responsibilities running the household. However, research shows that men have increased the number of hours that they spend on household chores, while women have decreased their time spent on household tasks. Another theory is that the reference groups of women have expanded to include men and more successful women. Reference groups are defined as the people that individuals relate to and compare themselves to. They are used to form personal benchmarks of success. My research will compare the happiness of women who have remained in traditionally female jobs to those who were able to enter new industries because of the women’s movement to demonstrate that a change in reference groups is responsible for the apparent decline in female happiness that has occurred since the 1970s."
             
             

"This project investigates the impact of participation in an intergenerational choir in residential care. Choir participants include residents with dementia, their family caregivers, and students (e.g., high school students). This will be the first professionally directed choir in residential care and the season will culminate with a public concert. The purpose of the choir is to reduce the stigma of dementia and increase social connections through a meaningful and enjoyable activity. Key outcomes of the study also include examining the impact of the choir on cognitive function, health and quality of life."
       
       

"Drug detection and identification is important for law enforcement and harm reduction strategies. This project will involve the synthesis and study of ‘host’ molecules that bind a wide variety of illicit drugs, and that turn on a coloured and/or fluorescent response upon binding. The responses of a small array of sensors will constitute a unique fingerprint that defines the identity of a given drug. This study might also be extended to include other detectable molecules that are important for human health, such as amino acids and metabolites."
          
          

"I will be designing novel molecules using techniques learned from previous courses. These will incorporate special functional groups (called sulfones) that have under-exploited properties in medicinal chemistry. In addition, the molecules will have rigid architectures designed to favour binding to biological targets. By adding different substituents, a useful drug-candidate may be obtained. All compounds will be evaluated by two different screening agencies: Eli Lilly and the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery."        

"Due to the rise in popularity of Solar Energy, this research project intends to analyse the overall biological impact that this energy source could cause if it becomes one of the main sources of energy. Just like with wind farms, new studies have shown that the so called “Solar Parks” are negatively affecting the nearby ecosystems, increasing the Externalities of Solar Energy, and questioning whether the Social Benefit outweighs the social cost."
         
         

"This project will examine the links between climate change and irregular migration out of rural communities in India and Bangladesh. Currently, twenty-five per cent of current migratory movements are influenced by hazardous changes in climate resulting in violent storms and intense flooding. With current global trends, it is expected that this figure will increase significantly. Environmental disasters, which are intensified by climate change, results in family fragmentation, loss of livelihoods and support networks, disruption of social norms, and relocation into unsafe disaster relief camps. These conditions are shown to be conducive to gender-based violence, exploitation, and trafficking. I propose to expand on existing literature that indicates that rural, low class women are most vulnerable to consequences of climate change by exploring evidence which links climate change to gendered dimensions of poverty, irregular migration, trafficking for sexual exploitation, and trafficking for labour exploitation.

As I am currently completing a CAPI internship with the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women International Secretariat (GAATW-IS) in Bangkok, Thailand, my primary source of information will be previous GAATW publications and project reports. However, I will also survey existing literature and reports within the past 5 years from GAATW’s member organisations based in India and Bangladesh, as well as IO’s, to determine if there is an increase in the use of third parties (whether coerced or willingly) for migration due to environmental changes."

"A study of what elements are necessary to retellings of fairy tales. For example, when does a modern retelling of Cinderella stop being Cinderella and become its own original story? I will examine what makes a story a fairy tale and what aspects of the fairy tale remain even as the story crosses genres—from literary fiction to poetry to young adult and children’s fiction to romances to erotica—in its multiple retellings. I’m currently most interested in the Cinderella story, mainly because of the transformation scene. I’m fascinated in how the transformation can be interpreted in so many different ways. S. T. Lynn’s Cinderella Ella is a story where Cinderella is transgender and the transformation lets her appear as herself rather than as a man; meanwhile, in Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted, the transformation is nothing more than a dress and the coach. What does transformation mean? What importance does it hold to different groups of people? Is it always positive or can it be a negative thing? I’m curious about whether the elements that allow fairy tales to be retold in so many different ways explains their timelessness, or if there is another aspect that accounts for our fascination with them over 200 years after the Grimm brothers first published Children's and Household Tales."

"Between 2012 and 2016 a UVic archaeology crew uncovered rare, 8,000 to 5,000 year old, wooden artifacts from the Triquet Island site, in Heiltsuk Territory.  I would like to do research on these to understand their function and utility.  In particular, I am interested in examining a wooden spindle whorl shaft. This project would involve research off-campus at the Royal BC Museum, Simon Fraser University, in Bella Bella with Heiltsuk knowledge keepers, and at the Heiltsuk Cultural Centre. Some experimental archaeology will also be pursued to help understand the dynamics of operating a spindle whorl."
   
   

"I will investigate a mammalian protein called Ars2 using Schizosaccharomyces pombe, also known as fission yeast. Fission yeast is a model organism with many features and pathways that are conserved with mammals and contains an Ars2 homolog called Pir2. We can use this homolog to make determinations about the equivalent protein in other organisms. While Ars2 is both essential to normal functioning in the cell and involved with arsenic sensitivity, how it contributes to that sensitivity is not known. I will investigate whether the homolog Pir2 is involved in the oxidative stress pathway and how it is involved with nonsense mediated decay. Specifically, I will examine the expression of a downstream transcription factor called Atf1. We expect that Pir2 will regulate an upstream regulatory protein called Upf1, thereby reducing the expression of the transcription factor Atf1 in a mutant Pir2 deficient cell. Furthermore, I will investigate the interaction between Pir2 and the centromeric cap complex- previous research suggests the binding is cap independent. I will test this hypothesis, and if successful generate mutations to determine which domains interact with validated Ars2 targets. This will allow us to determine which Ars2 interactions are involved with centromeric silencing."

"This project will explore the adaptation of Mexican writer Angeles Mastretta's novel Arráncame la vida (1985) into film. Mastretta's work will be explored through its political and social context and tied to the modern Mexican feminist movement as it developed and found its voice by the end of last century. I am interested in exploring how the personal and the political are interwoven in the story, as it follows the life and struggles of its female protagonist, Catalina Guzmán. Comparing the novel and the film, released in 2008, will also allow for exploring the director's choices in terms of message and impact on the audience."
        
        

"Physiological stress is a serious health issue that has been shown to affect physical abilities, including cognition. Amongst students, adequate cognition is crucial for academic success; however, many students suffer from both chronic and acute stress as a result of academic pressure, financial instability or social relationships, amongst other reasons. Thus, investigating the effects of chronic stress on cognition within a university student population is both relevant and important. As such, the purpose of this project is to investigate the effect of chronic stress on the cognitive abilities of students, as well to assess the practicality of a portable electroencephalography (EEG) recording device in the quantification of human stress. This project will utilize a MUSE device to record the EEG signal of participants completing a cognitive task and will use the perceived stress scale (PPS) to subjectively measure chronic stress experienced by participants. The correlation between PPS responses and EEG low beta wave power will be assessed in order to study the relationship between cognitive abilities and self-reported chronic stress."
       
       

"This project will investigate the changing burial practices of the Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean (Late Helladic I - Late Helladic II) periods in the context of the social and political developments which led to the eventual institution of the Mycenaean palaces in LH II (ca. 1500 BCE). Focusing on the concepts of inclusion and exclusion in the burial practices of these periods, I will explore the meaning and utilization of these features in the forging of social stratification and emerging power and prestige in the Early Mycenaean period.  The newly excavated Tomb 11 at ancient Eleon in Boeotia, which was uncovered during the 2018 season of the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project, will provide an original case study by which to consider these practices."        

"Recent sexual assault trials in Canada (e.g., The Queen v Jian Ghomeshi), the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and the international #MeToo movement raise pressing ethical questions for the protection of the rights both of survivors and alleged perpetrators before the courts. Taking into consideration psychological research on traumatic memory and post-traumatic behaviour, I propose to examine how an ethics-based perspective can shed light on these difficult questions. How can the courts avoid retraumatizing survivors, while maintaining the right of alleged perpetrators to be considered innocent before proven guilty? Usually considered from the perspective of law, feminist ethics can provide principle guidelines as the courts adjust standards of evidence in the future."
          
          

"The Labrador Sea is one of the few places where surface water sinks into the deep sea and spreads throughout the world’s deep oceans.  The oxygen content of this water is critical to deep-sea habitats both near and far.  Previous work using data from oxygen sensors on robotic profiling floats has identified that oxygen concentrations are lower when wintertime convection in the region reaches deeper or when convection shuts down earlier in the winter. These floats change their density to sink or rise through the water column, collecting data as they go and transmitting it to shore via satellite.  This JCURA project will examine oxygen data from robotic float deployments made since 2014 with two objectives.  First, I will investigate whether more recent data fits the previously observed pattern during wintertime convection.  Second, I will quantify the role of photosynthetic oxygen production during the spring period and what role this has in countering the wintertime low values."        

"The earth’s sedimentary reservoirs provide unique insights into the history of the earth.  For the first time sedimentary basins through time are characterized for the Australian continent.  Utilizing the Macrostrat database and tools, analysis and interpretation of the sedimentary reservoirs is possible."        

"“Selfish” genetic elements promote their own transmission to the next generation, regardless of how this may affect the organism that carries them. Sex-chromosome meiotic drive is a case where a selfish genetic element is found on a sex chromosome and promotes its transmission during meiosis, i.e. during sperm and egg formation. One example of this, called the “sex-ratio” trait (SR), is found on the X chromosome in several species of Drosophila flies. SR kills the Y-bearing sperm in males that carry it, so they only produce daughters. Aside from sex-ratio distortion, there may be other fitness “side effects” associated with SR. SR-bearing X chromosomes have been found not to undergo recombination normally during meiosis. This could lead to an accumulation of harmful mutations on the X chromosome, since the mechanism for getting rid of them is disrupted. I will investigating whether the presence of SR in Drosophila testacea affects host-parasitoid interactions with Leptopilina heterotoma, a parasitoid wasp that attacks larval Drosophila. I will expose colonies of larval D. testacea comprising both wild-type and SR-type individuals to L. heterotoma and compare the proportions of each genotype in the emerging adult flies to the proportions in non-exposed colonies. This will indicate whether flies of a particular genotype are parasitized at higher rates. The results will provide insight into whether there are interactions between parasitoids and the SR “genetic parasite,” which is currently unknown and would have implications for the population ecology of species with similar meiotic drive systems."

"Drawing on current literature and interviews with working and aspiring professionals, this project will explore the history of white neutrality and adherence to the gender binary in theatre and film casting. Additionally, it will discuss the recent trend of “colour blind casting” and whether or not it can actually solve issues of racism in the industry, as well as the potential of gender neutral casting and the implications it would have for the performing arts."        

"We are facing a global biodiversity crisis in which extinction is occurring at an unnaturally high rate as a consequence of human activities. Biodiversity loss has profound human consequences, including habitat change and the loss of ecosystem services. In British Columbia (BC), much of the biodiversity and human land-use is concentrated in species at risk hotspots (southern Vancouver Island and the south Okanagan), creating land-use conflicts. Developing a framework of attributes (termed “correlates of extinction”) that predispose species to extinction in the face of disturbance helps us to predict future risks and minimize human impact on biodiversity. This study examines correlates of extinction in two species at risk hotspots in BC by comparing trophic level, longevity, body mass, plant height, and range peripherality of species at risk to not at risk species. We predict that these attributes are distributed non-randomly between species at risk and not at risk species due to their influence on species vulnerability to anthropogenic change. This study will group eight major taxa together to examine the relevance of these correlates of extinction across taxa. By comparing attributes of species at risk and not at risk species collectively in southern Vancouver Island and southern Okanagan, we expect to gain insight into whether correlates of extinction influence species vulnerability in these conservation hotspots regardless of taxa."

"For this research project, I plan on examining the effectiveness of U.N. sponsored democratization missions in post-conflict States. By conducting a most similar comparative case study of two sub-Saharan countries that have been the subjects of similar U.N. missions, in terms of mission mandate and dedicated resource that ended in drastically different results, to examine the political, social and economic contexts that influence mission results."
    
    

"When asked about my ancestral heritage a few years ago, I had little to say other than that my family has been in Canada for many generations and we are of vaguely European descent. Such a disconnection with the land that my ancestors immigrated from and a lack of understanding about why they chose to leave, allows settlers like me to imagine ourselves as the original people of this land, rather than its occupiers.

By taking responsibility for our own learning, settlers (especially those of European descent) can begin to interrogate how our histories are entangled with and inform the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous territories. Through this research, I will review literature written by settler and Indigenous scholars about settler identity and experience on Turtle Island to outline possibilities for peaceful coexistence with Indigenous peoples.

Ancestral research is a worthwhile effort that has the potential to substantially shift settler consciousness, but it must be embarked upon cautiously and with the acknowledgement that it is a settler project, rather than one which benefits or upholds the sovereignty of Indigenous nations. However, a more nuanced understanding of what it means to hold a settler identity could make anti-colonial solidarity efforts both more effective and genuine."

"A growing movement for “Slow” foods, local foods, traditional foods and whole foods demonstrates the importance of relationship to food for the human organism. Using the Dual Valuing Process Model (Grouzet, 2013), it is predicted that proximity to an organic food will act as an organismic call, resulting in valuing intrinsic goals."
          
          

"Attachment style is known to influence emotion perception. Individuals who display a highly anxious attachment style tend to show lower thresholds for perceptions of negative expressions of emotion, while individuals with avoidant attachment styles tend to be less responsive to both negative and positive valence expressions. However, the temporal effects of attachment style on emotion perception have not yet been investigated. Face recognition research shows that we only need a very short amount of time (less than 100 ms) – what has been referred to as gist perception - to recognize the identity of a face.  However, it is unclear how much time is needed to recognize facial expressions.  In the proposed research, we will examine the relationship between attachment style and gist expression recognition.  We will assess attachment style using a validated adult attachment style questionnaire (Revised Adult Attachment Scale, 1996). We will test gist expression recognition using holistic paradigm in which faces with negative, positive, or neutral expressions will be presented at very brief, display times. We will determine how much time is needed to correctly identify facial expressions and whether attachment style plays a role in the early, “gist” stages of emotion recognition. We expect that participants with an anxious attachment style will identify negative expressions at shorter display times, whereas participants with avoidant attachment style will need longer display times to recognize both positive and negative expressions."

"China is known as one of the fastest growing major markets but in doing so, they have accumulated debt at an unprecedented level. Their buildup of debt began with a large stimulus package to escape the financial hardship of 2008 and continued as a way to maintain their impressive growth. With their current trade war with the US, a slowing economy and foreign countries struggling to repay their loans, their debt load may have reached a tipping point. This report will analyze the global impact of a Chinese financial crisis and potential ways to mitigate the issue, beyond what the Chinese government has done so far."        

"An examination of historical trauma through the lens of the family unit and objects. Through two books, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, I will explore the question of how historical trauma is archived and made tangible in objects.

Focusing on two traumatic histories - that of British colonialism and the Holocaust - I will research the ways in which the history tangibly carried by objects manifests both private and public human experience. By drawing our gaze to the lives of things, these two books imagine a different way to tell the stories of diasporic and post-colonial peoples. In doing so, these texts reverse a colonial gaze which seeks to objectify and dehumanize peoples. Through thing theory, I will explore how these novels blur the boundaries between human and object, thus radically reclaiming and reimagining what it means to be seen as "less than human."
       
       

"My proposed research project will be based on archival material digitized in the summer of 2017 by myself and three other members of the Provincial Records cluster of the Landscapes of Injustice research collective. My project will analyze patient case files from the Riverview and Essondale psychiatric institutions in BC and investigate the effects of the dispossession and internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII on their mental health. Specifically, it will examine how abrupt separation from families, forced removal from home, and racist/exclusionary societal and governmental actions manifested within the mental wellbeing of Japanese Canadians and how Japanese Canadian patients related their experiences of dispossession and internment to their mental states. Numerous Japanese Canadians were admitted near the time of dispossession and internment, and many files explicitly connect the patient’s condition with these upheavals. Moreover, correspondence between the British Columbia Security Commission (the corporate body responsible for the relocation and internment of Japanese Canadians), hospital staff, and patients’ families provide valuable information on the role of the BCSC in patients’ wellbeing and its role within the hospital system at the time. This is a valuable research avenue as it will contribute to an ongoing and much needed conversation on mental health, highlighting the serious effects that Canada’s policies of systemic racism can have on a population’s mental health. This project will be
contextualized within a history of medicine and psychiatric institutions in Canada."        

"The coordination between the parasympathetic and sympathetic autonomic nervous systems becomes impaired when an individual suffers a concussion. This dysfunction can be observed through measurement of heart rate variability (HRV). This project will examine how concussions influence this phenomenon, specifically whether the amount of concussions exacerbates the impaired coordination of the autonomic divisions through measurement of HRV during rest, exercise, and recovery in participants who have suffered two or more concussions in the last 10 years. Participants will rest for 12 minutes and then undergo an exercise protocol a cycle ergometer consisting of a 6 minute steady submaximal load that will lead to an incremental test to exhaustion (VO₂ peak). This will be followed by a 12 minute recovery period. The HRV profiles of participants will be compared to matched controls to determine the effects of concussions on HRV and consequently, the relationship between neurological and cardiovascular health and functioning."
       
       

"My research will explore the topic of community engaged learning as a method of practicing public sociology. Through my involvement in an intergenerational community applied theatre project that addresses seniors’ sexuality and the stigmas that surround it, my research will investigate what the process of community engaged learning can add to sociological education. Using the community theatre project as a case study, I will study the benefits and challenges of using my training as a sociologist to help a community project succeed. My final project will combine a narrative based approach and personal reflection to explore and analyze the field of community engaged learning at the undergraduate level."        

"Gradient based attribution methods, as well as hidden output gate values, can be used to measure the importance of certain dimensions of an LSTMs internal cell state. I intend to investigate the use of measurements of cell importance over the course of an input sequence to interpret the behaviour and learned representations of LSTMs used for language modeling."
             

"I will be exploring and analyzing vulnerability in selected images in Early Modern and Renaissance art through a neuroaesthetic approach. Using a neuroaesthetic approach when analyzing art is crucial to understanding how people were affected by the pieces during that period and if it affects us in the same way now. Through Adrian Randolph and other scholars, the exploration of how women at this time would have perceived artworks such as Botticelli's Venus and Mars will be prevalent in my analysis. In this project there will be research based on new scholarship in neuroaesthetics, particularly art historical studies which analyze the brain and nervous system in order to understand what prompts people to feel a range of emotions when perceiving art. Personally, I have been emotionally moved by the art of the Early Modern and Renaissance periods. For example, some art brings me to tears or others leave me in a state of shared vulnerability with the characters, artists, and those who would have viewed it in the past. By exploring emotional reactions to art we can more deeply understand historical narratives, societies, and understand better how art can change opinions and inspire people."
         
         

"Analytical instrumentation for drug-checking offers the possibility of rapid identification of substances based on their molecular fingerprint. In addition to matching these fingerprints to those stored in a database for identification, there is a further opportunity for harm reduction through the analysis of trends. This project will use Raman spectroscopy, gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and IR absorption to develop protocols for the storage, analysis, and sharing of data."
           
           

"The number of adults over 50 years of age living with HIV is on the rise worldwide. There are two reasons for the growth in this demographic. First, people with HIV are living longer lives due to treatment options like (HAART), which makes HIV a chronic, manageable illness. Secondly, the number of new HIV infections in older adults is increasing (Davis, Thornton, Oslin, & Zanjani, 2014; Guo & Sims, 2017; Greene et al., 2015; Harris, Emlet, Parker, & Furlotte, 2018; Roberson, 2018). In Canada in 2015, approximately 24% of new diagnoses were of adults over 50 years old and the new cases in this age group has been steadily increasing over the last five years (Bourgeois et al., 2017; HIV in Canada, 2016). The main research questions this research will address are: (1) how to create successful HIV education and prevention programs aimed at adults over 50 years of age by assessing their existing knowledge; and (2) how to improve training for healthcare providers to normalize discussions of sex and HIV prevention for older adults?"

"The American poets Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978) and George Oppen (1908-1984) both started their poetic careers in the midst of a vibrant modernist movement in poetry which for them was dominated by the innovative work of Ezra Pound. They were especially interested in Pound's attempt to write a poetry that could engage with the political and economic crises of the twenties and thirties, though as Jewish Americans interested in Marxism and socialism they found his economic ideas naive and his emerging anti-Semitism abhorrent. For my JCURA, I propose to examine how the early work of Zukofsky and Oppen shapes its political engagements in relation to poetic tradition and to modernist experimentalism, as well as to the ethnic and cultural difference of their minority status. Distinguishing themselves as members of a movement they called "Objectivism," Zukofsky and Oppen conceived of poetics as a form of knowledge that reframed experience in a way that could resist ideological forms of perception. My main focus will be the work of Oppen, who almost immediately after his first book withdrew from the literary world and exiled himself in Mexico to engage in political organizing. I will compare his first slim book (Discrete Series​, 1932) with some of his later work (particularly the long poem "Of Being Numerous," from the eponymous Pulitzer prize-winning book published in 1968) and with the post-Depression and post-World War Two work of Zukofsky in order to understand how Oppen's poetics changed under historical pressure between the thirties and the sixties."
        
        

"What would it look like to bring University-level study of literature and culture to elementary school children? How could we encourage a lifelong love of these topics, and give children a taste for experiential and engaged learning? How can we do this in ways that are especially resonant for this particular place, Victoria? My project will combine research and practical application to produce prototype instructional units grounded in a place-based literature curriculum. 

First, I will research existing best practices and principles of curriculum and programme design for teaching literature and culture to young children. I will supplement the existing scholarship by consulting with local elementary school teachers, indigenous peoples, and other community stakeholders to discover how these principles and practices might be adapted to our specific place. I will detail the results of my research in a brief research paper (2000 words). That paper will conclude with recommendations regarding which new lines of development seem most promising for devising place-based literature curriculum for young children. In the second phase of my project, I will design curriculum and programming on two scales: a) for a single day unit, and b) for a one-week unit. I will be guided in this development by an emphasis on the specificities of place, histories of colonialism, and the strong desire to inculcate a lifelong love of literature in young students. 

I will present the final design, with its rationale, principles, best practices, and examples at the JCURA Research Fair."        

"This project will further investigate reasons for—and consequences of—a move from classical logic to a non-classical logic, specifically to a paraconsistent logic. Accordingly, it will examine whether there is a good argument for rejecting the principle of explosion of classical logic; and, subsidiarily, what (if anything) this says about the epistemic status of this principle."
     
     

"In 18th-century France, the periodical journal becomes more prominent as a new medium. The Mercure de France is the only monthly publication focused on cultural and world affairs to be patronized and supported by the King, and its editorial stance is therefore one which seeks to uphold the official political culture of Parisian society. Its theatre section is particularly important in understanding how the Mercure’s editors promote and defend this set of cultural norms. In this section, works adhering to correct morals are praised, and works violating royal protocols are criticized. These plays’ audiences ― also the Mercure’s readership ― often appreciate plays with elements which transgress established classical forms in entertaining ways. As such, a balance has to be struck to avoid offending either the royal establishment or the general public. My research project will consist of a statistical analysis of certain recurring formulae in theatrical criticism of the decade 1724-1734, with the goal of illuminating the ways in which this genre’s specific brand of epideictic rhetoric gives the impression of neutrality in order to nudge the reader toward a positive or negative conclusion."
             
             

"The scholarship on Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) views his artwork through an anachronistic twenty-first century bias.  For contemporary viewers, the Tahitian oeuvre is particularly problematic. This research explores how we might re-invent the category of biography, applying a more critical lens to those places where it is too celebratory or judgemental, as well as needing the leavening force of the socio-economic field of art production.

Adopting a Materialist/Marxist approach, I have analyzed Gauguin’s production of his first album of prints, known as the Volpini Suite (1889), during a critical moment where he is re-evaluating his identity as an artist. His career trajectory is impacted by key events such as the 1882 stock market crash, the 1886 final Impressionist exhibition, the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. By defining the precise historical conditions surrounding the Volpini Suite, Gauguin can be reinterpreted as a conscious cultural producer and adept marketer, in a critical period in his career before travelling to Tahiti in 1891. A dominant trend in the scholarship is to adopt Post-Colonial and Feminist approaches to the entirety of his oeuvre. Gauguin, like most artists operating during the late-nineteenth century, had to navigate both the challenges and opportunities presented by contemporary social, political, and economic forces. Understanding the precise nature of these cultural forces are vital to the re-positioning of the artist and offer art historians a new way to work with biography and the socio-economic production of art."
          
          

"Canada is facing an illicit drug overdose crisis that has been getting dramatically worse over the past few years. Social workers are front-line responders to this crisis. The purpose of this research project will be to understand how social work as a profession is responding to the overdose crisis and what we can learn to inform responses. An environmental scan of national and provincial social work regulatory organizations and associations will be conducted in addition to a review of the literature. Results will be consolidated and findings shared back to the national and provincial organizations."

"Among some psychologists and philosophers, it is sometimes suggested that unconditional forgiveness on behalf of a victim of wrongdoing is a moral virtue, regardless of the nature of the wrong.  I will argue that it may actually be morally preferable not to forgive a wrongdoer, in the name of upholding a safe and responsible society.  Specifically, I have in mind questions of gendered violence, and whether (unconditional) forgiveness of such violence may actually incite more instances of gendered violence, and undesirable social conduct, as a result of perpetrators not being held sufficiently morally responsible for their wrongs."
      
      

"In the aftermath of a disaster, individuals and communities often lose access to adequate quantities of clean water required for proper hygiene and consumption. This can result in an increased incidence of diarrheal diseases, one of the major contributors to the overall death rate following a disaster. To limit the prevalence of such diseases, the swift re-establishment of a clean water supply is vital. In emergency situations, water treatment is usually achieved through a chemically-assisted “batch” sedimentation strategy inspired by conventional treatment approaches. In this process, aluminum sulfate is used to condition suspended particles for quicker settling and clarification. For efficient settling to occur, conditioned particles must be provided optimum conditions to collide and agglomerate. This process is referred to as flocculation, and is achieved by inducing specific energy inputs to the system. The flocculation process however is not included in “batch” treatment for the sake of simplicity in resource-limited contexts, and thus, longer settling times can result. With the onset of monsoon season, the “batch” water treatment system currently implemented in Rohingyan Refugee camps in Bangladesh will experience decreased drinking water production due to high source water particle loadings. The proposed solution requested by Oxfam, a major humanitarian relief agency, is to design and implement a portable flocculation unit to the existing system to improve particle settling times. The research conducted aims to determine whether successful flocculation can occur in a portable flocculator designed within the size and cost requirements of the project."
    
    

"Foreign workers contribute to poverty reduction through sending money (remittances) home to their family members. Remittances are associated with lower poverty levels and improvements in human capital indicators of the recipient countries, such as education and health. According to the World Bank, remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached approximately US$441 billion in 2015, a figure three times the volume of official aid flows. Yet, remittances do not necessarily lead to economic growth. In fact, they can pose negative impacts to recipient countries. Remittances can lead to currency appreciation, causing exports prices to go up and import prices to be cheaper. As a result, there is a reduction in export levels and increase in import levels. Moreover, in situations where remittances mainly finance consumption rather than investment, they fail to translate into sustainable growth. Using a Real Business Cycle (RBC) model, I will consider the implications of remittances in the economic growth of Honduras over the period 1974-2016."
        
        

"The animated series Acadieman, which aired on Rogers TV from 2005 to 2009 in both English and French, features the first Acadian superhero (sort of) who works in a call center in the Moncton region and speaks a variety of Acadian French known as Chiac. Peppered with Maritime terms and phonological and lexical archaisms, it also makes extensive use of English borrowings. Because Chiac has been viewed (and still is to a certain extent) as corrupted French, native speakers often suffer from linguistic insecurity. However, both Chiac and local identity have received validation through their representations in media, especially local radio shows and the works of artists (novels, songs, and Acadieman, for instance). With regards to Acadieman, despite initial limited exposure during its first year of existence, the series has grown to be widely successful, winning awards and being readily available in francophone stores across Canada. In this project, I focus on the episodes of the three seasons of the animated series in order to analyze the protagonist’s use of Chiac, that is, the particular ratio of archaic terms, nautical words and English loanwords he employs, which can reveal the particular view of Chiac that Dano LeBlanc, the creator of Acadieman, holds. I probe as well Acadieman’s interactions with other linguistic groups. Examining the relationships Acadieman has with speakers of other languages and dialects, including Québécois French which is often considered as superior, could shed light on the evolving attitudes towards Chiac, which has gained greater recognition in Canada."
              
              

"With this project, I will be looking at British tourism in Canada during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, with a special emphasis on tourism propaganda. By studying posters, guidebooks and advertisements, I will explore how Canada was viewed and portrayed as a destination for British tourists and as a part of the British Empire. I will also examine travel writings by British visitors to Canada. I will explore how common Canada was as a destination for aristocratic and wealthy tourists during this time period, why they chose Canada as their destination, how their travels were influenced by their perception of the British Empire, and how their time in Canada might have affected these perceptions. By doing so, I hope to extend our understanding of how Canada was viewed and portrayed by the wider world and how Canada was experienced by tourists in the decades preceding the First World War."        

"The objective is to create a charged tag that is able to successfully attach itself to Methylalumoxane in order to then use ESI-MS to solve for the neutral components of MAO in the presence of said charged tag. By understanding the composition of MAO, it will allow for further understanding of its characteristics along with new suggestions for alternative and cheaper ways to synthesize MAO."
            
            

"British Columbians have debated how to best manage their forest industry since the earliest days of the colony. As early as 1853, governments created legislation designed to develop and support forestry based value-added industries. However, by the early 21st century, raw logs made up a record percentage of BC’s forestry exports. How did this happen and what has it meant for the people of the province?"

"The goal of the project is to try to extend results in the literature concerning switching and homomorphisms of m-edge-coloured graphs to the more general situation of (m, n)-mixed graphs (a special case of which are the former)."
      
      

"Glioblastoma, a malignant cancer originating from the astrocyte cells of the brain, is one of the most aggressive and deadliest forms of cancer. Glioblastoma shows a high resistance against most of current anti-cancer drugs. One of the difficulties when developing anti-cancer drugs is the difficulty relating successful effectiveness of a drug in 2D cell culture to effectiveness in animal and human trials. Recurrence in glioblastoma is in part caused by the invasion of a subset of glioblastoma cells known as glioblastoma stem cells invading surrounding tissue, which is extremely difficult to replicate using 2D cell culture. Aspect Biosystems 3D Bioprinter called the RX1 can create complex layering of glioblastoma cells between neuronal and glial cells of the brain, generating an in vitro replicate of the natural environment of the brain. These "mini-brains" can then be used to screen anticancer drug effectiveness in stopping glioblastoma stem cells from invading the surrounding tissue, thus bridging the gap between 2D cell culture and animal models and allowing for an easier road for drug development. This project aims to develop a synthetic tumor invasiveness model (STIM) by 3d bio-printing glioblastoma stem cells in the presence of various neural tissue. Known effective anti-cancer drugs will then be used to verify effectiveness of the STIMs produced."

"Adoptive T cell therapy (ACT) is a powerful form of personalized cancer immunotherapy that has shown promise in the treatment of certain cancer types. However, as a treatment for solid tumors, ACT has limitations, including barriers that prevent T cells from entering the tumor bed to elicit their cytolytic activity. The project aims to improve ACT for the treatment of solid cancers by engineering T cells with enhanced ability to infiltrate tumors and carry out their cytolytic activity within the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.

Casitas B-lineage lymphoma proto-oncogene-b (Cbl-b) is a negative regulator of T cell receptor (TCR) signaling, enzymatically tagging positive regulators of the signaling pathway for degradation. Accordingly, our lab has previously observed enhanced efficacy of ACT using Cbl-b-null T cells in a mouse breast cancer model.

To enable future clinical trials of this concept, we require a reliable, feasible means to block Cbl-b function in T cells. The project will use a lentiviral expression system to engineer T cells (both human and murine) to stably express a “dominant-negative” form of Cbl-b, i.e. a mutant that will outcompete wild-type Cbl-b for binding to its target molecules but lacking any enzymatic activity. We will test the hypothesis that these T cells will exhibit enhanced signaling and proliferation in response to TCR stimulation, and elicit superior efficacy in a mouse tumor model of ACT, compared to wild-type T cells. In addition, we hope to observe by immunohistochemistry, improved T cell infiltration into solid tumors."
           
           

"My project explores the relationship between the development of executive functions and pragmatic skills in preschool children. Executive functions are the cognitive processes we utilize when facing new tasks, or in goal-directed behavior. Pragmatic skills are the social aspects of language that allow us to use it effectively, and appropriately in different social contexts. The preschool age is a period of rapid development in both cognitive processes and language, offering a unique opportunity to study the changes in both over a relatively short period. Although previous research has found a relationship between executive functions and language, research on pragmatic skills in particular is quite sparse. As deficits in both executive functions and pragmatic skills are seen in certain developmental disorders, such as ASD and ADHD, understanding the relationship between the two could be key when creating programs to help such children.  As well, if a predictive relationship exists between the two it could be useful in the development of education practices with typically developing children who show slower development in particular areas. With my research in the Child Development Lab under the supervision of Dr. Mueller I hope to help clarify what the relationship between pragmatic skills and executive functions may be, and how it can be useful when working with young children."        

"Opsin genes encode G-protein-coupled receptors that are light sensitive when bound to a retinal-derived chromophore. Fish have surprisingly large opsin repertoires. When the so-called ‘visual’ and ‘non-visual’ opsins are all considered, repertoires of >30 genes are not uncommon; zebrafish have 10 visual opsins and 32 non-visual opsins.  This is perplexing: high resolution contrast sensitivity and wavelength discrimination, and circadian rhythm entrainment are well characterized in species with far fewer.  Also intriguing is the observation that many opsins (visual and non-visual) are expressed in  the brain, heart, skin and testis, as well as eyes. I am testing the hypothesis that opsin do more than sense light, by identifying those conserved in three species that have evolved in perpetual darkness, the Mexican cavefish, the Chinese cavefish and the cistern catfish, from Brazil. My research will study patterns of sequence evolution in all opsins we find in genome and transcriptome sequences."
    
    

In this project, we will study an interesting R-optimality criterion for regression models and compare it with A- and D-optimality criteria. The corresponding design problems can be transformed into convex optimization problems. We plan to apply CVX program in MATLAB to construct optimal designs for various applications."
       
       

"My research will be investigating the change in neural activity between exercising indoors and exercising outdoors in nature. Subject’s neural activity will be recorded before and during exercising in both conditions using a portable EEG device. My research will be important in providing further evidence for implementing outdoor programming."
        
        

"Sisters Rising is a community-engaged, Indigenous-led, SSHRC-funded study looking at honouring Indigenous responses to gender and sexualized violence. The project engages Indigenous girls and youth of all genders in using arts and land-based materials to re-story Indigenous teachings of gender wellbeing."

"Ovarian cancer is the most fatal women’s cancer where every day, five Canadian women will die from the illness. Recent advances in the hereditary understanding of the disease have shown a significant role of the BRCA gene where this genetic marker can indicate an increase in cancer risk, as well as serving as a possible targeted treatment option for women. Identifying a mutation with the BRCA gene can also provide an opportunity for genetic testing to be performed for relatives, which can allow for preventative approaches to be taken. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of a seminar model to provide education and obtain consent for genetic testing for individuals with ovarian cancer. The investigators hypothesize that the seminar model is effective in providing education and obtaining consent, resulting in decreased wait times from diagnosis to test results while increasing the number of eligible individuals completing genetic testing."
 
 

"This project will center on the genderization of male and female anatomy in ancient Greek and Roman medical practices. This will primarily focus on the theorizations and philosophies of the Hippocratic Corpus, Celsus, Soranus, and Galen, all prevalent medical theorists of their respective eras. Through the textual and material evidence surrounding these medical practitioners, this study will focus on how genderization of the body impacted the study of anatomy in the ancient Mediterranean."        

"On 9 August 1849, Maria Manning and her husband Frederick George murdered Maria’s lover, Patrick O’Connor. This murder came to be known as the “Bermondsey Horror” and had a deep cultural impact. Charles Dickens based Mademoiselle Hortense, the maid in his novel Bleak House, on Maria Manning, and Madame Tussauds displayed a wax figure of Mrs. Manning for over a century. The legacy of the Bermondsey Horror is so long lasting that in 2013, the BBC documentary A Very British Murder featured the case. The case derived much of its sensationalism from the role of Maria. She was the one who had conceived of and carried out the murder, violating and defying prevailing Victorian gender norms. 

Given the lasting impact of the case on British culture that exists to this day, coupled with what contemporary reactions to Mrs. Manning illuminate about Victorian gender norms, it is striking that there exist only two book-length studies of the case, neither of which focus on the question of gender. 

My project will address this gap in the literature by analyzing the contemporary representations and narratives that were created around and about Maria Manning in order to explore Victorian notions of gender. To carry out this project, I will be relying on Robert Huish’s extensive 1849 book on the subject, The progress of crime, or, The authentic memoirs of Maria Manning, as well as primary sources from newspaper and periodical databases in the university’s library and The Making of Modern Law database."

"BC’s Ministry of Health has identified the development of Patient Medical Homes (PMHs) - family practices offering “comprehensive, coordinated, and continuing care” provided by physicians working with interdisciplinary teams – as a priority in their Primary Care Strategy (1). Evidence shows that when the team in a PMH provides 'relationship-centred' healthcare - care that is built on the relationship between provider and patient – there is a  positive impact on care quality, patient experience, outcomes, and provider experience and reduced provider burn out. I will identify existing tools that evaluate ‘relationship-centredness’ from the literature and engage with a panel of patients and providers who will review these tools for use in BC practices. Based on feedback from the panel I will develop a report that ranks the tools, explains the rationale for the tools selected for further consideration and how recommended tools fit into the evaluation framework; this report will be used directly by the Centre for Relationship Based Care and the Innovation Support Unit (ISU) (both out of UBC) and other stakeholders (Doctors of BC, Ministry of Health). Knowledge translation activities will include an ISU webinar on relationship-centred care and a presentation to the Ministry of Health Primary Care leadership on relationship-centred care evaluation.​

1. College of Family Physicians of Canada. Why PMH? [document on the internet]. Mississauga: CFPC; 2018 [cited 2018 Aug 14]. Available from https://patientsmedicalhome.ca/why-pmh/ "

"This project will discuss the phenomenon of overtourism, and focus on its effects on Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million citizens that received 32 million visitors last year alone. Through my research I hope to identify the main causes of overtourism, shed light on the consequences it has had, and continues to have, on the city and its inhabitants, and explore some of the proposed solutions to the problem."       

"Climate sensitivity is the change in surface temperature after doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and is estimated to lie between 2-4.5 K. I’m running a series of Global Climate Model (GCM) experiments to determine how incremental changes to the background climate state (via the strength of shortwave cloud forcing) impact climate sensitivity estimates."        

"Provincial and federal legislatures alike have developed reputations for disorder and hostility as a result of routine heckling. Is it possible that increasing the number of female MLA’s and cabinet ministers could alter this aspect of Canadian political culture? Drawing on critical mass literature, this research will analyze the dynamics of heckling in the current British Columbia legislature, which boasts the highest percentage of female MLA’s in Canada as well as a 50/50 cabinet."        

"Ethnic minorities, each with distinct and different cultures, make up 8.4%China’s population of 1.4 billion people. These ethnic minorities tend to live along the borders of the country in and around autonomous regions. However, in recent years a notable number of ethnic minorities have migrated to China’s bigger cities – especially on the east coast. This project will examine the migration and life patterns of Chinese minority groups in Shanghai and the Chinese government’s attitude towards these groups. It will explore the policies that support minorities in the city as well as programs and legislation that protect their unique cultural identity. The analysis will focus on Shanghai restaurants run by minority groups and how the government protects their cultural and regional trademarks and traditions. This research will be undertaken by examining policies already in place, goal statements made by the government regarding minorities in the city, and academic articles on the lives and success of minorities in Shanghai. A key objective of this project is to explore how the Chinese government’s attitude towards minorities, and the policies it has established, affect the migration rate of minorities to Shanghai and their integration into city life."        

"Eosinophils are a granulocyte population that have been highly studied in the context of allergic inflammation and parasitic infection, however their role in mammalian tissues during development (in the absence of inflammation or infection) remains ambiguous. The signal(s) that regulate the recruitment of eosinophils to peripheral tissues also remain unclear. In this project, we aim to determine whether the microbiota alters eosinophil recruitment to peripheral tissues, and to test the hypothesis that eosinophils are involved in generating tolerance to orally administered antigens. Our project aims are to 1. determine whether a depleted microbiota affects eosinophil frequencies in the thymus, the intestinal tract, and the lungs. And 2. to develop a mouse model of oral tolerance and with it determine whether a lack of eosinophils affects the ability of mice to generate tolerance to orally administered antigen."
             
             

"The methodologies of preserving the public memory (sometimes framed as the “legacy”) of a person, group of persons, or event, has been a topic of intense debate and dialogue in both academic and non-academic circles. This paper will work to bridge the gap between the academic and popular by examining the methodologies and implications of memorialization processes across a selection of fictional works; it will be looking at the forms they take; how the characters of the work engage with them; and, by extension, how the characters engage with history itself."

"This project investigates the impact of participation in a community-based intergenerational choir designed to engage and support persons with Alzheimer’s disease (PwAD), their caregivers, and students (e.g., high school music education students). First, we assess the impact of the choir intervention on a range of health and well-being outcomes for PwAD and their caregivers (e.g., cognition, mood, social inclusion, caregiver burden). Second, we identify the key characteristics of a community choir that promote meaningful social inclusion, health and quality of life for PWAD and their family caregivers. Third, we use knowledge mobilization strategies to adapt the program into a model intervention that can be effectively utilized by other community groups."
  
  

"Within the context of popular music the lead vocal is of particular importance. Increasingly, tools from the field are attempting to automate standard mixing processes, for example levels, equalization, and dynamics (DeMan et al., 2017). In this project I will use a pre-existing collection of multitrack recordings and their mixes¹ to evaluate music production techniques used on lead vocals. I will subsequently generate a selection of vocal treatments based on my analysis and findings for use in listening tests in oreder to evaluate the perceived quality of these processes. I hope this work will be of interest and use to the audio engineering community and improve my own knowledge and skillset with regards to both music production and academic research methods.

¹ http://multitrack.eecs.qmul.ac.uk"
    
    

"My research project will focus on the Latin American theory of indigenismo, which seeks to identify an empowering identity for Indigenous peoples of the region without the influence of Europeanized perspectives, to throw off the yoke of colonial history. I will investigate specifically the avant-garde Marxist inspired form of indigenismo cultivated by the early 20^th century Peruvian political philosopher and founder of the Peruvian Communist Party, José Carlos Maríategui (1894-1930). He argued that instead of being cultural in nature, the issues faced by the Indigenous population were caused by the discriminatory, feudal-like socio-economic structure that existed at the time.  Moreover, Maríategui looked to an early pre-colonial Inkan form of agrarian communism as basis for identity construction. I will examine the impact of Maríategui’s Marxist indigenismo on the cultural politics of Peru."       

"The blockchain, known mostly for its linkages to the infamous cryptocurrency Bitcoin, works through a consensus mechanism. This mechanism requires a multitude of users to validate a claim. Many incentives are at play when each individual user determines whether to validate a claim, from monetary rewards to resource constraints. Behaviour economics is built on the study of how individual incentives affect group dynamics. Applying these theories to the blockchain will help us better understand the potential and
possible risks associated with the technology. For my research project I will apply first principles of game theory to the consensus mechanism to analyze whether individual agents are incentivized to act in a way that maximizes social surplus."
             
             

"My research focuses on the modernist author Stella Benson (1892-1933), a British novelist, poet, short story and travel writer, whose literary contributions to the Modernist movement have been overlooked. Even though Benson has not yet received sufficient scholarly treatment and critical attention, at present digital reprints of her works are preventing their loss. A contemporary of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, Benson was a published satirist and fantasy-fiction writer at the juncture of the 19^th and 20^th century. Her publications include approximately eight novels, four collections of poetry, five short story collections, and two travelogues. Her novels center on early Modern feminist issues and themes, which often humorously scrutinize gender and class discrimination in the context of British colonialism. Benson, herself a Suffragette, worked primarily as a social worker, advocating for causes such as the safety of prostitutes in England, and later fighting against child-prostitution in Hong Kong. She also served as a secretary, gardener, and farm laborer during the war. Her travels were extensive, especially for a young woman in England during the early 20^th century, including to Jamaica, the United States, and China. Her primary sources include diary writings and travel essays. I am interested in publishing critical annotated editions of her 1915 novel I Pose and/or her unpublished 1902-1933 diaries held in the Cambridge University Library. I would use the grant to gain access to her unpublished diaries. Depending on my correspondence with the University of Cambridge, I would travel there and/or purchase copies of her diaries."

"Physical literacy is the motivation, confidence, and physical competence to be active for life; encompassing affective, physical, cognitive, and behavioural components. Evidence is mounting that Canadian children have low levels of physical literacy. My project will assess the impact of an 8-week physical literacy mentorship program for elementary teachers on the physical literacy levels of children in their classes. The intervention will consist of a physical literacy expert working with the teachers during physical education classes through demonstrations, co-planning, and feedback on lessons. Using the Physical Literacy Assessment for Youth (PLAY) tools, the students’ physical literacy will be analysed pre and post intervention and compared to children in non-mentorship classes."        

"This research project will concern space and place within Victoria, British Columbia - specifically the power public space, sustainability, and community engagement holds within changing cities for the better.  This project will draw on international sources and inspirations, such as Alexanderplatz of Berlin (Germany) and Superkilen Park of Copenhagen (Denmark) - both spaces I have had the opportunity to examine in person. The focus of the study, however, will be Centennial Square, a highly contested space within Victoria.  A research paper will critically evaluate the approach the City is taking to redesign the space (in comparison with these other case studies), exploring the community-engagement visioning process. I plan to create a community map and / or engagement event along with the reflective Honours thesis."
        
        

"In an attempt to improve the efficiencies in the analyses of stellar spectra, a Generative Adversarial Network *similar to Liu et al. 2018) will be developed by the student, and applied to both observed and synthetically generated stellar spectra. The machine-learning task is to map the two separate domains to each other, to improve the analysis by bridging the synthetic gap.  We anticipate improvement in a range of stellar parameters, as well as identification of new features."
       
       

"My project will challenge the apparent increase in popularity of the English language in Japanese music – particularly song titles – following the end of the Pacific War. My research will draw on literature providing context for the political environment of Japan at the time, and I will prove through analysis of popular song’s titles throughout the pre, mid, and post war years that the apparent explosion of popularity of English in Japanese music was an illusion resulting from the artificially imposed absence of English language arts and traditions by Imperial Japan’s censorship efforts. Analysis will confirm that rather than representing an increase in the popularity of foreign music after the Pacific War, the data shows that post war trends are consistent with trends predating war-time censorship. This project and presentation will give me the chance to share an intriguing and often overlooked period of Japan’s history of global cultural interactions closely resembling modern trends."
    
    

"My research will be directed at the ever-popular cultural norm of smoking in France and how/why it remains so prevalent in their society. I will look into the current government regulations and taxations for the industry, in addition to any current or growing anti-smoking movements and what potential economic impacts the tobacco industry in France could face in coming years."        

"One of the long-standing questions in the field of philosophy of mind is called the mind-body problem. The problem is this: given that minds and mental properties appear to be vastly different than physical objects and physical properties, how can the mind and body relate to and interact with each other? Most contemporary philosophers of mind accept a materialist perspective with respect to the nature of reality, i.e., there is one reality and it is physical. Therefore, materialism requires that mental phenomena be explained solely by physical reality. In response to the mind-body problem, materialists argue that mental properties reduce necessarily and completely to physical properties.

In my analysis, I will offer a brief overview of the contemporary responses to the mind-body problem and discuss the development of some of the most prominent materialist theories. Next, I will present problems with the arguments offered for and against the materialist stance. Finally, I will argue that philosophers have failed to satisfactorily defend the materialist stance, specifically, they have been unable to explain how the mental reduces to the physical.  The failure of materialist perspectives to explain mind and consciousness is our invitation to take a fresh look at the alternatives."
       
       

"Coral reefs are biologically diverse marine communities with many ecosystem services that humans rely upon. However, climate change, one of the major challenges of our time period, has caused mass mortality and degradation of coral reefs globally. Research is needed to discover the mechanisms of coral reef recovery and resilience if reefs are to persist throughout this future. Recruitment of new corals is essential to the recovery of coral reefs, however macro-algae inhibits coral larvae from settling by out-competing the larvae for space on the reef and preventing or slowing the regeneration of coral reefs. A stress event, such as an El Niño, that causes bleaching and/or mortality on a coral reef may push the system to a macro-algae dominated state. On Kiritimati (Christmas Island) the 2015-2016 El Niño event caused mass coral mortality
(~90%), and the south western reefs appear to now be undergoing a phase shift to macro-algae dominance, whereas the other reefs in the system are not showing signs of a shift.  Using coral recruitment videos that were collected before and after the El Niño, I will investigate the impacts of macro-algae density on coral reef recruitment by comparing the abundance and diversity of coral recruits in reef areas experiencing a phase shift to areas of no phase shift. This research will further scientific knowledge of how macro-algae impacts reef recovery, their resilience, and help determine what conservation initiatives are the most effective for the future."
              
              

"This study seeks to draw a link between a selection of female literary characters who provide knowledge, wisdom or spiritual guidance to  other characters in contemporary Québecois texts, and investigating how this contributes to feminine voice and modern feminist discourse. It will attempt to highlight the importance of matriarchal traditions within the context of a patriarchal society."
           
           

"Dialectology evaluates language variation determined by geographic location. This project is concerned with sociophonetic change in the vowels of the BAG and BEG lexical sets, which are both raising in the western dialect region of Canada. The goal of the study is to determine if the BAG and BEG vowels are raising to share the articulatory space of the BAGEL set. Past research shows that this overlap is occurring in Oregon and Washington State, and preliminary research has documented its occurrence in Vancouver. However, a broader picture of the geography of this change is lacking. The current research sets to determine if Victoria is aligning with the greater Pacific Northwest for this change, implementing instrumental analysis of word list data from local undergrads."
    
    

"This is a pollination ecology study taking place in the boreal forest of southern Yukon. It examines the longevity of individual flowers of Arctic Lupine (Lupinus arcticus) in relation to their pollination. Pollination of plants by animals (ex. insects) is a mutualistic relationship in which the plant is pollinated (often with pollen from a different individual, leading to genetically diverse seeds), while the pollinator receives a reward such as nectar. A major role of blooming flowers is to attract animal pollinators, so once pollination occurs it may not be necessary or energetically favourable for the flower to continue blooming. Thus, pollination may decrease floral longevity, as has been shown in foxgloves, carnations, petunias and various orchids. Understanding such aspects of pollination ecology are meaningful in the face of declines in native pollinator and plant populations, as they can better inform conservation efforts."       

"Looking at medieval art, profane and sacred, at funerary sculptures, at drawings in the margins of manuscripts, at paintings or stained glass, one will encounter many dogs: of different sizes, colors, positions, and postures, they hold different symbolisms, representing in their contexts either loyalty or ferocity, either guardianship or aggression. The values and stories associated with dogs, a familiar pet but also a fearsome guardian and defender, intertwine classical myths inherited from Antiquity and Christian references. Often evoked as a way to reflect human qualities which one should either fear or emulate, they also linked human beings and gods, keeping the gates of the underworld or guiding the souls of the departed to their afterlives. Dogs held sacred power as well as familiar values. This complexity offers an opportunity for the analysis of an aspect of medieval culture: the synthesis of symbols and representations from different cultures. Through the use of primary sources —the Bible, European mythologies, medieval bestiaries, works of art— and secondary sources —works on animals in medieval art and culture —, I’ll examine the symbolic ambivalence of dogs as representations of friends, foes, and forewarnings. My problematic will be the manner one can recognize which type of symbolism to choose in a specific context: what is the significance of colour? of species? of posture? Which are the conventions to depict the good and bad dogs? Ultimately, are these medieval symbols still informing our own perception of dogs as symbolic representations?"
    
    

"Increased rates of eutrophication have been observed in Lake Winnipeg due to excess nutrient loading from both point and non-point sources. This project aims to develop a model within the Soil and Water Analysis Tool (SWAT) to simulate hydrologic processes and nutrient loading dynamics within the full Assiniboine River Catchment. This model may then be used as a basis for predicting future hydrologic and nutrient conditions for Lake Winnipeg, allowing best management practices to be established."
       
       

"This research will consider drug use in the Canadian prison system. In contrast to the Canadian public, opioid-dependant inmates are more vulnerable to infectious diseases, violence, and death from overdose. In BC, current policies offer drug users opioid replacement therapy while they are incarcerated. However, long wait-lists and bureaucratic hurdles make accessing these services unreliable, thus reducing efficacy. Recently, the BC-based Prisoners' Legal Services filed a human rights complaint against Correctional Service Canada, claiming that prisoners with opioid addiction are not receiving adequate access to treatment. While there is sufficient literature outlining the efficacy of harm reduction, there is, however, limited analysis of how the current discourse on opioid replacement therapy in the Canadian prison system nfluences public perceptions of opioid-dependant inmates. Grounded in critical social theory, this research will review recent media and academic literature on opioid replacement treatment within the prison system. Applying discourse analysis, I will explore the following questions: How is opioid replacement treatment discussed? Whose voice is being privileged in the literature and media? How is media informing public opinion? My employment and volunteer experience working with adults who have recently returned to their community after leaving the prison system and my social justice activism in the area substance use informs my interest in exploring this topic. The knowledge that I will gain from pursuing this research will greatly impact my work as an anti-oppressive social worker supporting marginalized and oppressed people, many of whom have substance misuse issues and/or criminal justice involvement."

"Three large earthquakes occurred in the Kerman region of Iran in quick succession and geographically close to each other in December 2017. Our goal is to study these earthquakes using InSAR imagery and to model them in order to characterize faulting. Further, we will use both distributed slip fault models as well as uniform slip fault models to assess where slip is at its peak and where it is minimal, and to better understand the relationship between the three events. We will also examine the triggering potential of the earthquakes on each other using USGS software. Ultimately, we are seeking to better understand how three large earthquakes occurred so close to each other in space and time."        

"The goal of this project is to investigate, for the first time, the biomechanical interactions between variation in shoulder bony anatomy and the mechanical design parameters of a new and radical type of shoulder joint replacement (the Reverse Total Shoulder Arthroplasty (RTSA)). As a result of the geometrical reverse of the shoulder joint articulation produced by an RSA, it is poorly understood what the biomechanical effects of the implant’s design parameters; furthermore, there is a complete lack of information in the literature regarding the interactions between the implant parameters and anatomical variations that occur between each patient.

To achieve this goal, I will complete the development of a Statistical Shape Model (SSM – a model that statistically analyses variation in a population of input shapes to determine the independent modes of geometric variation in that population) of the scapula and humerus (i.e. shoulder) bones which is currently underway as an Honour’s thesis project. Once completed, I will work to integrate this model with existing Biomechanical Rigid Body Dynamics modelling software that simulates shoulder motions of interest and determines the corresponding muscle and joint forces. Once integrated, it will be possible to conduct simulations of variable anatomy (as determined by the SSM) and RTSA configuration and thus determine the relationships which exist between these variables."

"I would like to investigate the ways in which the dialogue surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflects the way that Judaism often gets merged with the actions of the Israeli government and the ideology of Zionism, a convergence that has led to a reemergence of anti-Semitism. Through unpacking largely ambiguous, weighted and contentious topics such as “religion” and the “Middle East,” I hope to come to a complex and multi-faceted understanding of how anti-Semitism has reemerged within many different movements in the recent years. This will include recognizing and interpreting what exactly is anti-Semitism by studying the history of the phenomena in order to see where it appears in relation to this dialogue, and analyzing the current and past ontological, political, ideological conditions that continue gave rise to this reappearance in our contemporary world. Overall I aim to bring awareness to this issue though providing an elaborate and discerning explanation of the topic at hand, an issue that can only be understood in relation to the greater circumstances that it is a part of and that can only be reconciled through a broad and a compassionate insight into this phenomena."        

"In this project, I will examine the use of telepresence robots to increase accessibility into physical classroom environments. Despite the supports we provide at UVic, students with special needs for access are underrepresented on our campus and alternative online programs charge three times our tuition, making obstacles even harder for accessing higher education. The 3,775,900 Canadians with a disability, or 1 in 7 people, consist of 13.7% of the total population. For half, the cement ramp, where it does exist, does nothing in terms of assisting them in gaining access to a physical location as their health issue may not be related to lower limb mobility. This JCURA project will entail implementing and evaluating one element of an accessibility pilot on campus in partnership with the Centre for Accessible Learning and the Technology Integration and Evaluation Research Lab. The goal is to determine its impact on the quality of learning experience and to gather the perceptions by instructors and learners in the classroom. Other applications will also be studied. For example, these telepresence robots can also support a variety of situations beyond supporting learners who cannot attend in person for a variety of health and other reasons, such as extending our reach into the community, supporting collective class observation of remote spaces, or bringing in specialists to interact with our students in various classroom environments."
      
      

"This project will engage children from 5 different regions of the globe (about 15 countries) in a series of Focus groups that will initiate dialog with children (11-17) on their rights as articulated under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)."
     
     

"3D-Multiple Object Tracking (3D-MOT) has been found to improve athletic performance, particularly in sports requiring the use of selective attention.  The majority of previous research examines the effects of 3D-MOT on visual selective attention; however, we are interested in the effects of 3D-MOT on auditory selective attention, as will be measured by changes in reaction time before and after 10 sessions of 3D-MOT training.  For the purpose of this experiment, the reaction time is defined as the time between the start gun firing and the athlete’s feet leaving the blocks.  The aim of our research is to determine if training on the Neurotracker, a 3D-MOT program, can enhance performance in non-visually dominated sports (e.g. swimming), as well as add to the existing literature in the area of athletic performance improvement via 3D-MOT."
      
      

"While the European Parliament (EP) mimics the functions and features of national parliaments, there are several unique aspects of this institution, which are distinct from any other political arena in the world. The European Parliament has transnational “Europarties” that attempt to create a European-level political discourse and debates, the methods of nominating, electing, and translating electoral outcomes to seats in the EP remains influenced by national rules and political cultures. Electoral results reflect regional variation in electoral turnout and engagement between states. In the 2014 EP election, turnout ranged between nearly 90% participation in Belgium to merely 13% in Slovakia.

This proposed research project focuses on these issues. I will examine both the influence and limitations that national electoral systems have upon engagement with EU institutions, and self-identification with the European project. I will select countries with diverse electoral systems and political cultures to identify the degree of influence that plurality and proportional representation systems have on voter turnout in EP elections and their wider impact on trust in the EU.

I plan to focus on the following countries as case studies: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Data gathered by Eurobarometer, Eurostat, the OECD, and national polls will be used to compare patterns in both national and EU elections to help isolate the impact of electoral systems on participation and approval. My supervisor has expertise on this topic, and will mentor me throughout the process as well as supporting the further development of my research skills."
     
     

"Housing is a basic need for individuals. In Victoria, BC issues around housing availability and affordability continue to grow. Recent reports suggest that Victoria is now one of the most heated housing environments in North America when it comes to price and stock. Segments of the population who are most vulnerable in this housing context include: seniors, students, low income individuals and immigrants. Unfortunately, social housing policy appears to be driven more by the interests of developers than by the need to address the precarious  circumstances of marginalized populations.

My Honours research project will be a community-based action research study, in partnership with James Bay New Horizons (JBNH). This organization is a non-profit society established in 1974 to support local residents in skills development and through social opportunities to enhance quality of life.  Working with JBNH representatives and advocates, the project will begin with an environmental scan of the gray literature and the research literature related to housing challenges for vulnerable populations. From there, an ethics review will be undertaken to do qualitative interviews with staff and representatives  of JBNH, and with a small number (n=6) of local members of JBNH who are also residents of James Bay, and who have, or who are experiencing circumstances  of housing precarity. The qualitative interviews will be thematically analyzed and a report will be developed for JBNH and Victoria City Council to promote greater understanding of the range of issues faced by these persons.  Findings will be presented to the community in March, 2019."
         
         

"Privacy is generally understood to be a fundamental human right in Western society – but what does this truly entail? Does our definition of privacy extend and apply to all cultures and religions, or is it ultimately a Western capitalist construct? This project delves into these issues, looking in particular at the concept of privacy and how it might be influenced by various understandings of religion and state; as well as how this relates to the monitoring of social media platforms such as Facebook, the most widely used form of social media in Malaysia today.

While there is currently a Western-style data protection regime in place in Malaysia via the Personal Data Protection Act, as passed in 2010, there is some question as to whether or not this law and the Privacy Commissioner can truly enforce privacy rights within Malaysian culture. To find an answer, I have spent the past several months in Malaysia developing several contacts such as academic experts, representatives of NGOs, and media experts who I have and will be interviewing in the coming months. In addition to this, in May of 2018, the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition - the governing party since Malaysia won independence in 1957 – was defeated by the progressive party. Because what this means for the Personal Data Protection Act is still in question, I will track how their changes affect and influence the privacy rights of the citizens of Malaysia as the progressive party works to undo the corruption of the previous government."
      

"Bela Bartok (25-March-1881 to 26-September-1945) was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Bartok’s compositions were influenced by the traditional folk music that surrounded him. He was able to seamlessly intertwine this music within the Western Classical style creating a unique and remarkable voice.

A fine pianist, he composed lasting, brilliant works for all instruments. He succeeded in preserving many traditional folk melodies and styles by integrating them within these compositions.

Written between 1937-38 for the Hungarian violinist Zoltán Székely, Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2 shows many instances of this merging of styles. Despite the composer’s initial proposal of a one movement theme and variation, Székely insisted on a traditional three-movement concerto. Bartok complied, but subtly incorporated his original theme and variation form into the piece. 

I am researching and performing this concerto, and will demonstrate where Bartok introduces elements and techniques originating from Hungarian and other Eastern European folk music. While my research will largely be focused on this work, I will also borrow examples from Bartok’s other compositions where applicable. 

I will give illustrations of the rhythmic patterns, unconventional meters, idioms, ornamentation, phrase structures, modes, and scales taken from this “peasant music”. Diverse bow techniques and “folk-like” sound elements will also be explored.

Gypsy-Hungarian blood flows through my veins. I am passionate about this music and excited to share my research.

*I will have an audio-visual component for the Fair, however my main presentation will be given in MAC B037 at 8:00 PM on March 6^th."       

"Several lines of evidence show that vegetation at high latitudes is changing.  In the Northwest Territories, fieldwork and remote sensing indicate that green alder (Alnus viridis) and white spruce (Picea glauca) populations are expanding near their northern range limits. These changes have the potential to increase fire frequency, impact animal habitat and alter surface energy balance. My research project will use historical and modern air photos to examine changes in the distribution of green alder and white spruce at two spatial scales. At a broad scale I will document and compare the northern extent of each species. At a finer scale I will examine how terrain types affect alder expansion, and compare local spatial patterns of spruce and alder recruitment. This project will provide insight into the extent of vegetation expansion in the NWT, and the fine scale processes underlying it."
      
      

"E-Cigarettes were introduced to the American market 12 years ago and today their usage, especially among youth and young adults, is commonplace. The impact of E-Cigarettes on health outcomes and behaviours, specifically bodyweight, is largely unknown; although, the relationship between traditional cigarettes and body weight is a topic with extensive literature. This research paper will be the first to examine the causal effect of E-Cigarettes on bodyweight. Using microeconometric modelling with data from the 2016 BRFSS data set containing 486,303 records and data on state specific E-Cigarette policies this relationship will be explored. This paper will then go on to compare the impacts of E-Cigarettes to traditional cigarettes and the policy implications."
              
              

"The University of Victoria First Peoples House is a leading sustainable building with innovative design. Constructed in 2008, the building features the use of recycled material and rammed earth. In this project, non-destructive testing will be conducted to investigate the structural and material performance of the building’s rammed earth walls. This project will build on the success of a previous project completed a few years ago by using non-contact techniques like infrared cameras and also contact techniques like ultrasonic pulse velocity testing. This assessment will mark a critical 10 year milestone of this structure."        

"This study considers the acquisition and development of sociolinguistic variation among two children, five year-old twins, and contrasts their use with that of their primary caretaker. The target feature is /t/, a sound that is known to vary across varieties of English. In Victoria, the local model is fundamentally Canadian, but the city’s history as a site of English immigration, and the historically overt valuing of English norms, has potentially led to a unique Canadian context in which [t] is retained at higher rates between vowels than it is in other Canadian locales (e.g. compare wa-Ter and wa-Der ‘water’). The goal of this project is thus to get a snapshot of how /t/’s pronunciation patterns among emergent natives of Victoria English."
        
        

"This research project will explore how and why the Nazis utilized forced sexual labour in their quest for dominance. My research will focus in particular on the establishment of brothels, intended for prisoner use only, in concentration camps. In an effort to fill a gap in the historiography of this topic, I seek to determine how forced sexual labour was utilized by the Nazis as both a means of asserting their power and as a method of increasing production within camps. I will explore how this gendered form of labour impacted the women who were forced to perform it. To contextualize this topic for readers, I will first present a brief history of prostitution in Germany under the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Next, I will examine what drove the Nazis to establish brothels within the camps. Finally, I will analyze the extent to which nationality, race, and religion played a role in who was chosen by the Nazis to work in camp brothels. I will explore what life was like for women in the brothels and determine how these women were perceived by both their fellow inmates and the Nazi leadership based on their engagement in forced sex work. Through my research, I seek to answer the following questions: Why has the history of brothels in concentration camps remained largely unstudied? How has the neglect of this topic affected those who were subjected to forced sexual labour? By answering these questions, I hope to shed light on a topic previously neglected by many historians and highlight how certain gendered forms of labour are overlooked, despite their immense impact on women’s lives."

"The surface roughness error of large optical mirrors for telescopes needs to be on the order of nanometers. A 6-axis KUKA arm robot was developed with a specialized polishing tool and CNC programming to polish flat mirrors with zero net force on the workpiece. This project aims to further develop the current system into being capable of polishing large curved mirrors with zero net force on the workpiece. A multi-axis load cell is implemented to handle compensation of the tool weight for the force control algorithm. A calibration procedure and algorithm using the multi-axis load cell are described along with modifications to the current force control system, so the system can polish large curved mirrors."

"This project investigates the impact of participation in a community-based intergenerational choir designed to engage and support persons with Alzheimer’s disease (PwAD), their caregivers, and students (e.g., high school music education students). First, we assess the impact of the choir intervention on a range of health and well-being outcomes for PwAD and their caregivers (e.g., cognition, mood, social inclusion, caregiver burden). Second, we identify the key characteristics of a community choir that promote meaningful social inclusion, health and quality of life for PWAD and their family caregivers. Third, we use knowledge mobilization strategies to adapt the program into a model
intervention that can be effectively utilized by other community groups."
  
  

"A novel technology, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, has allowed for the correction of numerous genetic mutations in human cells. This technique is currently being investigated as a treatment for genetic disease. Patients with Gaucher disease (GD), a rare lysosomal storage disease, could benefit from this form of therapy to ameliorate symptoms of neurodegeneration and hepatoslpenomegaly. Previous attempts to correct mutations in GD have failed due to low sensitivity of mutation correction detection and low transfection amenability of our target cell type, induced pluripotent stem cells. We will explore the correction of GD mutations using a new form of CRISPR/Cas9, called base editing, and with a more sensitive screening technique, droplet digital PCR."
    
    

"Human cultures around the globe, both in the past and in the present, have used sophisticated management techniques to build nutrient-rich, microbially-diverse, highly-productive soils that grew richer with continued usage. This study aims to begin investigation into healthy soil characteristics and soil-building strategies, with a focus on determining the availability of free soil electrons, and determining the importance of the soil microbial community’s role in producing these electrons. Free electrons from the soil are currently under investigation for use in electricity generation and improving human well-being. It is the goal of this study to provide some insight into how we can begin to rebuild degraded soil ecosystems by drawing from the diverse and rich human-history of soil-building techniques, such as ancient soils in the Amazonian Basin, and indigenous soils in Coastal British Columbia, to impress upon the audience the incredible importance of healthy soils for past, present, and future human health and future innovation."
       
       

"Music comprises connected sequences of hierarchically-related sonic events, roughly analogous in timescale and construction to the words, phrases and sentences found in language. The concept of “grammatical correctness” in music is somewhat more challenging to define, however—in part due to the interconnection of linguistic syntax and meaning that is generally lacking in music. Work such as Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s (1983) seminal Generative Theory of Tonal Harmony analyze musical structures in terms of their metrical tendencies, the boundaries between groupings of events, the relative importance of such events, and an ongoing sense of “tension” and “relaxation” throughout a musical passage. Modelling the organization of musical cognition, Lerdahl and Jackendoff suggest rules of well-formedness and preference to help define these structures; this in turn provides a framework for investigating exactly how the mind and brain process the structure of musical ideas as they unfold before our ears. For the proposed research, the sense of expectation that continuously develops across a musical passage will be compared systematically with grammar-governed expectations within linguistic sentences. The project will investigate the online processing of hierarchical structures in tonal music, in comparison to that of linguistic syntax—investigated by prior research such as Ding et al.’s (2016) neurolinguistics study. Participants will perform experimental tasks to evaluate their reaction times and judgments of grammaticality in response to stimuli of varying degrees of “well-formedness”."
     
     

"With the increase usage of mobile applications and social media towards health awareness, it is evident that not all these applications will be as popular. There are many applications with similar functions, but they will not be as engaging and sustainable to the public. Some applications will be used for many years, while others will be downloaded then uninstalled due to their flaws. With that in mind, I am doing a study to observe and test some selected health promotion mobile applications. I will be evaluating these mobile applications using remote technology engagement from the literature. From there, I will compare and predict which mobile applications will be sustainable."

"I will conduct laboratory experiments to determine how anthropogenic noise (such as vessel noise) affects the nest guarding and/or vocalization behaviour of plainfin midshipman (Porichthys notatus) guarder males. The reproductive behaviour of midshipman guarder males is focused on parental care and nest guarding (as opposed to the stealthy reproductive behaviour of midshipman sneaker males), and the males produce a multitude of vocalizations, making them ideal study organisms. Using underwater speakers, I will expose the fish to noise treatments in various situations, such as while they are presented with a threat stimulus, and measure changes in behaviour, such as aggressive nest defense behaviours."       

"The issue of Chinese population aging will become a serious problem in the future, and it will sternly affect Chinese economies. In my thesis, I proposed to use mathematical methods to analyze the long-term impact of aging population on Chinese financial economics. For instance, I will analyze its effects on the issuance of bonds and securities, pension funds, insurance, etc. Also, I will describe the possible approaches to mitigate the losses from those negative impacts."        

"I would like to investigate the relationship between cultural relativism and moral realism from the perspective of feminist philosophy. These two theses are often seen as being mutually exclusive. I would like to investigate the middle ground, a feminist metaethical position that allows for legitimate moral criticism of different cultures, but that still recognizes the limitations of this kind of criticism. The central question I will look at is how we can engage in feminist theory and practice in an increasingly global world."
         
         

"Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among adults aged ≥65 years. Early and accurate identification of at-risk individuals is essential in providing effective interventions to decrease the likelihood of falling and subsequent injury. We recently determined a composite measure drawn from an extensive battery of common clinical mobility measures, postural sway and physiological tests as well as cognitively influenced gait parameters that retrospectively classifies fallers and non-fallers. This composite measure was able to accurately retrospectively classify fallers from non-fallers with a sensitivity of over 92%. To further develop this measure, prospective validation is required. The present study will measure older adults who at the time of enrollment are considered non-fallers, and will monitor their status yearly until they sustain a fall. This will allow the development of a predictive algorithm that will be able to identify at-risk older adults prior to falling and allow for early intervention and prevention of falls."
              
              

"nAChRs are critical mediators of signalling in our neuromuscular junctions and central nervous system. They regulate many important bodily processes that range from keeping our hearts beating to regulating dopaminergic signalling in our reward pathways. Consequently, loss of function of these receptors causes a number of problems, such as neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s and  Alzheimer’s. It is important to characterize the molecular mechanisms that regulate these receptors given their large role in cognition, disease, and addiction."
      
      

"Sisters Rising is a community-based study with Indigenous girls, youth and young women, conducted in urban and rural communities in western BC. Sisters Rising responds to the urgent need for community-rooted responses to sexualized violence that support Indigenous wellbeing and sovereignty. Despite the calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Indigenous girls and young women are too often the object of deficit-focused research; few studies have explored the historic and systemic roots of sexual violence from their perspectives. Our focus is on challenging the victim-blaming climate of gender violence by recentering Indigenous teachings and linking body sovereignty to decolonization and land sovereignty.

I feel very honoured to take part in this study and to be able to conduct research with young people in my home community of Haida Gwaii, and in other Indigenous communities. This grant will support my undergraduate journey as well as my transition to graduate school. Working with knowledge holders such as Elders, our goal will be to recenter Indigenous teachings that honor young people of all genders. Participants will use land-based methods (i.e., storytelling, drumming) and materials (hide, cedar, wool, etc.) to explore issues of dignity, safety, sexualized and gender violence, and resurgence. Workshops will be documented through multimedia methods including digital collage and video. As a way of sharing across Nations, our research team will co-author peer-reviewed publications, host workshops and activities, and create resources on sexualized violence, all showcased on the Sisters Rising website."

"Graphs are the main modelling tool for online social networks and diffusion of information. Social media and networks can reach out to a large proportion of the population and spread out critical information in a very effective way. Businesses and other organizations have understood the huge potential of social media and networks and want to analyze the dynamics of social connections. In this project, we will conduct graph analytics and mining research using state-of-the-art systems for handling very large amounts of data distributed over clusters of commodity machines."

"This project will explore the benefits of continuous support and communication between students, teachers and parents throughout a student's education career. Using Finland as a case study, when studen's transition from elementary school to secondary school, information about interests, learning needs and personal information is transferred between teachers and schools. This ensures progress made in the previous school system is not lost and the student can be fully supported as they continue in their educational career. This project will explore ways to implement this continuity in support into the BC education system in an effective manner."

"Exploring how the onscreen vampire has evolved throughout time to reflect the changes within our society. Discussing the transition from the frightening ghoulish villain to the desirable superhuman hero as we move the focus away from the blood sucking narrative and onto the individual stories of the vampires themselves. Addressing which core elements have remained the same, been altered, or been removed altogether. Taking examples from films such as “Nosferatu” (1922,1979), “Interview with the Vampire”, and “We Are the Night” to show topics such as the humanization of vampires, a decline in society's fear of vampires, and the shift in vampire films from horror to action."

"In 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, a united Germany emerged. However, as you travel between the eastern and western parts of the country it is very evident that the country is still divided in terms of wealth, investment, and industrial production. It is noticeable in the pricing of goods between the east and west; the infrastructure in these areas; the social programs; and even a difference in average salaries between the east and the west. It is also abundantly clear that this division isn’t getting any better as time progresses—in fact, in some respects, it is like the Berlin Wall never fell. With this in mind, I will be conducting my research to find out why this phenomenon is occurring and its implications on doing business in Germany with regards to regional economics. To do so, I will look at three companies, from three major German industries, all of which are members of the Deutscher Aktienindex (DAX; the German Stock Index)."

"The purpose of this investigation is to explore some of the implications of Spain’s recent economic crisis, focusing on practices of overdevelopment and speculative demand during the period of 1998-2008. More specifically, how the economic, political, and cultural practices turned the building boom into a real estate bubble after the financial market crash of 2008. The burst of the bubble left Spain with physical remnants of developments that do not serve their intended purpose: both finished and unfinished residential areas as well as underused infrastructure now in decay. My interest in this topic is rooted in my own observation of one of those unfinished urban areas south of Madrid. Many of the sights and landscapes have a beauty to them despite their tragic narratives. This analysis will include several case studies from the crisis, including both  small and large-scale projects. The accompanying images often say more than the textual analysis. The deserted landscapes serve as reminders of the dangers brought by overdevelopment."

"For this JCURA I wish to study the Frontier Apostolate, a Catholic lay movement that brought around 4000 people to northern British Columbia from around the world to work and volunteer for the Roman Catholic Church between the mid 1950's and the early 1990's. I will discuss the legacy of the Frontier Apostolate, ahd its impact on the religious environment of northern British Columbia. As such, it will be important to address the colonial impact of the Roman Catholic Church in northern British Columbia, and consider how colonial practices were framed in this context. In this study I will analyze both primary and secondary sources, including newspaper articles, books, documentaries and journal articles. In addition to this I will also conduct interviews with members of the Frontier Apostolate community (for this I have contacted UVIC's Human Research Ethics, and will abide by their standards). Moreover, this study will tie these points of investigation into the broader conversation of religion and society in the bioregion of Cascadia."

"Extensive literature demonstrates the importance of CBX8 in progression of various cancers.  CBX8 is an epigenetic methyllysine reader, meaning it selectively processes methylated lysine residues in proteins, leading to diversified expression of the genetic code.  The methylation of such residues is one form of post-translational modification of proteins.  Currently there are no published inhibitors for CBX8 and the development of selective chemical inhibitors is necessary for understanding the specific biological roles of the protein.  These inhibitors will allow us to decipher the mechanisms through which CBX8 operates, and will further unveil the ramifications of rendering the reader protein inactive on the expression of certain genes related to cancer.  High-throughput screening of heterocyclic analogues has resulted in hit compounds that show promise for inhibition of CBX8.  Synthesis of additional analogues will allow for optimization of CBX8 inhibition and will give chemical tools that will allow us to study inhibition of the protein in cancer cells. The synthesis and characterization of such novel compounds will be investigated, and optimal synthetic routes to their design will be explored."

"This project will examine the phenomenon of youth migration from rural areas to megacities in contemporary Japan. The research will analyze how the movement of young adults impacts populations in both the countryside and cities with a particular focus on young workers and how rural areas cope with the increasing proportion of elderly residents. From this baseline analysis, the project will examine how youth migration is represented in film, literature and popular culture, and will consider if such depictions are having an impact in the decisions of individual young people in deciding where they want to settle. Where possible and appropriate, interviews with Japanese youth will be undertaken to compare their migration experiences to those portrayed in films, documentaries, manga and books to highlight any significant differences and similarities. Findings from this cross examination of evidence will be used to comment on perceptions of a youth crisis currently unfolding in Japan, and to consider possible solutions to the demographic imbalance between cities and rural areas."

"My work and art practice explores relationships of intimacy, sexuality, and the fragility of ambiguity. To further understand my own place within a LGBTQ+ art lineage I want to understand how sexuality and gender influences my work, how identifying as queer or gay can dismiss and undermine the validity of my work. This research project will combine a technical investigation into a sexual binary history and how that binary is breaking down. It will also involve discovering other contemporary work exploring similar themes and how they relate to my own practice. Within the confines of this research project I will explore and define how an object's history and it's process of creation influences the perceived value of that art object. The project will outline how the bias of “craft” and a connection to gender and sexuality can undermine a work's validity, importance, and power within a space. I want to create and continue a dialogue in art that defies these strong gender and sexuality biases, one that does not fully rely on monolithic masculine power but equally supports and admires feminine connotations and connections. The final accumulation of this research will result in a body of sculpture work. This collection will push contrasting perceptions of gendered objects and processes together by taking masculine objects and overwhelming them with woven, knitted, and crotched materials. These materials may change, grow, and adapt in response to the research."

"My research project analyzes species difference in relation to birds within medieval literary ecologies: i.e., how avian figures signify in various literary genres. I aim to examine the ramifications of transforming birds, normally associated with natural freedom, into literary subjects. Birds were appealing didactic figures to medieval minds: several "bird debate" poems, for example, have come down to the present day and demonstrate the rhetorical potential of the avian. However, birds could also function as receptacles for human knowledge, as in the case of St. Francis of Assisi's sermon to the birds, wherein he educates his literal flock about God's love for them. Other medieval texts, such as the Ch ster mystery play Noah's Flood, attend to the real relationships - some social, some merely functional - that existed between humans and animals. Several of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, notably The Parliament of Fowls and The House of Fame, emerge from this vibrant literary environment. My project, to be undertaken with the support of my faculty supervisor towards the  completion of an Honours graduating essay, presents several significant opportunities: it will advance my knowledge of later medieval culture, of avian relationships with their human interlocutors within literary habitats, and of current research surrounding medieval representations of birds in ecocriticism and animal studies. The research I would present at the JCURA research fair would explore how writers like Chaucer engage in interspecies dialogue, seeming to confirm human dominion over nature only to critique the human impulse to  control the environment."

"Under the supervision of Dr. Carolyn Butler-Palmer, of the Art History and Visual Studies Department, I intend to research and investigate the domestic life of the child during the Victorian era and within the local context. My research will take place at the 19th-century Victorian home and garden of Point Ellice House, a 150 year old National Historic Site, which retains its original collection and functions as a heritage museum in Victoria BC. I have been hired on as one of the two Canada Summer Works employees at Point Ellice House this summer, where they are keen in supporting my research and have given me the approval to work closely with the home’s collection over the course of the summer and into the Fall and Winter semesters. In addition to my research and work within the home, I plan to interview local historians and authors who have studied the O’Reilly family, to whom the Point Ellice House had originally belonged.

My primary goal with this project is to investigate the benefits of heritage museums, in regards to the cultivation of an increased interest in local art, and cultural heritage. Secondly, I intend to emphasize the historical importance of childhood at these sites within our local community, as experienced by the present day child who visits them. My goal is to create a relatable historical context in which children visitors may experience first-hand the world in which someone of their own demographic lived, and are given an opportunity to use their imaginations in coming to these realizations."

"The Harmful Algae Monitoring Program (HAMP) has been monitoring sixty-four sites in British Columbia to collect data of harmful algae species and related factors; factors included descriptive data such as date and location, and environmental data like water temperature and salinity.

We will use a generalized linear models (GLM) and possibly rotating panel designs to examine the correlations between chosen variables and the presence of the algae species. In addition, we will use these models to provide prediction of future blooms."

"The tomb of the Princess of Chen of the Liao Dynasty of China, buried in the 11th century, contains an unusually high quantity of amber. The Liao Dynasty, ruled and founded by the Khitan people, was in the process of adopting Chinese cultural practices, including burial practices, which differs greatly from traditional Khitan burial and death practices. The Princess of Chen was buried in a Chinese way, incorporating some burial practices of the earlier golden age of China, the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). Placing the contents of the tomb of the Princess of Chen in the context of the contents earlier Chinese Tang tombs, contemporary Chinese Song (960-1279 CE) tombs, and the relationship between the Khitan people and the Chinese Empires, I aim to answer two questions. First, what does the contents of the Khitan Liao tombs, with focus on the amber, tell us about the Liao culture with regards to adopting and adapting Chinese customs and holding onto old traditions? Second, what was the significance of the presence of the amber to the Khitan Liao people, and to the Royal court at the time of the death of the princess? I am focusing on analysing the contents of the Tomb of the Princess of Chen, while also analysing contents of other Liao, Tang, and Song tombs for comparison between cultures."

"Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) is well known today for the trenchant social critique of novels such as Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1894–95), which scandalized their initial readers by subverting Victorian sexual double standards and class hierarchies. These novels have become so well known for the political nature of their subversiveness, however, that they have overshadowed a contrasting type of social criticism in Hardy’s fiction that has gone largely unstudied: Hardy’s satire of Victorian reading practices and literary institutions. To bring further attention to this more lighthearted side of Hardy’s social criticism, this essay will analyze the novel in which that lightheartedness is most apparent: Hardy’s little-studied comedic novel The Hand of Ethelberta (1875–76), which I will argue is valuable not for the trenchant social critique we have come to associate with Hardy but rather for its coy satire of its own readers. In doing so, I aim to uncover the comedic side of Hardy that often goes unacknowledged in Hardy scholarship, as well as bring attention to The Hand of Ethelberta not as Hardy’s least representative novel, as critics have traditionally considered it, but as the novel in which Hardy’s recurring interest in satirizing the reader finds its fullest expression."

"The binding of organic pollutants onto ocean micro-plastics is strongly influenced by pH and salinity. This project will study how aqueous conditions affect the surface structure of polymers. I will use a combination of nonlinear vibrational spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and contact angle measurements to examine polymer surface structure and surface restructuring when exposed to solutions of varying composition."

"Nostalgia has important psychological benefits, but does the content of nostalgic memories make a difference? Does the content of nostalgic event vary across gender. The objective of the research is to examine the content of nostalgic memories of men and women, and the effect on well-being. Participants are invited to describe a nostalgic moment that involves playing with toys and identify toys that make them nostalgic of their childhood."

"Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) generates renewable electricity using the temperature difference between tropical surface seawater and cold deep water. Consequently, it lowers sea surface temperature as deep water is discharged near the surface. Mass deployment of OTEC power plants has been proposed to fill global energy demand, and mitigate global warming. However, this artificial surface cooling could disrupt the global energy budget and eventually exacerbate climate change. The goal of this project is to analyze the long-term consequences of OTEC using the UVic Earth System Climate Model to simulate its effects. This research could help determine if any
configuration of power plants may generate sufficient energy without further disturbing the climate."

"Sanfilippo type B syndrome is an autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disorder. It results from mutations in the N-acetylglucosaminidase (NAGLU) gene. The defective Naglu protein leads to an abnormal accumulation of heparan sulfate. Clinically, Sanfilippo B manifests in the central nervous system. Patients experience developmental delays, behavioural issues, and cognitive deterioration. The average lifespan of a Sanfilippo B patient is two to three decades.  We propose to use the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR associated endonuclease 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system to correct the causative mutations in our patient-derived Sanfilippo B cell lines. Simply put, CRISPR/Cas9 involves a guide RNA, which guides the Cas9 endonuclease to a specific genomic location, and a correction template. Once bound to the target locus, Cas9 cleaves the DNA. The DNA is repaired by the cell’s intrinsic DNA repair systems using the correction template. Our custom correction template will correct the mutations in Sanfilippo B. Initial CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing experiments yielded low rates of correction. Newly published methods outline the use of an asymmetrical single-stranded correction template, and a dual guide RNA targeting system to increase gene editing efficiencies. After CRISPR/Cas9 treatment, our cells will be screened using restriction fragment length polymorphism, lysosomal live staining, DNA sequencing, and Naglu activity assay. Any confirmed colonies will be expanded in cell culture for potential therapies."

"This series of studies will investigate the intersection between environmental issues and mental health as part of my psychology honours program. They will focus on the recently described cluster of acute climate change-related mental health issues, with a specific focus on eco-anxiety. This problem, rooted in fear combined with a sense of powerlessness, is becoming more widespread as more and more people realize the magnitude and impacts of this developing problem that even Barack Obama, who had to deal with many important problems, called “the issue that will chiefly define the 21^st century.” Eco-anxiety is newly recognized as a form of distress and intense worry among an increasing number of individuals, particularly as they feel hampered by a large of number of structural and psychological barriers from solving, or even feeling able to help solve, the climate problem. As climate change worsens, experts are concerned that the prevalence of climate-related anxiety will increase, especially among vulnerable populations. Consequently, the proposed studies will expand understanding of climate-related anxiety at this relatively early stage of its impacts. The research will assess, using both qualitative and quantitative methods, the current prevalence of climate-related anxiety among students, that is, those who will experience some of the heaviest impacts of the changes over the course of their lifetime. It will also consider and begin to develop new means of alleviating climate change-related anxiety, and examine their possible effectiveness."

"Each year, Le Dictionnaire le Robert publishes their annual list of the newly accepted words in the French dictionary. The list published in 2017 presents many new words that originally came from the English language, such as pop-corn and troller. This same year, L’Office Québécois de la langue française, a Canadian organization that offers an online terminological database, also accepted words borrowed from English such as grilled-cheese and cocktail. These newly adopted words caused reactionary press articles due to the inclusion of several words of English origin. The goal of my research is to explore the integration of seven of these newly accepted words in French and French-Canadian press articles. I chose three words relating to food (cocktail, grilled-cheese and pop-corn) and four words relating to technology (spoiler, youtubeur/euse, geek, and troller). My analysis aims to understand how these words are integrated into French discourse as seen in the press articles that constitute my corpus."

"Virtual reality and 360° films are a very new, emerging form of storytelling. So new, in fact, that we don’t really know how to tell stories with this medium yet. As a storyteller and a lover of technology, I want to explore this new medium. What works in 360° storytelling and what doesn’t? How does it differ from traditional film? Can we tell good stories with this medium, or is it even built for storytelling? Through a variety of small 360° film projects and experiments, I want to start finding answers to these questions."

"Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is associated with underlying brain pathology centered on the medial temporal lobes that leads to a progressive, neurocognitive disorder that is primarily characterized by memory impairment. Evidence to date has suggested that along with age, previous traumatic brain injury (TBI) may put individuals at risk for the development of AD. However, few studies have examined individuals with TBI for the biomarkers associated with AD. The proposed research will use a large publically available database containing neuroimaging and neuropsychological data from Vietnam War Veterans to compare those to sustained moderate/severe TBIs to healthy controls. Given that hippocampal atrophy on magnetic resonance imaging and memory impairments on neuropsychological assessment are most commonly seen in AD, we hypothesize that similar patterns of brain atrophy and cognitive deficits will be present in the TBI group compared to the control group. Ultimately, this work could lead to a better understanding of TBI as a risk factor for AD and inform the need for dementia prevention measures to be implemented for survivors of TBI."

"In the wake of the recently empowered Trump administration, a large-scale process of environmental and other deregulatory politics has begun, with significant implications for state-corporate relations and the field of White Collar Crime. Environmental pollution and destruction is both the most common, and one of the most damaging, forms of corporate violence, yet has received some of the least attention from criminologists in the past. Of particular significance, too, is the application or suppression of the media throughout the electoral campaign and into the Trump presidency, and its impacts on regulation and environment-based decision-making in politics. This research project aims to apply White Collar Crime Perspectives, in particular opportunity-based crime models such as routine activities theory, to the phenomenon of environmental deregulation under the Trump administration, to draw attention to and clarify the far-reaching implications these actions may have within and beyond the United States, now and in an environmentally troubled future."

"Since the 2008 Financial Crisis that nearly crippled the world economy, the Bank of Canada has taken the position of a stimulus monetary policy to encourage growth. This narrative has led the target overnight lending rate to fall to 0.5%. Due to this low cost of borrowing, Canadians have taken advantage of this opportunity by borrowing at a record pace. This increased borrowing has led to the overall household debt levels in Canada to reach new heights. As household debt has continued to climb over this period, wages have remained sluggish and are lagging the inflation data. Accompanied by the meteoric rise of housing prices in Canada, the landscape remains uncertain for the stability of these debt levels. In addition, the Bank of Canada has begun to shift its narrative towards an imminent rate hike in the near future. These market conditions potentially leave the Canadian economy vulnerable to negative adverse shocks. My research aims to analyze the credit risk of Canadian household debt in major cities. Specifically, I will be using empirical data from cities such as Toronto and Vancouver since 2008 to examine trends in household borrowing levels during a time where average house prices have risen exponentially year over year. Additionally, I will analyze how an intervention from the Bank of Canada may affect the debt levels of Canadians."

"Gold nanoparticles are being used as radiation dose enhancers in cancer therapy. I will be using gold nanoparticles encapsulated in liposomes as my therapeutic system for this study.  Breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) will be first incubated with the nanoparticle system. Once nanoparticles are internalized within cells, a radiation dose of 2 Gy will be given. Effectiveness of the treatment will be assessed using clonogenic assay. As an NSERC USRA student, I am studying the cellular uptake of this nanoparticle system. If I am given this award, I have the opportunity to test this nanoparticle system in radiation therapy."

"Pax6 is an important gene involved in many aspects of retinal and neural development. For example, it is expressed in a gradient in the subventricular zone of adult mice and plays a role in stem cell differentiation into dopaminergic neurons as they migrate to the olfactory bulb. It has been hypothesized that a complementary gradient of miRNA-7 serves to create this gradient and mediate the expression of Pax-6 protein in subventricular zone neural stem cells. miRNAs are small pieces of non-coding RNA that regulate the amount of protein produced at the post-transcriptional level, in a dose-dependent manner. miRNA-7 has targets on many genes, and so there are a couple of recently proposed target sites on Pax6. My research project will use knock-out mice for these proposed miRNA-7 target sites, followed by tissue sectioning and immunolabelling for dopaminergic neuronal markers, to further understand the mechanisms by which Pax6 is precisely and finely regulated in neural development."

"The attempted assassin of Louis XV was executed in 1757 by being drawn and quartered. This method of execution was expressly designed in order to inflct the most pain as possible. A mere thirty-five years later, during the French revolution, the guillotine became the only method of execution in France. The guillotine, contrary to previous methods of execution, was designed in order to inflict as little pain as possible. This paper will explore the decline of cruelty of capital punishment in France during the 18th century."

"A research project exploring the impact railroad development had on Aboriginal groups across  North America. Comparisons between agrarian and hunter/gatherer societies will be made to   draw inferences about how access to market and improved transportation may have impacted the lives of Aboriginal peoples."

"I will be assisting Dr. Karen Courtney and PhD student Marcy Antonio with their research applying the Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy to mobile health applications.  The goal of this project is to try to identify behavior change techniques that are being used in mobile health apps.  As part of this project, I will complete training in research ethics (Tri Council) and in use of the Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy.   I will be working with the research team to review and code a sample set of chronic disease management health apps.   If this project is successful, the taxonomy would provide a standardized way for people to describe mobile health app interventions and assist researchers in understanding which behavior change techniques are most effective in different apps and in different settings."

"Urban soundscapes play an important role in the social life of cities. Street performers are part of the ensemble that constitutes a city’s soundscape, which brings urban space to life through the performative enactment of place. Drawing upon a combination of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this study will examine how street performers produce “place” in the streets of downtown Victoria, British Columbia. Street performing is regulated by bylaws, but it is untaxed, irregular work. Street performers may therefore face certain economic or social challenges, and the degree to which they are marginalized or empowered in the context of Victoria is important to understand for both the performers and the city. The manifestations of power dynamics through land ownership, state regulation, and social interactions will be key elements considered in this research."

"I am interested in the idea of social choreography, a term scholar Andrew Hewitt uses to describe a tradition of thinking about social order that places its aesthetic ideal directly at the level of the body.  I am specifically interested in how this concept, very much rooted in the performative, is able to relate to the still life image and its place within contemporary art.

As part of my research I will be looking at the contested validity of the still life within art criticism and its connection to the social construction of gender.   Further to this I will be framing my arguments within both historical and present-day ethical concerns surrounding photo-based media and the status of the body as it has evolved since photography’s inception.

"Despite Western society’s best efforts, racism and oppression are still prevalent today and continue to affect people from non-dominant cultures worldwide. Affected communities are left with emotional scars and the reality of their histories are often buried by the dominant culture in society. Although schools and educational institutions teach that racism and oppression are “bad”, they continue to exist and conversations around them are considered taboo and delicate. Theatre, on the other hand, has the potential to explore delicate and tabooed subject material in a way that is emotionally safe and that allows audience members to engage critically. Therefore, I propose an initiative to devise a theatre piece that discusses, explores, and engages audience members on the topic of racism and oppression that is created with the support of and for a specific community group. I propose working with Ukrainian Canadians, as this is my ethnic background and is an ethnic community that has historically faced intense racism and oppression in Canada. Through the historical lens of my culture, the theatre piece will speak to the greater truths and commonalities experienced by immigrants and refugees of all cultural backgrounds. I believe that through theatre this community will be able to begin a process of healing and reconciliation which will be carried forward in future generations."

"This research project investigates ways in which North American Indigenous artists responded to contact with non-Indigenous peoples (traders and settlers) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indigenous artists creatively integrated new materials, methods and motifs into their artistic production. The result is a category of ‘hybrid’ objects that bring together elements from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous visual cultures. This category of hybrid objects is broad and I will likely focus on one of its many facets as my research progresses.

"The specific goal of the research project will involve using geochemical data on igneous rocks collected in the Fort St. James – Vanderhoof region of British Columbia to better constrain the geological history of the region."

"This research will examine the effects that advancements in media and technology, and the resulting cultural globalization have had on the evolution of Japanese street fashion. The project will focus on the punk and hippie inspired movements in the mid-20th century, through the "heyday" of Harajuku and ground breaking DIY fashion of the early 2000s, to the increasing popularity of big brand names in the most recent contemporary era. This research will be undertaken through visual, semiotic, and critical discourse analysis of Japanese fashion media, both digital and print. Targets of this analysis will include Japanese street fashion magazines in both their print and online forms, the social media accounts of Japanese street fashion celebrities, and the various websites dedicated to documenting photos of streetwear in Japanese cities. While the runway is often seen as the traditional conduit through which one views fashion, a key objective of this research is to illustrate how the intersection between globalization, new media and street fashion in Japan subjugates that traditional model."

"I will be working with Rhianna Nagel, Cam Owens, and (most likely) the Fernwood NRG to explore how urban agriculture and the community events supporting agricultural initiatives play a role in fostering inclusive and sustainable communities. I will be helping the Fernwood NRG in some capacity, and my final thesis will be partially comprised of a deliverable that can be passed on to the community partner to support their work in the community."

"The objective of this project is to characterize Ars2, an essential gene found in eukaryotes. This gene has attracted interest due to its ubiquitous presence across disparate species and its diversity of function. Ars2 is essential to mammalian development and is involved in retinal development, facilitating stem cell differentiation into photoreceptor cells. In fission yeast, Ars2, likely through it highly conserved C terminus, facilitates RA processing as a central part of the cap binding complex and is also involved in chromatin formation. Understanding this protein would give us mechanistic knowledge of a central player in the fate of RNA, and more broadly, the pathways underlying embryonic development. However, the exact role of the C terminal domain is unknown. This project will attempt to uncover the mechanism by which this C terminal domain mediates interactions with RNA processing machinery. To do so, we will generate sequential deletions of the conserved C terminal regions using PCR amplification and will clone the resulting construct into E.coli. Subsequently, we will attempt to rescue a yeast strain possessing only a dysfunctional Ars2 gene using the artificial constructions. Rescue will be confirmed using several readouts established in the Nelson lab, and a lack of rescue by any of the deletion constructs will suggest that the region deleted was essential to Ars2 interactions. Completion of this project will help us better understand the mechanism by which an essential gene exerts its effect on embryonic development and cell fate."

"I propose to examine how Charles Taylor constructs a phenomenology of value in Sources of the Self by repurposing Heidegger's concept of intentionality as world-disclosure in order to ontologically situate the value-disclosing dimension of selfhood. My goal is to draw on Husserl's arguments that all knowledge is derivable from self-knowledge in order to show how Taylor's expansion of the resources of phenomenological description best accounts for our true starting point as value-creating cognizers, and in doing so, forms an important addition to first philosophy as Husserl envisioned it."

"Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), known as MPEG-DASH, enables high quality media streaming over the Internet from conventional HTTP web servers. The key idea behind MPEG-DASH is to adaptively adjust bitrate based on current network condition, in particular, bandwidth and delay. Content delivery networks (CDNs) utilize cache servers to reduce the delivery distance to end viewers and relieve the heavy traffic load from the original content servers. Nowadays, CDNs have become the major media delivery platform and carry over 80% multimedia traffic over the Internet. Nearly all CDNs adopt MPEG-DASH to enhance the quality of experience (QoE) of end users. The control of MPEG-DASH, however, is under the control of CDNs, and as such the quality of service delivered to end users may not truly align with their demand. To avoid the problem, it is desirable to design an intelligent agent at the client side (i.e., end viewer) to inject more feedback to the web servers. For this purpose, we need to analyze the behavior of MPEG-DASH via monitoring and analysing the media delivery over a real CDN. This project is proposed for this purpose."

"Since 1993, the company, General Dynamics Land Systems Canada (GDLS-C) has been granted permission to export up to 3,000 light armoured vehicles to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through a legally binding contract. Regions of the Middle East have seen regional instability due to terrorism and conflict and this ongoing deal with Canada has the potential to further conflict in an already politically charged area.

In my research I will further investigate why Canada is still upholding this weapons deal even though NGO’s such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations Commissions have come out with reports stating that Saudi Arabia has been violating international humanitarian law. Canada, a country which is seen as safeguarding human rights in the international community, has formulated its foreign policy, which appears to disregard its values in favour of Canadian jobs and the defence industry, an alliance with a regional partner, or both.

Declassified government documents argue that these weapons have been sold to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s regional powers in order to counter attacks from ISIS in surrounding areas such as Iran and Syria, uprisings from Iraq and insecurity in Yemen. However, from a realist perspective, sending more arms to an already insecure area could make the area more prone to conflict.

My research to investigate this ongoing issue will include mixed methodologies of both qualitative and quantitative research data, official government statements, NGO reports and selected interviews with representatives of key players."

"Childhood psychological maltreatment (CPM) refers to both emotionally abusive (e.g., criticizing, threatening, or denigrating a child) and emotionally neglectful (e.g., denying a child affection or attention) caregiver behaviours. Previous research has demonstrated that CPM is highly prevalent, and is associated with numerous psychological and behavioural disturbances across the lifespan. Nevertheless, inconsistencies in how emotional abuse and neglect have been defined, measured, and analyzed continue to impede progress in the understanding of CPM. For example, due to the high co-occurrence of emotional abuse and neglect, many researchers have used variable-centered analysis to control for the effects of one sub-type when investigating the other—an approach which assumes emotional abuse and neglect are continuous dimensions of CPM (i.e., varying by degree). In contrast, other researchers have taken a person-centered approach to their analyses—a strategy which assumes that emotional abuse and neglect are categorical in nature (i.e., present or absent). Using taxometric analysis, the goal of this study is to determine whether data collected from two measures of CPM provide evidence for emotional abuse and neglect as continuous dimensions, or distinct categories of maltreatment. To supplement an existing dataset of 410 undergraduate responses, self-report data will be collected from 625 adults using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The results of this study will guide the direction of future CPM research, as evidence for a continuous versus categorical (or vice versa) conceptualization of emotional abuse and neglect has important implications for the theory, assessment, research, and treatment of childhood psychological maltreatment."

"Recent international accords such as the Paris Climate Agreement have established that climate change is a global issue that must be addressed by reducing carbon emissions. The question now turns to the best way for countries to do so. One option is to create a market for carbon emissions, however, recent failures such as the European Union’s emission trading system show that in practice releasing the right amount of permits is a difficult and potentially costly task due to imperfect information. If the regulator releases too few permits then the price of the permits will be too high and the cost of reducing emissions will be exceedingly expensive; if too many permits are released then the price will be too low and carbon reduction goals will not be realized. This project will seek to model an emissions trading program with a “safety valve” under uncertainty where the regulator promises to release an unlimited amount of permits at a specified price, and where the marginal cost of abatement and marginal damage are unknown. Models such as this seek to combine the best parts of a tax and an emissions trading program by reducing the potential cost of releasing too few permits. The paper will then go on to compare the loss of social surplus amongst different models to try and attempt to make an efficiency argument. Finally, the paper will discuss the policy implications of these results in the context of global and Canadian carbon emission targets."

"The unregulated and federally illegal cannabis industry in Canada is on the cusp of massive cultural changes and women are making unprecedented strides in taking on entrepreneurial and leadership roles in this industry as has never been seen before. The legitimate cannabis industry is in its developmental stages across North America leading many to claim that this industry will be a blue skies market for women to take on leadership roles and to challenge gender norms in this newly emerging sector. This dominant discourse suggests women have an unfettered opportunity to take on influential and entrepreneurial roles in the industry, suggesting women will not have to overcome historic gendered divisions of labour that characterize most other industries.  This discourse erases the reality of gender inequality in our culture that the cannabis industry is not apart from.  The “blue skies market” sentiment towards the industry is a discourse that I wish to complicate and explore throughout my research by situating women’s lived experiences of the industry within the context of the corporatization of the cannabis sector which relies upon the legitimizing power of white, heteronormative femininity to normalize cannabis consumption.  My research project seeks to evaluate how gender is operating in the cannabis industry and the role that gender is playing in moving cannabis into the mainstream."

"Mental health is a growing concern in Canada, specifically within minority groups, such as the LGBTQ community (Mule & Smith, 2014). As a result of the Civil Marriage Act passed in 2005, the number of same-sex couple families in Canada rose 42.4% between 2006 and 2011 (Statistics Canada, 2011). Therefore, this study will seek to address if children of same-sex couples exhibit differences in mental health according to their parents' marital status. To answer the research question, in depth interviews will be conducted with 4 youths between the ages of 12-14; 2 whose parents are married same-sex couples, and 2 whose parents are common-law same-sex couples. The proposed exploratory study will use narrative analyses while the coding process will use methods of grounded theory in order to gain a holistic understanding of the lived experiences of the participants. Moreover, the findings will be discussed in the context of their implications on further research as well as program and policy shifts."

"My project will begin by building on Greg Woolf’s 2015 theory in which he discusses ancient literacy as a technology rather than simple representation of speech. I will evaluate a selection of Hellenistic Greek coinage, dating between 323 and 31 BC, as a miniature form of monumental records of the various states that arose in the post-Alexander age. In addition, this will allow me to create a standardized and comparable baseline against which to re-examine Michael H. Crawford’s original 1975 interpretation and publication of legends inscribed upon Roman Republican coinage, dating between 280 and 31 BC."

"My research project will look at community-based marine conservation efforts in the Southern Gulf Islands, with a focus on rockfish conservation on Galiano Island. Of the 37 species of rockfish found in British Columbia (BC), 8 species are currently threatened or at risk. In BC, 164 Rockfish Conservation Areas (RCAs) have been established, which are closed year round to hook and line fishing in order to help rebuild plummeting rockfish populations. Galiano Island touches three separate RCAs. As part of my research, trail cameras facing these RCAs will be used to monitor recreational fishing activity. Interviews with people fishing around Galiano will be conducted in order to determine the level of public awareness of RCAs. Public outreach efforts, such as setting up booths at environmental events and giving brief talks around Galiano Island, the surrounding Gulf Islands, and Victoria, will be carried out in order to raise awareness for rockfish conservation and provide public education. These activities will all contribute to the Rockfish Conservation Project, which is an ongoing joint effort between the University of Victoria, the Galiano Conservancy Association (GCA), and Valdes Island Conservancy (VIC). As the GCA and VIC are both community-based non-governmental organizations, one aspect of my research will look into the effectiveness of environmental efforts that are rooted in and driven by community engagement. Another component of my research will involve co-authoring a scientific paper on the Rockfish Conservation Project in order to report on the effectiveness and status of the project."

"This project will investigate discussions of the compatibility of international law and constitutional democracy. Specifically it will investigate liberal cosmopolitan political philosophy and the conflict between the support of constitutional democracy and international law in the area of human rights and global distributive justice."

"'The Victorian Age saw the transformation of the madhouse into the asylum into the mental hospital' Andrew Scull, Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen

How and when did the conception of madness as illness begin? When did we cease to view madness as curse of genetic inheritance and start to understand it as treatable? I propose to research these questions by looking at depictions of psychosis in Victorian literature between 1840-1900. The Victorian Era saw a change in the criteria for insanity: not only was the definition of insanity transformed by medical advances, but society also changed in its response to madness itself (Scull 1981). The notion of lun·acy as a manifestation of racial inheritance (a model that we see in Bertha from Jane Eyre [1847]) transitioned into a model of it as a form of illness. As such, the very nature of madness cascaded from something dark and ominous­ incurable-to a treatable medical issue. I hope to  study several works for  background information on psychiatry during this time, such as Madness and Civilization (1961) by Michael Foucault and Madhouses, Mad Doctors and Mad Men by Andrew Scull (1981). These works will be used to pursue insights into the evolution of psychosis in works such as, George Eliot's Adam Bede (1859), and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862) and George du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson (1891). As I am completing a minor in psychology, this research allows me to tie in my psychology work regarding psychopathy and my primary interest in Victorian literature. By studying these texts, I hope to elucidate how the concept of madness in the nineteenth century transitioned to the forms of mental illness we perceive today."

"This intent of this research is to critically analyze the sociological effects of natural resource development, specifically, the economic, environmental and social impacts of resource extraction on surrounding communities. The sustainable management of natural resources is a highly important issue in British Columbia, yet the majority of existing research pertains to cumulative environmental effects and there is limited research analyzing this issue through a sociological lens. This project thus serves to identify social areas impacted by resource development projects, and explore sustainable solutions. Relevant concepts include sustainable development; urban-rural divides; Indigenous Resurgence and politics of recognition; and the impact of unsettled land claims."

"I will look at the body’s response to oral ingestion of sugar via blood glucose levels as well as if sugar has an impact on nervous system function, specifically the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. Sugars influence on the nervous system will be measured by looking at Heart Rate Variability (HRV), or the variability in time within each successive heat beat. Participants will come into the lab on two separate occasions in a fasted overnight state. They will receive a beverage with or without sugar. The amount of sugar will depend on their respective body weight. From here, students will lay down for 12 minutes with a heart rate monitor to collect HRV data. Following this, they will cycle for roughly 20-40 minutes, depending on their fitness level. After cycling is completed, participants will lay down for another 12 minutes to collect more HRV data. Blood glucose will be analyzed on four separate occasions, including before beverage ingestion, after beverage ingestion, after exercise, and after the final rest. The participants will ingest the contrasting drink (with or without sugar) from their first trial upon arrival for their second condition. From our results, we will look at sugars influence on blood glucose and HRV before and after exercise."

"Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among adults aged>65 years. Early and accurate identification of at-risk individuals is essential in providing effective interventions to decrease the likelihood of falling and subsequent injury. We recently determined a composite measure drawn from an extensive battery of common clinical mobility measures, postural sway and physiological tests as well as cognitively influenced gait parameters that retrospectively classifies fallers and non-fallers. This process involved data reduction using principal components analysis followed b logistic regression. The final model consisted of 5 gait measures with 92.3% sensitivity and 66.7% specificity (total model classification of 82.9%). Gait parameters were recorded as participants performed 10 cognitively loaded (continuing backwards aloud by serial sevens) and 10 unloaded walking passes (i.e. there and back) on a GAITRite instrumented walk way. Within each gait domain (length, width, timing, and velocity) there were variables representing the mean and variability for cognitively loaded trails and difference scores (unloaded-loaded trials). It is currently not known how many passes of gait data is required to produce this high level of specificity and sensitivity. It is would be clinically useful to use the fewest number of steps required, thus the aim of this project is to repeat this analysis using gait data from 1, 3, 5, and 7 passes in separate analysis to determine to the level of specificity and sensitivity of the resulting model."

"Rett syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder due to a spontaneous mutation in a gene (MECP2) on the X chromosome.  It is embryonically lethal in males while females expressing the mutation survive but manifest a constellation of severely debilitating symptoms after birth. Development is mostly normal during the first 6 months but then stalls and regresses resulting in individuals that lack motor coordination, have impaired speech, and exhibit Parkinsonian symptoms often accompanied by seizures. Mice with the same mutation have many neuronal dysfunctions including poor neural communication, some of which is due to improper signaling by the transmitter acetylcholine (ACh). The cholinergic system is critically involved in the generation of purposeful behaviours including voluntary motor acts, which correlate with some of conditions seen in Rett patients.  For my JCURA project, I will study the expression of the nicotinic type of ACh receptor (nAChR) in a mouse model of Rett syndrome.  I will use fluorescence microscopy to compare nAChR density in different regions and different neuron types in normal and Rett mouse brains to determine whether there is dysregulation in the expression levels of these receptors.  nAChRs are particularly dynamic and their densities are up- and down regulated in response to manipulations like nicotine exposure and sensory deprivation. Removing the whiskers for several days causes more nAChR to appear on neurons in normal mice. Thus, my ultimate goal will be to examine whether the density of these receptors is properly regulated in Rett mice in the brain region that processes whisker inputs."

"Are administrations with strong commitments to realist ideology more likely to intervene in human rights violations? Although realists suggest that ideology does not matter in terms of foreign policy, realists are more likely to favor government sponsored humanitarian intervention if that intervention serves their national interest. The Obama administration will be used as a case study of realist ideology, and contrasted with the administration under Bush Jr., which can be classified as a regime with liberal ideological commitments. Their underlying ideology will be illustrated through examination of their National Security Strategy. Through the consultation of various indexes including the Minorities at War and the SIRRI databases, I will analyze the past humanitarian interventions under Obama and Bush respectively, and contrast them with those instances of human rights violations, which did not result in external intervention."

"As one of the most under-reported crime in North America, sexual harassment has been deeply studied by psychologists, sociologists and jurists but rarely by economists. My research aims to analyse the individual's decision making process of reporting sexual harassment from an economic perspective. By adding to the small literature in economics, this research focuses on private reporting and future crime preventing. A two stage dynamic game theory model will be built and guide the analyze."

"I will provide the first estimates of the causal effect of economic inequality on prescription opioid use and overdoses in the United States. Exploiting longitudinal, county-level data administrative data on opioid prescriptions, data from the CDC on overdoses, and recently available annual county-level data on inequality, regression models will be developed to disentangle the effects of inequality from other determinants of opioid use, such as demographics and macroeconomic conditions.  A Bartik-style instrumental variable approach using interactions between lagged industrial structure and national changes in output prices will then be used to address unobserved confounders."

"I will be joining work currently underway using an animal model for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, through prenatal ethanol exposure in rats. I will be using immunohistochemistry to detect changes in hippocampal neurons, to determine the effects of ethanol on neural plasticity. This will help elucidate the ways in which alcohol affects learning and memory on a cellular basis."

"My research project will explore how outdoor adventure culture, and summer camps in particular, can contribute to the empowerment of LGBTQ+ youth. I will examine how queer environmentalism can assist in the creation of outdoor adventure programs which achieve these empowerment goals."

"As a means to research and understand inclusivity in every age group, I would like to create and facilitate a single, versatile workshop that is capable of finding commonalities from children in grade school all the way to adults. The workshop would become an expansion of a previous workshop created for a grade five classroom, utilizing the story of Giordano Bruno, a man sentenced to be burned for his belief that the sun was the center of the universe. Giordano’s story took place in 1600BCE; I would like to cross cut this true moment in history with a similar, modern day story. Performing the workshop without age restrictions will aid me to understand which theatrical techniques are most effective at promoting inclusivity as children grow. Before expanding the workshop, I would like to research interdisciplinary and inclusive facilitation methods in community engagement and classroom settings. I believe a single story can resonate with students and adults of all ages, and if so, can be a method of encouraging tolerance and acceptance as we move through life."

"This project will explore the acoustic and articulatory phonetics of sounds that are not well understood in SENĆOŦEN. Additionally, research will be done on how to initiate linguistic research within indigenous communities in a mutually beneficial, appropriate, and respectful manner, and conducted in such manner.

For this project, pronunciation of sounds will be done using acoustic recordings and ultrasound imaging. A native speaker of SENĆOŦEN will have their tongue imaged while they are speaking in SENĆOŦEN using ultrasound, and exploration of SENĆOŦEN pronunciation will be researched using this imaging. The pronunciations that will be explored will largely depend on what the SENĆOŦEN speaking community’s goals of pronunciation are and these will be evaluated continuously throughout the project. An outcome of this research will be a full description of these sounds including their phonology, articulatory phonetics, speech physiology, and a narrow description of the target phonemes using the international phonetic alphabet that best reflects their exact pronunciation. Ultimately, this will help language learners of SENĆOŦEN better understand and learn how to articulate different sounds."

"The project aims to create a textual play and live performance by compiling various forms of media and information (plays, poems, Wikipedia articles, statistics, policies, etc.) centred around rape and rape culture. The focus of the piece is on material that may aide a survivor of sexual assault in finding healing through paths of justice, reconciliation, and forgiveness. During the fall semester, the play will be compiled and refined in order to be performed during the spring Semester at the University of Victoria’s Phoenix Theater."

"On March 26^th, 2000, Vladimir Putin was formally elected as president of the Russian Federation. During the symbolic transfer of power, Boris Yeltsin insisted that Putin “take good care of Russia” (Colton, 437). Yeltsin’s request was highly symbolic, yet deeply relevant. Putin’s subsequent consolidation of power, characterized by political and cultural authoritarianism, may be symptomatic of Russian cultural attitudes regarding the state-citizen relationship. Putin’s style of authoritarianism has a paternalistic character, eschewing democratic values in favour of strong authoritarian leadership. We must consider what exactly Russian citizens expect from the Russian state. Does Putin’s paternalistic regime enjoy popular (if not democratic) support, or does the regime take an antagonistic relationship to the Russian citizenry?

Soviet communism may have had an influential role in shaping Russian cultural attitudes towards the state. Did Soviet communism, with its high degree of paternal care and practically non-existent democratic processes, lay the foundation of Putin’s Russia? If I am accepted for the JCURA scholarship, my research will examine Russian cultural attitudes towards the state, and how they have been shaped, particularly by Russia’s Soviet past. Health, quality of life, and political polling statistics will play a key role in my analysis as well as the history of life under the USSR and research on the social psychology of authoritarianism."

"The proposed research project will examine the development of neck-shaft angle of the femur throughout the growth period in two archaeologically derived skeletal samples of Holocene foragers. Using 3D model specimens of the proximal femora of juvenile skeletons from Indian Knoll, Kentucky (n=37; 4143-6415 BP), and Later Stone Age Foragers from Southern Africa (n=50; 9120-220 BP). Neck-shaft angle will be measured using measurement tools in GeoMagic Design X software, and examined across the age ranges represented in each sample. The neck-shaft angle has been chosen as the focal point of this research project because it is thought, in current paleo-osteological research to represent hip movement and load-bearing. The Indian Knoll foragers are described as semi-sedentary, who expertly utilized a small resource set through hunting and gathering, and lived along the relatively flat topography of Green River, Kentucky. The Later Stone Age foragers also utilized hunting and foraging, as well marine resources along the coastal region Southern Africa, which presented this population with a more diverse terrain (varying altitudes) than the Indian Knoll Sample. This research project hopes to determine whether the femoral shaft angle during development may be affected by the different ecological contexts and subsequent loading patterns experienced by the individual, and whether, in two populations with similar lifestyle strategies, an observed difference can be observed and attributed to their environment or activity patterns."

"Post-translational modification of proteins in biological is a key driver of disease states. To further investigate these diseases, protein diversity must be expanded beyond the 20 proteinogenic amino acids. My project involves the generation of new alkyl halides to mimic biological post-translational modifications. Working in conjugation with CBX proteins to phage-display generated peptide sequences.

My project also involves the synthesis, development, and testing of selective inhibitors for CBX proteins."

"Firefighters’ decision making must be performed under extreme stressors: time pressure, high temperature, and physical exertion. This study will investigate (a) the impact of maximal exercise in full turnout gear on firefighters’ performance on a decision making task, (b) if the magnitude of this impact is correlated with physiological stress markers (cortisol, IL-6, CRP, HRV), and (c) if performance is marked by changes in ERP components (DAP & Rew-P)."

"This project aims to explore the tumultuous and complicated history of the Cholas, a group of Indigenous Ayamaran women in Bolivia. Easily recognizable in their traditional dress of bowler hats and colourful skirts, I intend to research and deconstruct the history of the unmistakable Cholas. A term once used pejoratively to classify and discriminate Indigenous women in Bolivia, Chola is now used by politicians and the tourism industry as a representative of Indigenous nationhood. I aim to explore how these women, are used as a commodity to promote indigenous culture and authentic Bolivian tradition. My research on the commodification of the Cholas will be largely done by examining Cholita Wrestling. This weekly event, charges audiences of over five hundred people to watch as Ayamaran women in full traditional wear, wrestle one another in the ring. Often described as a platform for Indigenous female empowerment, the fighting cholitas is an extremely popular event. My research will examine the event’s popularity, to determine if there is a legitimate shift from gendered racism to empowerment or rather, the commodification of the traditional oppression of Indigenous women."

"The Allee effect is a biological phenomenon that predicts a decline in population productivity at low density, which can increase the risk of extinction in a vortex-like process. Recently, the concept has been modified to include the exploitation of populations by humans (i.e. hunting, fishing). The anthropogenic Allee effect (AAE) model suggests the large monetary cost, associated with killing individuals within rare populations - though counter to economic logic - actually increases demand, thereby leading to increased exploitation and eventual extinction. An assumption underlying the AAE is that the rewards for killing rare species outweigh the costs associated with locating and hunting them.

Little is known about what rewards hunters seek to motivate their willingness to pay high costs. Recently, however, Darimont et al (2017 Biology Letters) suggested that contemporary trophy hunting evolved via ‘costly signaling’; male hunters target costly prey (i.e. rare, dangerous animals) to signal to competitors and potential mates that they can absorb the costs. These days, costly prey can be defined by the financial costs to acquire through travel, guiding and governmental fees.

I will test AAE and costly signaling hypotheses. I predict that rare species are more costly to hunt and that the hunters that kill these same rare species receive more prestigious awards from hunting organizations, such as Safari Club International (SCI) and Boone and Crockett Club. Testing these hypotheses could unite these bodies of work and identify heretofore unrecognized routes towards conservation of endangered prey."

"The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism (REM) is an encyclopedia of entries relevant to the study of modernism. The encyclopedia contains 2,900 curated essays about people, movements and places that contributed integrally to the Modernist  period. A companion site, the Linked Modernisms Project (LMP), is an ongoing project at the University of Victoria which aggregates metadata from REM and provides tools for browsing and viewing this metadata. LMP provides graphical tools for visualizing the relationships between subjects as well as locations, periods of time, political and artistic movements, etc.

Each relationship is stored' as a subject, object, predicate (SOP) triple, otherwise known as a semantic triple. Semantic triples are the data entities of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model. For example, searching the site for subject "Alan Turing" returns semantic triples such as ("Alan Turing", "has Birthdate",1912) and ("Alan Turing", creator Of, "Computer Science").

The problem of extracting semantic triples from articles in the REM is a typical problem of computational information extraction (IE). IE refers to the task of extracting information from an unstructured document (in particular plain text) and transforming the content into a formal relationship which is understood by computers. In this instance, the formal relationship is specified by the RDF data model.

The database of relationships is currently incomplete, with only a small number of the REM's subjects containing relationship data. The objective of this project is to utilize natural language processing information extraction techniques in order to finish populating the database with semantic triples that could be extracted from the REM.

The techniques utilized in this project represent an effective and pioneering method for doing literary and historical research. In addition, the methods have potential applications for research in other areas, such as biological sciences and social sciences. We believe that computational IE could represent a revolution in academic research."

"The Magellanic Stream is a trail of gas that emanates from the Magellanic Clouds and traces their orbit around the Milky Way. It is heavily lopsided, lagging behind the Clouds in their orbital path. This one-armed feature, together with the lack of stars associated with the  Stream, have raised question about its origin. If caused by Galactic tides, then one would expect a two-armed tail structure and the presence of stars. If caused by ram-pressure onto a tenuous halo of hot gas then its spatial distribution would not trace accurately the orbital path of the Clouds. We intend to address this puzzle using cosmological simulations of the formation of the Local Group of Galaxies from the APOSTLE project. Preliminary work has shown the presence of a number of one-armed features emanating from satellite galaxies in APOSTLE runs. Their detailed analysis should yield invaluable clues to interpret the properties of the Stream and to elucidate its origin."

"My research focuses on the Korean Society of Women Composers as a way of studying the development of educational opportunities for women in music throughout the latter half of the twentieth-century. I will focus on the first educational institutes in Korea and the graduates who formed the first generation of female composers as a microcosm of broader trends. In the male dominant field of music and society of Korea, these composers set a precedent in signifying female presence. Currently, the Society advocates for Korean composition globally and for educating and discovering promising future female composers."

"This project looks at code meshing and code switching as a challenge to traditional assessment models in the high school classroom. Advocates of code-switching tend to emphasize the practical value of learning to switch between different Englishes in a world that does not accept nonstandard Englishes in professional contexts, while advocates of code-meshing argue that Standard English has been arbitrarily given precedence over other Englishes and is a result of a fundamentally racist and classist system. Drawing from observations and anecdotal evidence collected in a high school classroom in 2017, the project explores the attitudes, successes, and challenges of students allowed to use code switching and meshing in their assignments."

"This project aims to improve the effectiveness of Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT), a new treatment that bolsters the patient’s immune response against their cancer through the infusion of large numbers of tumour-reactive T cells. Despite the great clinical success of ACT in some settings, there remain significant challenges that limit the effectiveness. In particular, there is a need to develop in vitro T cell expansion protocols that yield fit and active T cells rather than exhausted, terminally differentiated T cells. Traditional T cell expansion protocols use high concentrations of the T cell growth factor Interleukin-2. While this yields high numbers of T cells, they are often near the end of their functional lifespan. We hypothesize that using different combinations of growth factors that promote the formation of long-lived “memory” T cells will result in a less terminally differentiated product that is better suited to recognize and attack cancer when infused back into the patient’s bloodstream. Specific populations of T cells from the product will be classified based on their T-cell receptor variable β chain (TCR Vβ), which examines population clonality. T cell expansion products will then be analyzed by flow cytometry to determine how memory and exhaustion phenotypes vary among specific TCR Vβ populations. T cell expansion products will also be tested for reactivity against primary tumour samples. By evaluating different growth factor combinations, we hope to create an improved protocol that yields more potent T cells for use in ACT, leading to better patient outcomes."

"PLPH is a community-based research project in BC being conducted by the Pacific AIDS Network (PAN) in partnership with the University of Victoria. PLPH is investigating the relationship between housing experiences and health outcomes for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV). With the identification of housing as a critical health determinant for PLHIV, the study examines Prince George, Kamloops, and Vancouver communities using a case-study approach, exploring how housing experiences have interacted with the health and well-being of PLHIV. The study seeks to investigate how current housing and HIV programs, services, and policies have informed the health outcomes of case-study participants, and identify best practices for housing services and policies to better meet the needs of PLHIV. The study has interviewed policy makers and service providers in the three communities, and has interviewed people living with HIV at two time points, using qualitative interview, timeline and home mapping techniques. The JCURA research student will provide qualitative data analysis support and assist with the production of a community presentation and web content on study results."

"The purpose of my research is to explore the violent world of gladiatorial games in Roman society through Pompeian epigraphic inscriptions. In order to investigate the social importance of such practices in C1 AD Italy, both official dipinti and the more colourful graffiti will be explored, thus giving voice also to ordinary people.

Furthermore, in a broader territorial perspective, my analysis will try to focus on the local chauvinism that such contests fostered, and the spread of violence outside of the arena, as occurred in 59 AD.

Particular attention will be given to the new monumental epigraphic discovery recently found near Porta Stabia in Pompeii, soon to be open to the public. It is the case of a funerary tomb with an inscribed epitaph revealing new insights on the social aspect of the gladiatorial games and on historical events in Pompeii."

"Iron doped TiO2 nanocrystals, a UVic grown photo-catalyst, have been developed, tested and proven to oxidize organic material for water purification applications. The nanocrystals act as a photo-catalyst when in contact with organic material, water and visible light. The nanocrystals remain inert and do not degrade in this environment through photo-catalytic operation giving them a theoretical infinite lifetime. This research aims to study the nanocrystals’ ability to oxidize bacteria and viruses by measuring the reproductive success of gram negative E. Coli. Should the experiment prove successful, applications of the nanocrystals could be useful in reducing the transfer of diseases by creating germ free environments with TiO2 based paints with specific applications within hospitals."

"During the Archean eon, the Earth received only ~75% of the solar energy it receives today. There is no evidence, however, for the presence of an ice age during this time, which implies a immense greenhouse effect. One greenhouse gas candidate in a reducing atmosphere is ammonia. The goal of this study is to quantify the ammonia in the Archean atmosphere and to understand the extent to which the species contributed to a warmer Earth-surface temperature. We will consider both long term forcing and climate feedbacks involving ammonia."

"This paper examines the impact of the Polish government’s desire for energy security on the state-owned energy infrastructure firm, Gaz-System. The project discusses historical and political context, analyzes recent strategy and developments, and examines possible courses of action."

"With this project, I seek to analyze how Canada’s war memorials have aided in constructing historical narratives of Canada’s involvement in military conflict from the Boer Wars, through the First and Second World Wars, and finally to the Korean War. By studying memorials from each of these conflicts, I hope to understand how they reflect Canadians’ views of military conflict and the role of the military in society at the time in which they were built. I will explore how these memorials have been constructed to depict Canada, Canadians, and war in a certain way. My project will focus specifically on memorials in Victoria and Ottawa to compare how depictions of war differ across regions in Canada and, in particular, how Victoria’s military narratives differ from the larger Canadian depiction of war. Some of the secondary sources I will be using include Death So Noble (1997) by Jonathan Vance, Mystic Chords of Memory (1991) by Michael Kammen, and Blood on the Hills (1991) by David Bercuson. I also hope to utilize primary sources, such as the Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, as well as archival resources at the Military Museums in Calgary and personal observation of the memorials."

"Polymer thin films are widely employed to inhibit the adsorption of organic compounds, such as asphaltenes during the processing of crude oil. The prevention of fouling of heat exchanger surfaces is of great industrial importance for the sake of energy conservation and cost benefit. This project will investigate the structural characteristics of the polymer-oil interface in the presence of dissolved and precipitated organic species, including model asphaltene compounds."

"Victoria’s Jewish community forms an integral part of Vancouver Island heritage, including the oldest continuously operating Synagogue in Canada. As part of one of the oldest Jewish communities in Canada and the West Coast of North America, the Emanu-El Jewish Cemetery is the subject of UVic Anthropology’s Dr. Erin McGuire’s practical field course in Heritage Archaeology. At the Emanu-El Cemetery students gain hands-on experience mapping the cemetery’s burials. Through data collected by the Field School, in tandem with archival research, this research project aims to build profiles of known burials for use by the Emanu-El congregation and larger community. With such important characters as Samuel D. Schultz, the first Jewish-Canadian judge, and David Oppenheimer, second mayor of Vancouver buried at Emanu-El, compiling detailed and accessible profiles is key to disseminating knowledge of this important part of our heritage. By first identifying a group of people throughout the cemetery’s history – from pioneers to Holocaust survivors – and then building online profiles, community engagement and accessible heritage is promoted. In this growing age of internet connectivity, having ready access to heritage resources drastically increases knowledge and engagement in the wider community. The results of this project, attained through archival research, would produce detailed profiles and accessible online resources, thus engaging the community on this marginalized part of our heritage. As it is Canada’s Sesquicentennial, acknowledging all aspects of Canadian heritage, and making them easily accessible to communities everywhere, is vitally important."

"The term "civilizing mission" has been expressed as one of the primary rationales of, and justifications for, Great Britain's imperial expansion in the 19th century. This research project will attempt to unpack the meaning behind the shorthand "civilizing mission" by using the technique of "text-mining" on the collection of 19th century British literature digitized by the British library. By examining the frequency of the use of this and related terms, and exploring the main uses, I will answer the questions: What did the terms "Civilizing Mission" mean to 19th century Britons and who were the main targets of this "mission"?"

"Ferramonti di Tarsia — the largest Italian internment camp for Jews. An example of various aspects of the history of Italian Fascism which is largely unknown internationally."

"A closer look and performance of Maya, a chamber music work written by contemporary composer Ian Clarke. Maya has become a popular new standard amongst flutists world wide owing to Clarke’s influential and unconventional techniques and beautiful melodies."

"Sexualized violence affects communities throughout Canada at alarmingly high rates; however, a lack of accessible and representative data sampling, combined with a culture of silence and disbelief has limited the accuracy of data collected by states and institutions. This creates a significant gap in understanding of the structural roots of sexualized violence and its prevalence within communities, especially those that are disproportionately affected. For my project I propose that a new method, rooted in community-based and intersectional practice, will serve to produce a more holistic understanding of how sexualized violence appears in community and the extent of its impact.

This project will engage an ethnographic study here at UVic, rooted in an intersectional community-based framework. With the help of the Anti Violence Project (the on-campus sexual assault centre) I intend to work with focus groups of survivors to build a data collection model that centres the stories and safety of those who have experienced sexualized violence. From these focus groups I will build a tool (e.g. surveys, reporting frameworks) that can be used on campus to better understand the root causes, pervasiveness and impacts of sexualized violence. I strongly believe that a more intersectional and holistic understanding of how and why violence is happening will lead to better prevention and education frameworks for institutional response.

This project is also a personal endeavour. I am a survivor of sexualized violence, and I have dedicated the last 5 years of my life to engaging in anti-violence work and advocating for survivors."

"Within the scope of the larger-scale project of transforming a bacterium with an entire bacterial chromosome, we aim to find the most efficient method of recombination in vivo with the red/gam λ phage recombination system. To optimize this system, we will be testing multiple different Escherichia coli background strains and counter selection agents. Since different strains of E. coli have different efficiencies of both taking up exogenous DNA and degrading exogenous linear DNA, and both of these features are likely to affect efficiency of “capture by recombination”, it will be important to test and determine these features to inform our decision of strain selection. Counter selection elements provide selective pressure when one is isolating recombinant DNA that lacks an antibiotic marker. This project will compare recombinant capture of Thermus thermophilus DNA into a BAC using different E. coli strains (recA, recJ, recD, etc.) and with different plasmids expressing red/gam functions. Additionally, we will compare the efficacy of CRISPR/Cas9, homing endonuclease I-SceI, and sacB (+sucrose) at enhancing the identification of BAC recombinants."

"In the spring of 2017, the Canadian government announced its plans to end the prohibition of the recreational use of marijuana by the summer of 2018. This marks the end of nearly 100 years of governmental control of the drug, which began in the midst of the 1920s drug panic document by Catherine Carstairs and others. Opium was generally the substance in question, and while there were others, such as morphine and cocaine, which were publicly condemned, marijuana was largely unknown. Yet in 1923, it was added to the list of scheduled substances with little fanfare. Why did this occur? Carstairs suggests that the roots of marijuana prohibition can be found in Mackenzie King's attendance at international events on the opium trade from 1909-1912. This is particularly significant as the scheduling of marijuana occurred under King's government. The initial causes of the prohibition of marijuana remain unclear and appear somewhat separate from the broader drug panic; the first seizure of marijuana did not occur until fifteen years after its prohibition, in 1937, and it was not targeted by the anit-drug campaigns of the 1920s. I would like to more closely investigate the potential sources of marijuana prohibition by examing the House of Commons debates that saw its introduction, the report of the 1909 commission and the subsequent Hague Opium Conference, as well as Mackenzie King's personal diaries during those years. Hopefully, by the end of prohibition, I can shed some light on its beginning."

"This research project argues that Katherine Dunn's carnivalesque Geek Love (1989) rewrites Shakespeare's The Tempest by privileging female characters and matriarchal power. Instead of comparing characters (Shakespeare's Miranda and Dunn's Miranda, for instance) or focusing on familiar themes (such as normalcy and monstrosity), I foreground how the colours blue and green correspond with power dynamics in both texts. Through an emphasis on colour and colour patterns, my reading centres on how the aesthetics of Geek Love reveal a subtle spectrum of gender politics at play in key moments of conflict. While existing scholarship on Dunn's work reduces Geek Love to a product of 1990s subculture, or it stresses the novel's tendencies toward vulgarity and "freakishness," no journal articles or monographs attend to how Dunn repurposes The Tempest through her use of colour, let alone how colour operates in relation to gender and power. To support my argument, I am interpreting colour as a symbol in the early modern and contemporary periods, and I am reading Color Codes (Riley 1995) and The Key of Green (Smith 2009) to historicize my inquiry through cultural studies of design and perception. I am also reading colour as both an allusion and articulation of gender, consulting publications such as Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare/s Plays (Adelman 1992) and Prospero/s Island (Cobb 1984). Finally, to position colour as a signifier of difference, I responding to Weese's "Normalizing Freakery: Katherine Dunn's Geek Love and the Female Grotesque" (2000), one of few compelling articles about Dunn's novel. Ultimately, my research expands scholarly attention to Dunn's work beyond its association with 90s era "freaks and geeks" by introducing a reading that focuses on Geek Love's canonical influences and demonstrating (through interpretations of colour) a significant shift in notions of female power between the renaissance and the late twentieth century. I will present this research in poster format, which is conducive to sharing observations about the politics and aesthetics of colour."

"Sisters Rising is a community-based study with Indigenous girls, youth and young women, conducted in urban and rural communities in western BC. Sisters Rising responds to the urgent need for community-rooted responses to sexualized violence that support Indigenous wellbeing and sovereignty. Despite the calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Indigenous girls and young women are too often the object of deficit-focused research; few studies have explored the historic and systemic roots of sexual violence from their perspectives. Our focus is on challenging the victim-blaming climate of gender violence by recentering Indigenous teachings and linking body sovereignty to decolonization and land sovereignty.

As a proud mother of five and a Nuu-Chah-Nulth student, this study will support my undergraduate success and future application to graduate school. I will facilitate hands-on, arts-based research workshops with Indigenous girls, youth and young women in their own communities. Working with knowledge holders such as Elders, our goal will be to recenter Indigenous teachings that honor young people of all genders. Participants will use land-based methods (i.e., storytelling, drumming) and materials (hide, cedar, wool, etc.) to explore issues of dignity, safety, sexualized and gender violence, and resurgence. Workshops will be documented through multimedia methods including digital collage and video. As a way of sharing across Nations, our research team will co-author peer-reviewed publications, host workshops and activities, and create resources on sexualized violence, all showcased on the Sisters Rising website."

"My research project will be a comparative analysis of the impacts of climate change on the food security of Indigenous peoples on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada, and Aotearoa (New Zealand). While in two different hemispheres, the central coast of British Columbia and New Zealand have similar latitudes, climates, and ecosystems, and will likely face similar impacts from climate change. Through the the lens of food security, this project will therefore analyze how the impact of climate change on Indigenous peoples may also be influenced by the cultural, political, and socioeconomic environments that they are in. Thus, it will lead to a greater understanding of how differing human forces may influence Indigenous peoples ability to respond to the pressures imposed on them by global climate change in similar environments. It will also help create an understanding of the experiences of Indigenous nations in these areas regarding climate change and food security, and how they perceive future solutions, and current limitations to these solutions. The project will build off of my previous work in Heiltsuk territory on the central coast of BC, where I worked with community members and researchers to learn about their relationship to the land and ecosystems of their territory, and how they have witnessed and experienced climate change through these relationships."

"Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the world has been considered to be ‘Unipolar’ – characterized by the United States enjoying an unparalleled level of military, economic, and geopolitical prowess. In my research I will be attempting to ascertain whether this period is coming to an end. My research question is: Will the present system of US Unipolarity persist, in spite of challenges from Russia and China? This question will be answered by not only looking at military and economic indicators, but I will also investigate (through discourse analysis) how the United States perceives these threats from Russia and China."

"In the 2014/2015 school year, British Columbia accepted 18,700 international students in the K-12 school system and this number is only growing. Districts are happy to offer space to international students as they bring in tuition dollars and create jobs to run and support international student programs. Most of these international students, as well as the increasing number of immigrant students, are English language learners (ELL) and must learn English while integrating into the Canadian curriculum to try to be successful in their classes. Through my experiences teaching Biology 11 on practicum, speaking with practicing teachers, and working with ELL students I have recognized a shortfall in successful learning opportunities for ELL students in the science classroom. International and immigrant learners struggle to take away meaning and context from their science lessons taught in English when they are faced with the new uncommon vocabulary of the language of “science”.  This project focuses on instructional and relational strategies to increase success of ELLs in the science classroom. Research based on adaptations and modifications to improve the experiences of both teachers and international and immigrant students with consideration to science curriculum will be showcased."

"Peatlands cover only 3% of the global land surface but play an important role in the global carbon budget because they store more carbon per unit area than any other terrestrial ecosystem. There is concern that carbon stored in peatlands may be released through accelerated decomposition caused by atmospheric warming and that this process will further accelerate warming. Previous studies have shown that the amount of carbon stored in peatlands depends on the type of peat that accumulates. In order to understand the possible impacts of climate change on these important carbon sinks, research on how past changes in plant communities and climate have influenced peatland carbon storage is needed. In this project, I will analyze a peat sequence collected from a fen located on central Vancouver Island that spans the last 13,000 years. I will determine the type of peat (moss, sedge or ligneous peat) that has accumulated at this site using plant macrofossil analysis. This analysis will show whether changes in plant communities over the last 13,000 years have resulted in the accumulation of different types of peat. These data will be combined with carbon analysis to determine the relationship between changes in peat composition and carbon storage through time. Documenting changes in peat composition and carbon storage on long timescales will help improve our understanding of peatland dynamics and is essential for identifying the potential impacts of future climate change on these important carbon sinks."

"The Willerth Lab uses stem cells to engineer neural tissue.  Stem cells have the ability to differentiate into any cell type in the body.  This tissue engineered from stem cells can be used to streamline drug screening and in organ transplantation increase supply and negate the risk of tissue rejection. However, tissue engineering still faces challenges.  Many cells need to grow in three dimensional (3D) aggregates to communicate and differentiate properly. Cells at the center of the aggregate interact less with molecules in the surrounding media while cells on the outside of the aggregate interact more with molecules in the surrounding media.  Additionally, morphogens must be added to the media on a regular schedule, making the entire process exponentially more labour intensive.  Microspheres are a potential solution because they can be incorporated into cell aggregates and degrade over periods of up to 100 days, allowing continuous and evenly distributed morphogen delivery.  Biodegradable scaffolds can also be used to support the cells and mimic the biological environment. In the future these scaffolds can be bioprinted in order to streamline the entire differentiation process.  This experiment investigates differing morphogens incorporated into microspheres, with 3D cell aggregates embedded into biodegradable scaffolds."

"Alcohol is a teratogen that can lead to a range of developmental problems in offspring known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs). Ethanol exposure during pregnancy, known more formally as Pre-natal ethanol exposure (PNEE), especially affects an infant’s ability to learn and form memories, which are functions commonly associated with the hippocampus, a subcortical structure. The efficacy of neural transmission and synaptic plasticity in the brain is determined by both increasing and decreasing synaptic strength of neurotransmission, known as long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD), respectively. Using in-vitro electrophysiology techniques, I will be carrying out high-frequency stimulation (HFS) and low-frequency stimulation (LFS) protocols in the medial perforant path of the dentate gyrus, within the hippocampus, to analyze differences in LTP and LTD of male and female pair-fed rats."

"Our research will be investigating subjects brain activity prior and during a written test completed by the participant; brain activity will be recorded using a portable FFG device. Ultimately we would work towards predicting academic performance analyzing the EEG data."

"My project will explore how nationalist rhetoric was employed by feminists to advocate in favour of eugenics in early twentieth century Canada. The creation and implementation of sterilization legislation will be specifically examined, to show the connections between nationalism, eugenics and women’s advocacy.

Growing concerns around the "racial degeneration" of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), gave WASP women an opportunity to fashion themselves as mothers of the race, and the nation. In doing so, suffragettes were able to justify their participation in politics, often specifically in areas of social and moral reform. 

The platform for women's suffrage was built on racial anxiety, and the notion that motherhood was intrinsically connected to the health of the nation. Therefore, when reformists turned their efforts to eugenics, women and racial minorities became targets of the resulting sterilization legislation."

"Idealist, innatist philosophers (e.g., G. W. Leibniz, C. A. Campbell) considered human beings to be both active agents within, and single, distinct perspectives on, a greater social reality. Symbolic Interactionists (e.g., E. Goffman, C. Cooley) investigated social development by imagining individuals as simultaneously reflective and creative of social reality. Within this backdrop of innate perspectivalism, I intend to investigate the notion that there are features common to all people, and thus to their societies, that might inform sociological accounts of human activity. The study of such features would contrast the empiricist approach dominant to sociology. I raise this topic through a focus on conspiracy theory."

"Indigenous communities are distinct communities within Canada, with their own cultural beliefs, practices, and languages. These communities are viewed as some of the economically poorest communities in the country, but arguably they are some of the wealthiest in terms of culture and kinship connections. In economics, well-being is often measured using income, life expectancy, education, and income. In Canada in particular, the well-being of Indigenous communities is often evaluated using a composite index called the Community Well-being Index (CWI). I believe that this and other measures do not fully encompass what it means for Indigenous communities to be “well-off.” Using my home community of K’omoks First Nation as a case study, I will look at currently available measures of well-being such as income, life expectancy, and the CWI and evaluate how tightly they relate to traditional and current ideas of well-being. I will then propose and construct other indicators of well-being, such as cultural retention and life satisfaction, which may be more useful in evaluating the effectiveness of policies and programs."

"This project will scan review the scope of technology use in the technology and society classroom. We will delve into how the technology and society coursework provides students theoretical opportunities and digital skills use. Juliet and Janni will also scan other similar courses in the province and survey former students. This will require ethics approval and will offer Juliet the opportunity for familiarity with qualitative and quantitative research."

"I have completed a scoping review of the literature examining intergenerational music-based interventions between children or youth and persons with dementia. This research is in support of Dr. Debra Sheet's ongoing research of a choir here in Victoria, Voices in Motion, composed of high school students, persons with dementia, and their caregivers."

"Sediments are a crucial component to the aquatic ecosystem of estuaries and coastal wetlands, as they influence the biotic and abiotic exchanges and morphological transformations that occur (Levin et al., 2001). The Skeena River, a watershed in Northwestern British Columbia, at its delta mouth, deposits millions of tonnes of dissolved, suspended, and bedload sediment into the Skeena estuary (Kelson, 2012). However, there is little available, long term data records on sediment load transported by the Skeena River. In order to address this gap in knowledge, public and open source data were used to estimate sediment load and river discharge over a thirty year period at the mouth of the Skeena River using the Hydrotrend model. These results were compared with observed river discharge station data along the Skeena River in order to assess model accuracy. Trends apparent within the long term sediment load estimates are contextualized in terms of their current and posed future implications for the estuary. Moving forward with this research, a successful model could be used to estimate sediment load at the river mouth into the future using predicted climate scenarios or supplement further studies on the sedimentation within the Skeena estuary.

Keywords: Hydrology, Watershed, Modelling, Sediments, Discharge, Estuary, British Columbia 

References:

Kelson, J. (2012). 2011 Skeena Estuary Study (Rep.). Retrieved January 20, 2017.

Levin, L. A., Boesch, D. F., Covich, A., Dahm, C., Erséus, C., Ewel, K. C., ... & Strayer, D. (2001). The function of marine critical transition zones and the importance of sediment biodiversity. Ecosystems, 4(5), 430-451."

"We will study a parameterized family of area-preserving maps of the torus (related to the "standard family"). The Lyapunov exponent measures the rate of stretching of microscopic regions as they are iterated under the dynamical system. There are many unresolved questions about coherence of unstable directions, existence of stable periodic points etc."

"This is a pilot study focusing on the attitudes, skills, and practices related to oral health care during pregnancy. The objective is to identify baseline knowledge of general dentist and dental hygienists when working with pregnant patients. The second objective is to define the barriers and facilitators to accessing oral health care as identified by general dentist and hygienist. This pilot study is affiliated with a larger program of research being conducted and is in partnership with Island Health."

"A combinatorial design is, roughly speaking, a family arrangements of some objects which enjoys various `balance’ properties.  An example is a completed Sudoku puzzle, in which every row and column uses all symbols exactly once each.  Hill-climbing is a standard algorithm used for constructing combinatorial designs on computer (among many other uses).  Some exciting recent work gives randomized constructions of combinatorial designs using an `iterative absorption method’.  However, these methods are theoretical and have no chance of generating a practical-sized example.  This research aims to explore the possible computational benefit of using absorbers in hill-climbing algorithms for designs."

"Women migrants in China’s big cities are increasingly well educated white-collar workers. Portrayals of the experiences of such migrant women in popular culture have raised awareness and shaped public perceptions. This project will explore representations of the lives of women migrants in Shanghai through an analysis of the hugely popular TV drama series Ode to Joy. The series revolves around the stories of five unmarried professional women on the same floor of a residential block in Shanghai. Focusing on all aspects of their personal and professional lives, the series has raised many issues about the experiences of young women in China, and especially of migrant women in large cities. The way in which these experiences are portrayed and represented in Ode to Joy will be critically analyzed in relation to key findings and debates in the academic literature, including differential treatment of migrant women, changing gender relations norms, balancing career aspirations with traditional expectations around marriage and children, and the tensions between female migrant identity and urban status. A key objective is to highlight where popular representations of migrant women are confirmed or not in the academic literature, and to comment on the possible impact of such portrayals on public perceptions in general, and on government policy in particular. The research will raise further questions about the relationship between the actual experiences of migrant women in Chinese megacities and how these are represented in contemporary popular culture in China."

"On board computer (OBC) on UVSD’s Homathko satellite handles with sensor processing, communications system, and payload deployment. OBC has to operate in harsh radiation enviroments in low earth orbit. The duration of the mission is approximately two years. UVic’s astronomy department and ALTAIR project requires multiple LASERs in orbit for telescope calibrations. Homathko fires multiple LASERs to a telescope for measuring distortions in upper atmosphere. Distortion information allows astronomers to get better images of celestial objects. Homathko requires a 2º attitude determination system for the LASER. OBC is required to be able to recover from soft errors induced by cosmic radiaiton. The system is also required to operate in extended range of temperatures from -20ºC to +70ºC. The physical size is constrained to 10 cm by 10 cm, which will require surface mounted components and a multiple layer printed circuit board. OBC will have a ham radio repeater. OBC will have RF and magnetic shielding to protect the instruments OBC will undergo extensive hardware and software testing. TRIUMF will induce 5krad of TID to OBC for testing."

"During a recent co-op work term, I became aware of the acute implications salary and hiring freezes can have on a firm's short-term operations. Lacking the ability to remain competitive in the labor market, and without the discretion to develop new positions, firms under salary and/or hiring freezes are limited in their ability to keep up with industry growth. Moreover, inefficiencies spawn from such policies and are costly; therefore, firms need to appropriately factor in all the indirect costs associated with such policies before implementing them. In my research study, I propose to explore the long-term effects of these temporary policies on corporates and public sector institutions.

I plan to develop a model based on microeconomic theory that explores the relationship between the short-term savings decisions of firms (focusing on hiring and salary freezes) and the long-term effects those decisions can have. Typically, firms have numerous choices at their disposal to control or cut costs. Are they making the optimal one when choosing labor?

With the model, I would like to answer practical questions applicable to the private and public sector. For example, under what scenario is choosing an alternative method to control costs optimal? In a short-term liquidity crunch is a firm better off cutting production or foregoing merit increases? What type of impact will a hiring freeze have on long-term productivity or innovation at the firm level? Are the effects different across the public and private sector?

"This research project will explore how marine protected areas (MPAs) might help promote marine mammal protection from underwater noise. This will involve using GIS to help identify areas on the west coast where important marine mammal habitat overlaps with high noise levels, and proposing potential sites where establishing MPAs could help protect marine mammals."

"Previous electrophysiological research has shown that the electro-excitability of hippocampal circuits can change in response to traumatic brain injury (TBI). My honors project will study the effect of repeated minor TBIs on the structural plasticity of the hippocampus in rats. Structural plasticity, or neuroplasticity, is the brain's ability to change and adapt due to experience. The hippocampus is responsible for the formation of long-term memories and upon TBI, can be damaged and reasonable for cognitive and memory deficits. Specifically, I am interested in the effects seen in the performant pathway which extends between the entorhinal cortex to all fields of the hippocampus, including the dentate gyms. By stimulating this pathway, the excitability of post-synaptic neurons can be observed by recording the resultant excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP). Long-term Potentiation (LTP) describes an increase in the strength and efficiency of neuronal communication and can be represented by an increase of the quality of the EPSP in a pathway. The formation of LTP can be produced in vivo by sending rapid and short bursts of electricity through a pathway of neurons. This project compares the quality of resultant EPSPs following LTP stimulation between rats that have incurred minor TBI and healthy control rats. The results of this study will isolate the effect that minor TBI has on the structural plasticity of the hippocampus and, therefore, the ability to perform its normal cognitive and memory functions."

"In order to help characterize the protein Streptavidin, I am seeking to research and identify the time-constant between open and closed transition states of the proteins binding mechanism by utilizing optical trapping data. These transition states are a theoretical model of how the protein binds and if a characterization is extracted from the data, it can be used extensively in both research facilities and industry.

By analyzing data of the protein trapped in gold double-nanohole samples from the lab, I will develop a Matlab program to help identify the state transitions through signal processing techniques such as filtering, autocorrelation, Golay-smoothing, etc."

"With the increase in ocean levels and global warming, there is a desperate need for renewable and clean energy at this time, more than ever before. Although the economic development of technologies such as wind and solar power is improving, these energy sources are intermittently available in nature. A reliable energy storage technology could bridge the gap between the supply and demand of electricity.

The osmotic energy storage system would store energy by separating a water-based solution, creating a chemical potential. Energy is retrieved by mixing the solutions. The research would involve optimizing such a technology and would show the practicality of an osmotic energy storage system."

"Germany has become a focal point for human trafficking. Many factors have contributed to the rise of this problem, including under-investigation and underreporting of the issue. It is also partly the result of legislative changes, such as the removal of the main methods of victim identification through the legalization of prostitution and the 2007 expansion of the Schengen agreement which allows for travel in Europe within the Schengen zone without passport controls. Sex trafficking has increased in Germany in the wake of the refugee crisis. Germany has accepted over a million refugees in 2015. Officials involved in refugee camp protection have openly admitted that exploitation is probably occurring, but are not looking into it. This may be due to officials and social programs being overstressed from the magnitude of the refugee crisis, racial biases, fear of potential terrorism, and the temporary nature of the camps. There also seems to be little pressure from the German public or legislators to increase investigations of human trafficking in the refugee camps.

In my JCURA project, I wish to research how and why human trafficking in refugee camps in Germany is occurring. I want to study what obstacles officials face, and how these obstacles are essentially facilitating human trafficking, and I will focus in particular on examining to what extent racial and cultural biases may be contributing to the under-investigating of human trafficking in German refugee camps. I will also be applying for a short-term research grant through the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) to conduct some on-site research for this project."

"Predation by Arctic foxes is the primary cause of shorebird nest failure on Coats Island, Nunavut. Vegetation in certain tundra habitats provides excellent concealment for nesting shorebirds. Yet paradoxically, data from an artificial nest experiment shows that habitats with the greatest concealment also face the highest predation rates. I hypothesize that this is the result of foxes targeting habitats typically preferred by shorebirds, thereby optimizing their foraging. To determine this, I will conduct research at a well-established research camp on Coats Island, in the north end of Hudson Bay. Throughout the shorebird nesting season, I will place trail cameras among the island’s four dominant habitat types: sedge meadow, dry heath, gravel ridge and scrub willow. I will use a combination of trail camera data and observational records to determine whether foxes concentrate their nest searching efforts in certain habitat types. I will also determine the primary habitat types favoured by nesting shorebirds by searching for nests throughout the season and broadly categorizing the habitat types they are found in. I will then relate variations in fox search intensity between habitats to shorebird nest site selection. Understanding fox nest searching strategies and shorebird nest site selection will help provide information on complex predator-prey interactions."

"Growing up in Saskatchewan, I’ve always had a healthy appetite for local legends and folklore. Candle Lake is named for its mysterious lights that sometimes appear on the lake’s surface, like candles, with earliest reported sightings going back to the Cree tribes that inhabited the area. As a writing student, my studies have focused on fiction and non-fiction. Folklore’s blend of truth and mystery makes them compelling content to tackle. For my project, I intend to bring this legend to life as a short comic, an ideal story-telling form for oral histories, which are often image-based and rarely in print."

"According to electronic music composer and feminist scholar Tara Rodgers, “sounds and audio technologies are crucial sites of representation through which such historical shifts and associated cultural politics were imagined, expressed, and legitimated.” In the history of electronic music, the contribution of Daphne Oram’s “oramics machine” has been largely overlooked.

Developed in the early 1960s, oramics was an approach to musical composition that would allow composers to establish the parameters of individual sounds using an alphabet of hand-drawn symbols on synchronized strips of film. These symbols would then be fed into the oramics machine to produce the desired sonic output. Oram’s inspiration and research for the oramics machine was largely influenced by Pierre Schaeffer’s concept of the “sound object,” an individual sonic entity ontologically distinct from its source that Oram illustrates in her out-of-print 1972 work, “An Individual Note: Of Music, Sound, and Electronics.”

"A lack of positive role models in the school may contribute to decrease a student’s self-efficacy, especially in academic and career-related motivation. For example, recent studies have shown that the lack of women in professional roles depicted in public school textbooks in the United States most likely is a contributing factor to the lack of representation of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields (Ceci et al., 2015, Styles, 2015). 20% of Canada’s population is comprised of new settlers, introducing diversity in the Canadian classroom that extends beyond gender to include language, ethnicity, religion, affiliations, sexual orientation, abilities and economic status. With such a diverse set of students in the classroom, it is important that each student feels represented and observes positive role models at school in order to maintain high self-efficacy and succeed academically and socially. This project will consider the representation and self-efficacy of varying ethnicities in general school-created media (posters, newsletters, yearbooks, website) and perceived self-efficacy of student populations. Interviews will be conducted with students of all/random ethnicities of several high schools in Victoria to record their perceived representation as well as academic self-efficacy and media from these high schools will be analyzed to record representation of the considered ethnicities. The goal of this research is to determine if there is a correlation between representation by the school of particular students and students’ perceived self-efficacy. The results of this research may motivate schools with a diverse student population to properly maintain strong self-efficacy among its diverse student body.

Ceci, S., Ginther, D., Kahn, S. & Williams, (2015). Women in science: The path to progress. Scientific American Mind, 26 (1): 62-69.

"The argument of civil and criminal cases before the bench is a highly performative process, wherein barristers provide persuasive arguments on the interpretation of laws, evidence and fact. These performances, and their legal outcomes in the form of jury or administrative tribunal decision-making, serve not only to resolve a conflict between two parties, they can also establish or reinforce social norms of behaviour and thought when performed in front of an audience or jurors and spectators.

This research will explore in what ways did the legal performances of barristers (1858-1889) impact the early cultural and social norms of the new town of Victoria BC?"

"This research project aims to explore diverse methods of timekeeping, and how they can be minded and navigated within the secular state. Using holiday and calendar as the focus of inquiry, this research project will explore how the Canadian state and body of politics/institution/organization approach timekeeping that deviates from the “secular” Gregorian schedule. Necessarily, this research will be first grounded with the history of the Gregorian calendar within Canada, and its privileging as the “secular” and official measure of time. Aiming to be as inclusive as possible, while negotiating the realty of scope and language within academia, the project will focus on the “world religions” and their presence in Canada. Historic and contemporary calendars and methods of timekeeping will be considered as being pertinent contributors to the current landscape of “official” Canadian time. Research will include inquiries and dialogue with experts and practitioners in the field, predominantly through the University of Victoria’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society (which will be the venue of RS403, Studies in Religion and Society – whose coursework and academic relationships will contribute to the proposed JCURA research project). The final poster project will feature an analysis of how diverse methods of timekeeping are currently regarded and employed, as well as a proposal for needed considerations based on findings."

"Despite the harsh repression imposed by the counter-revolutionary regime led by President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, the nature of the Egyptian revolution that began in 2011 remains indeterminate. Whether or not historians will even label it a revolution remains to be seen. The ideological and institutional battle between the new regime and any remaining opposition has managed to drown out the diverse voices of the revolution that challenged the status quo in Tahrir Square and around the country. In the name of promoting “stability” in the region, the regime manipulates inter-communal differences to produce fear of uncertainty and characterizes any one who disagrees with its policies as a threat.

Revolutionary theory is marked by a distinction between what is known as third generation scholarship that focuses on state-based, structural factors and fourth generation scholarship that takes an interdisciplinary approach accounting for a multitude of further socio-political factors. The unfolding conflict in Egypt is an exceptional case study for comparing the merits and limitations of these two approaches. Using them comparatively to examine recent Egyptian history, a range of crucial questions emerge: how, if at all, has the paternalistic relationship between a military autocrat and the Egyptian people, associated with President Gamal Abdel Nasser, changed due to the events of 2011? How, if at all, did the revolution of 2011 affect how individual Egyptians understood themselves in relation to the state and each other? I intertwine my study of this uncertain history with the ongoing historiographical debate on the nature of revolutions."

Being a tripartite analysis, this project requires in depth examination of these three individual areas of study as a starting point in order to accurately grasp the background contexts of each. As such, I will be consulting sources such as Le Territoire imaginaire de la culture (Morin, Bertrand 1979) and “The New Quebec Culture” (Morin 1980) to help understand the sociocultural background that fueled the separatist movement in Quebec. I will also look at primary and secondary source political analyses such as and Nationalism and Literature: The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States (Corse 1997) to grasp the academic understanding of the separatist question. Finally, to advise my understanding of the role that irony plays in literature, I will consult analyses of the role that irony plays in literature, such as Linda Hutcheon’s Irony’s Edge (Hutcheon 1994) and Cynthia Willett’s Irony in the Age of Empire (Willett 2008).

"I will complete two five by ten foot abstract paintings, both composed of very small and somewhat uniform marks.  In order to avoid an overly busy piece, I will keep a nearly monochromatic palette and restrict the materials used to one brush and type of paint for each piece.  The first work will be painted with soybean resin and the second will be with graphite.

The work, ‘Many Lemmas,’ will be a time consuming and laboured task: it will require mechanical discipline.  This will allow me to make art as if I were a robot without the option of creative ambition.  On the other hand, even with these heavy restrictions I will be forced to decide whether it is compositionally favourable to make a mark or leave a space blank with every moment I am drawing.  In mathematics, a lemma is a step within a proof that only solves one pieces of a larger problem.  For this reason, I consider the two works to be pieces composed entirely of lemmas.

"During the late-medieval and early-modern period, increasing travel, trade, and contact with peoples of different cultures, religions, and ethnicities brought Western European understandings of the human body into question. My research investigates whether such contemplations and fears, as established in the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, were a reflection of changing conceptions about bodies. I consider how the legend reinforced the superiority of ‘appropriately’ human bodies which conformed to Caucasian, Christian, masculine ideals, and argue that representations of the dragon reflected expanding cultural notions of the racialized, feminized, and pagan ‘monstrous’ Other.

Within Europe, the Christian church was the ultimate authority for determining and controlling what was considered ‘normal.’ Religious, biological, and cultural judgements became problematic for those with non-normative bodies and, thus, were considered beyond redemption. Within the legend, immoral female desire is symbolized by the denigrated dragon being penetrated by the saint’s pseudo-phallic lance and female purity through the princess’s girdle and virginity. Over fifty known representations depict the dragon with a vagina and/or breasts, further feminizing and reducing its power. Ethnic differences were also used to establish political and religious assertions of authority based on culturally perceived physical characteristics and skin colour. The dragon’s dark skin and monstrous form clearly distinguished it from Christians. Ultimately, the dragon symbolized those human bodies deemed unqualified for belonging to ‘humankind’ and, therefore, ineligible for religious conversion and salvation, as part of a normative process of representation—which was anything but neutral, as this study suggests."

"The prolific author of Gothic and sensational tales designed to unnerve and mystify his Victorian readers, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–73) published his works in numerous popular periodicals. Though he vehemently rejected ties to the genre of sensation fiction, his lurid stories nonetheless titillated the public imagination, inspired contemporaries like Charles Dickens and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and regularly haunted the pages of periodicals such as All the Year Round, Belgravia, and The Dark Blue. Yet, as Nicholas Rance writes, “of the sensational triumvirate of Collins, Braddon, and Le Fanu, it was the relatively conservative Le Fanu who attracted the least audience” (166). Perhaps best known today for his sexually charged vampire tale “Carmilla,” a story that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Le Fanu is today largely overlooked by scholars; Simon Cooke notes this “critical neglect,” emphasizing “the lack of any sustained analysis of the rich field of illustration” (“Haunted Images”).

For my JCURA project, I will address this lack, examining the original periodical illustrations for four of the five tales that comprise Le Fanu’s 1872 collection of short stories, In a Glass Darkly: “Green Tea” (All the Year Round 1869; unillustrated), “The Familiar” (Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery 1851), “Mr. Justice Harbottle” (Belgravia 1872), “The Room in the Dragon Volant” (London Society 1872), and “Carmilla” (The Dark Blue 1871–72). Drawing on Victorian illustration studies, I will analyse how text and image function together to produce different effects in different stories and publication venues despite the stories’ connection through the recurring character of occult detective Dr. Martin Hesselius."

"The retreat and downwasting of glaciers flowing from the Andrei Icefield in the Boundary Ranges in northwestern British Columbia is exposing the remains of forests buried during Holocene glacier advances. My research will focus on a dendroglaciological analyses of radiocarbon-dated wood remains collected at eastward flowing Forrest Kerr Glacier. The intent is to construct radiocarbon dated floating chronologies from these archived samples to describe the late-Holocene behavior of the glaciers. The research will document discrete advances and allow for a description of the accompanying paleoclimate."

"My research project aims to characterize the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) at the heliospheric distances of Mercury, Earth and Mars using magnetometer data from MESSENGER, ACE and MAVEN, respectively. The observations will span from September 2014 until April 2015, which is the period of overlap when all three spacecraft were operational.

I will look at the three vector components of the IMF, in the radial-tangential-normal (RTN) coordinate system, as well as its magnitude and how these all vary with heliospheric distance. I will also compute the direction of the IMF, in terms of the azimuthal and polar angles, and look at how they vary with heliospheric distance. The results will then be compared to theoretical predictions (e.g. Parker, 1958; Totten et al., 1995) and other empirical results (e.g. Khabarova and Obridko, 2012; Khabarova, 2013).

"Language functions as the currency of nationalism. I wish to explore questions related to how language assimilation and negotiation can affect the identities and experiences of people and groups in Canada that have first or traditional languages that are not English or French. Language is a crucial component of identity and culture that informs how the very world is interpreted. Drawing from a Lacanian analysis of coming into subjectivity through language, it becomes crucial to examine how subjectivities become translated and how language is used to demarcate the boundaries of national subjecthood and citizenship.

I hope to denaturalize the myth of English and French as the true and sporadically occurring languages of what is now called Canada, and the naturalization of their dominance and hegemony. I also wish to use this discussion of language to focus attention on the myth of Canada’s idyllic multiculturalism, as a reminder that the imposition of English and French and the suppression of other languages is not a gentle or benign process, but one that continues today and has created a situation in which at times there literally is no language to be able to express what has been lost. It is crucial to acknowledge that, while we are all agents and may choose to learn dominant languages to gain access to various things, we are also all located in unequal configurations of power that are historically rooted."

"I define gratitude broadly in terms of self-awareness, appreciation for oneself, others, and the world around us. Gratitude as a value, and an attitude, is closely connected with self-reflection and ways in which we view and use time. Cultivating gratitude among students within the new BC curriculum means addressing social justice issues and Indigenous worldviews in meaningful ways, ultimately fostering dispositions of responsibility, respect, and active membership in community. I am completing my second practicum with the Institute of Global Solutions at Claremont Secondary and hope to explore ways in which the teachers, who are propelled and inspired by teaching environmental-based solutions, also address ecological relationships as quintessential to changing the world, paying attention to relationships and epistemologies appropriate to these global matters. Much like the case of climate change, where the industrial and neoliberal models that are driving much of corporate decision-making but is fundamentally unsustainable, I am examining individualistic notions of what is ‘best for me’ and addressing the failure of this mindset to acknowledge the various levels of privilege we hold and the potential impact of relationships with elders, teachers, parents, and peers in community.

My questions include: How can self, and community, reflective gratitude enhance ecological literacies and learning in students? How can educators support and cultivate gratitude in learners? And why is gratitude important in today’s world, and to future generations?

I will draw on the work of Paulo Freire, Shawn Wilson and Lorna Williams to more deeply understand the issues related to working on ecological mindshifts with students, and will then develop a two-part inquiry: 1) developing and implementing a unit of study focused on gratitude as a way to better understand ways to interact meaningfully and collectively in the world, observing students’ reactions and responses; and 2) conduct follow-up interviews with selected students in the class and with mentor teachers I have been working with."

"My research will explore the use of the societal Other in the concept musicals of the 1960s and 1970s (particularly Cabaret, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Company). Concept musicals (also called “bookless musicals”) revolve around a metaphor or idea rather than a linear narrative/plot, and often comment upon societal values or trends, while also defying unifying structural elements. While elements were used as a means to experiment with form (Bob Fosse, for example, used concept musicals to explore the possibilities of intertwining dance with the story), other concept musicals reveled in exploring the use of morally or sexually ambiguous characters on stage without automatically villainizing them. This lead to a proliferation of characters that defied societal restrictions placed on sex and gender—the Emcee in Cabaret, whose ambiguous sexuality controls the “underground” Kit Kat Klub; Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, whose “alien” proclivities cause ruptures in polite society; and Bobby in Company, a polite, perfectly ordered man coming to terms with his sexuality. The heroes of concept musicals are ambiguous, created from the moral fears of the dominant society of the time, produced as Other even as they captivate (and titillate) the audience—and these characters change with the whims of directors, shifting to continuously represent the antithesis of the hegemonic values of the time."

"TeenWork supports youth with disabilities who seek meaningful, part-time paid employment, providing comprehensive support and guidance from the moment of first interest and continuing if needed to adulthood. Ninety-three percent of TeenWork participants achieve paid employment during participation and 85% exit the program with paid employment. TeenWork staff suggest that the strengths of the program are: youth-to-youth support; individualized and long-term support; flexibility in program design; extensive communication with participants, guardians, and employers; and voluntary participation.

TeenWork is an example of a class of employment support programs; the criteria of success and the program practices in these programs vary widely. The objective of this project is to use TeenWork as a case study for assessing the usefulness of the criteria.

The activities of this study are:

a)     to locate in the evaluation literature the common criteria of success and contributors to success for supportive employment programs for youth;

b)     analytically compare those with current TeenWork practices; and

c)     use those criteria to pilot/test a data collection tool with a sample of participants, guardians, and employers."

"During the war, the Vichy regime aided Nazi Germany in deporting approximately 76,000 Jews from France, including children. Until very recently, public access to documents was extremely limited. Examining both current research and past documentation, I will research the extent of the collaboration with Nazi Germany and how it affected daily life in both France and Germany during the Second World War."

"When the Russian Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich commissioned twelve compositions to mark the 70th birthday of his friend, conductor Paul Sacher, he did far more than inspire a tremendous addition to the solo cello repertoire. In enlisting musical luminaries as varied as Benjamin Britten, Luciano Berio, and Pierre Boulez, Rostropovich brought about a confluence of works by artists whose field had been maligned as being disparate beyond aesthetic comprehension. The resulting 12 compositions amount to a nexus of currents in contemporary art music that demands the attention of a wider audience.

My study will begin by looking at the influence of Sacher and Rostropovich on the trajectory of modern music by examining how they came to affect the lives and careers of the 12 composers involved in the project. Turning to the composers themselves, I will provide an overview of their various styles, and situate the ‘Sacher' works in their broader outputs. An analysis of the set of pieces - covering, among other subjects, the composers' treatment of the name 'Sacher' as a melodic theme, and how each composer uses the technical resources of the cello to unique musical ends - will provide a means of experiencing the similarities among the works while understanding the expressive possibilities offered by the different compositional techniques. Through this combination of historical and analytical investigation, I aim to generate renewed interest in these wonderful and diverse pieces while putting to rest unfounded notions of the aesthetic discordance of modern compositional practice."

"Sometime after it became okay to make lesbians have children on TV, it became all they ever do. Having babies has been a staple of lesbian characters’ storylines through mainstream 1990s hits like Friends and NYPD Blue, through queer-focused shows of the 2000s like The L Word and Queer as Folk. And still, in 2016’s everexpanding network of queer women characters, it seems inevitable to have a lesbian conception/pregnancy/ birth storyline. Can the writers think of nothing else? This trend has roots in a wider social pressure for women to be mothers and to portray motherhood as essential to womanhood; an attempt to homonormalize queer portrayals for mainstream audiences; a laziness in digging deeper for queer female stories; and a reflection of reality. I will examine different cases of this frustrating trope across different TV shows, blending film production, film theory and gender studies to produce a stylized supercut video – a re-edit of existing footage that will serve as both entertainment and cultural commentary. This draws inspiration from previous socio-culturally aware supercuts such as Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” and Dylan Marron’s “Every Single Word Spoken By a Person of Colour in the Entire Harry Potter Film Series” (both on You Tube)."

"In early 2016, the World Health Organization deemed Zika virus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. There is currently no preventative vaccine, nor specific treatment for the virus. As communities throughout South America have discovered, when Zika spreads from a pregnant woman to her fetus, there exists the grave possibility of the baby being born with microcephaly – that is, an underdeveloped brain.

The overwhelming response of South American governments has been to suggest that women abstain from getting pregnant for the foreseeable future. However, given the inaccessibility of contraceptives, combined with the illegality of abortions, more women are challenging dominant health law norms around the continent. 

Ultimately, this project will examine the ramifications of Zika virus on health law norms in Ecuador by answering the following question: How is Zika virus affecting sexual and reproductive health norms in Ecuador, both within a health law and sociopolitical context? I will discuss the historical and cultural factors that have shaped Ecuador’s health law into what it is today, and consider the contemporary debate surrounding sexual health and reproductive rights through both human rights and legal lenses.

"Soniferous fishes like the plainfin midshipman use sound to communicate with conspecifics. The behavioural response of the plainfin midshipman to anthropogenic noise will be assessed in order to examine the potential impact of the changing soundscapes on the ocean's wild populations of soniferous fishes. Additionally, the dependence of this behavioural response on habitat complexity will inform the relevance of ecological context in the laboratory."

"The purpose of this project is to analyze media and court documents to identify the impacts of Super InTent city on its residents. This will take into account health, safety and wellbeing of the super InTent city residents."

"How can community projects and place-based learning work together to help students not only gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for their local community but also a voice in that community? How can educators facilitate positive relationships between students, local landscapes, knowledge holders and other key community members? In a world that is globally connected and in constant transit, how important is the development of place-based community and localized knowledge?

Place-based and site-specific projects for me are about responding to the environment and deepening my connection to a landscape. I have been inspired by art educators such as Lorna Reid (retired) at Esquimalt High and Sue Garat, currently at EMCS in Sooke, in terms of how they have incorporated community projects into their teaching practice. More recently my knowledge of local histories has been transformed through the stories and teachings of local indigenous knowledge holders J.B. Williams, Earl and Nick Claxton and local artist Chris Paul.

My research methodology would take the form of reflective self-study as well as the incorporation of narratives and documentation created by students (photos, journals and other media inspired by their experiences). Key texts that inform my thinking about community connections are “Saltwater People,” by Dave Eliot Sr. and “Photovoice: Sharing Pictures, Telling Stories and Changing Communities,” by Beverly Palibroda with Brigette Krieg, Lisa Murdock and Joanne Havelock."

"My research project will examine the social, political, economic, and cultural impact of the Euromaidan Revolution that took place in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2013/2014. Through this research, I will seek to analyze and explain the factors leading up to the demonstrations, the issue of corruption, the importance of European integration for the country of Ukraine, and how the revolution has manifested itself in the arts. I also wish to explore the phenomena of popular revolutions and demonstrations and the reasons as to why such events occur, why they grow, and why they often turn violent. More important, I would like to look at the consequences of the Euromaidan—did the new Ukrainian authorities manage to get rid of the corruption and establish political transparency? Street art will be crucial component of my project; I plan to highlight it when preparing my poster."

"I will be reviewing methods for crime data analysis, and writing software to provide meaningful visualizations and statistics. Analysis methods will include regression and principal component analysis. The software will include functions to help spot trends by examining crime types, time of day, weather, geographical location, and other external factors. Tools will also be provided to produce visualizations relating to these factors. The final report will include statements on the limitations of these methods and the nature of the data used."

Hypothesis: Tumor-specific CD8⁺ TIL in some ovarian cancers are trapped in tumor stroma and are therefore spatially separated from tumor cells bearing their cognate antigen.

Objective: To localize tumor-reactive CD8+ T cells and their cognate antigen-bearing tumor cells in the microenvironment of HGSC tumors.

Methods: We are developing an in situ polymerase chain reaction (isPCR) protocol to amplify the DNA sequences of tumor-specific T-cell receptors (TCRs) and their cognate tumor antigens within whole tumor sections. These PCR products will be visualized by chromogenic detection. We are currently developing this protocol in a mouse mammary tumor model system (NOP23), in which we are targeting the DNA sequences of both a model tumor antigen (OVA) and the TCR of cognate CD8+ TIL (OT-1). Once this protocol is optimized, we will develop a parallel isPCR protocol to detect human CD8⁺ T cells specific for the cancer-testis antigen, NY-ESO-1, in HGSC.

"I am interested in the relationship between metaphor and truth-- specifically, the type of truth which metaphor allows. If metaphor follows the form “X is Y”, but only holds as functional if “X is not Y” is true, then it can be said that metaphorical truths do not abide the rules of strict logic, and are simultaneously assertions of identity, as well as assertions of difference. They are, in the words of the Poet Charles Simic “part of the not-knowing aspect of art”.

I would like to question the mechanics of metaphor and further my understanding of visual art’s reliance on a similar, though not necessarily linguistic, mode of comparison. I am fascinated by the capacity of art for uncanny juxtapositions that prod the mind into new territories of thought.

As this will be an arts-based research project, an important element of the process will be the making of a body of work, and will necessarily hold as evidence both theory and practice. On the side of theory, I will take as a point of departure Jan Zwicky’s Wisdom and Metaphor and Lyric Philosophy, as well as Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Complementing these texts I will be reading poetry, specifically concentrating on the hybrid work of BP Nichol. I will be following this line of thinking into the realm of visual art with a focus on early conceptual artists Joseph Kosuth and John Baldessari.

The outcome of this research will be a video/sculpture-orientated series of work."

"This study will help researchers to better understand the influence of social connectedness on the health of young adults. Research suggests that social connectedness is an important factor related to health. Abundant literature is available on the relationship between social connectedness and self-rated health (SRH) for older adults and adolescents, but little research on this topic has been done with young adults aged 18-34. This type of information is important in order to inform policies and programs intended to support young adults’ health and wellness."

"Given a stack of n pancakes, all of different sizes, a pancake flip consists of removing a smaller stack from the top of the stack, inverting it, and replacing it on the original stack. The nth pancake number is the minimum number of flips required to sort n pancakes in the worst case. Currently only the first 13 pancake numbers are known, although lower and upper bounds of n and 2n-3 have been established for all unsolved n. A related problem is the burnt pancake problem, where each pancake has one burnt side which must face down once the stack is sorted. The burnt pancake numbers are known to be bounded by 3n/2 and 2n-2.

The burnt pancake problem can be represented by a graph with 2^n * n! vertices, each representing a different state of the stack and edges connecting states that differ by exactly one flip. Because every stack has n substacks removable from the top, this graph is n-regular. Each path in the graph represents a sequence of flips, so the diameter of the graph gives the nth burnt pancake number. Since this is the Cayley graph generated by the set of flips, its paths can be used to study ways of writing all permutations of any n-set as a composition of prefix reversals. The pancake problem can also be used to model genetic mutations as compositions of inversions.

We would like to investigate higher pancake numbers and other applications of pancake flipping."

"Speech from medicinal users of cannabis will be compared before and after the consumption of prescribed cannabinoid medication. The objective of this comparison is to identify potential vocal/acoustic markers that can be used to distinguish cannabis-intoxicated speech from sober speech.

The legalization of cannabis for recreational purposes has been suggested by the current Canadian government, therefore, developing accurate roadside methods to detect cannabis-impaired drivers is a growing priority; currently there is no roadside method to detect cannabis-impairment aside from a blood-test which is not feasible in most situations.

Acoustic analysis has been shown in previous research to accurately distinguish intoxication from a variety of substances, including alcohol. Algorithms have also been trained to discriminate sober from intoxicated speech with high accuracy. To date I have been unable to locate an acoustic analysis of cannabis-intoxicated speech. Therefore, the proposed analysis has the potential to further the state of knowledge in addition to solving a current problem for frontline personnel in medicine and law enforcement.

This research will advance upon current research that my advisor is involved in, which utilizes audio archives from the band KLÖ as a test-bed for exploring the pedagogical opportunities such archives can offer for audio engineering programs. As a composer and technology developer, I hope that this research will provide me with insight into my own consumption and practice of electronic music and inform future research opportunities in the creation of new instruments and music.

[1] Théberge, Paul. Any sound you can imagine: Making music/consuming technology. Wesleyan University Press, 1997.

[2] Peeters, Geoffroy. A Large Set of Audio Features for Sound Description (similarity and classification) in the CUIDADO project. IRCAM, April 2004.

"More options are available than ever before for sharing scholarly work as historians enter the digital age. The internet offers new possibilities for publishing research because of its dynamic and increasingly accessible format, multi-media capacity and facilitation of increased user interaction and user-generated content. While website content and layout can mimic that of historical monographs and articles, the attributes of the internet encourage exploring new approaches to sharing historical information.

Working with files from Landscapes of Injustice, a multi-year research project on the dispossession of Japanese Canadians during World War II, my research project will explore theoretical and practical possibilities for sharing historical research on the web. The project will work with a small sub-set of the archival material collected by Landscapes of Injustice, relevant secondary sources on the dispossession of Japanese Canadians during World War II and ideas of public and digital history.

"The set of all edge-weightings of the complete graph K_n is a vector space of dimension n(n-1)/2. Consider the triangles in K_n, which we regard as zero-one vectors with ones on the edges of the triangle. Taking all linear combinations of these triangles with nonnegative constants, we obtain a polyhedral cone. This cone is very complex and connects with several other topics in discrete mathematics, including the metric polytope and graph decompositions. Fortunately, this cone also has a lot of symmetry due to the large automorphism group of the underlying graph. The cone also has a recursive structure, although presently this is poorly understood.

This project will study the symmetries, recursive nature, and other properties of the cone. One goal is to discover more connections with other geometric or algebraic structures. Another is to improve computations of the face structure of the cone. Indeed, having a good description of the cone by halfspaces is useful for edge-decomposition questions such as the Nash-Williams conjecture."

"When I think of Foxconn I think of working conditions so horrific that employees would rather jump out of factory windows than work another grueling shift. The company, which is the third largest private employer in the world, is infamously known for incidences where this took place in their Chinese factories. The mainstream media covered the story closely not only because it was alarming, but because of what the factories were producing: iPhones.

So, with that being my only knowledge of the electronics manufacturing giant, I was shocked to learn that they had two factories less than an hour’s drive away from where I am currently studying. The Kutna Hora and Paradubice factories in the Czech Republic act as the center of Foxconn’s European operations.

This led me to ask a few questions. Why would the largest electronics manufacturer in the world choose to run production facilities in the Czech Republic rather than China? What are the working conditions like in the Czech factories in comparison to those in China? How does the Czech business environment impact Foxconn’s operations? And who in their right mind would want to work for them?!

I will delve into the questions above in greater detail throughout this paper. Based on everything I know about Foxconn I hypothesize that there are slave-like working conditions in all of their factories. How else would they achieve such outstanding efficiency and speed in their production? Perhaps, throughout the course of writing this paper, I will be proven wrong."

"Statistically, elders and youth represent the highest percentages of our population having unprotected sex and are in the most need of effective sexual health education. The rise of Sexually Transmitted Infections and Diseases over the past two decades clearly indicates that action must be taken to educate and promote healthy sexuality. Therefore I propose a joint health initiative between elders and youth in Victoria to discuss, learn, create, devise, and share the importance of sexual health. I believe that sexual health through Theatre in Education is an innovative initiative that has the ability to deconstruct social stigma and provide an embodied learning experience that will create lasting change."

I will search for traditional melodies from different parts of China, and transcribe simple melodies which are well suited to serve as practical study material on the fundamentals of brass playing, similar to the Bel Canto pedagogy which brass players have adapted from Italian vocal tradition, in which purity of sound is emphasized. In accordance with Western Brass pedagogy, and with guidance from my supervisor, these melodies can then be expanded and developed into exercises which focus on many fundamental musical skills, such as transposition, rhythm and articulation.

"Chronic pain management tools, support and advocacy are increasingly being provided online through web-based campaigns. If granted a Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award my research will seek to explore the relevance of local, provincial and national web-based campaigns for chronic pain management for populations experiencing structural vulnerabilities. Specifically, I am interested in assessing and appropriateness of these campaigns and tools for people who live with chronic pain and intersecting oppressions such as colonialism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, poverty and housing vulnerabilities, substance use issues and ableism. A content analysis of leading local, provincial and national campaigns will be conducted based on a suite of indicators defining trauma informed, cultural safety, contextuality tailored and equity based approaches to health services. The findings from this analysis will highlight examples of accessible and appropriate supports, gaps, and recommendations for improving web-based services for people with chronic pain to be more equitable and accessible for people who are commonly marginalized and living with chronic pain."

I propose to examine this cycle as the The Mystic Ark’s function using Abbot Suger’s Anagogical Window as a comparative, extant artwork. By comparing and contextualizing these works, this cycle can be understood as their activating function. Both programs streamline cognitively-generative art by providing organization and structure for students. This is applied today with adult colouring books promising mental clarity, and the generative possibilities of Buddhist mandalas. They are planned lines along which meditation is sustained, but specifically they are about generative memorization and the transmission and generation of complex ideas. They are vital educational tools developed by Hugh and Suger, and are still applicable as mental expansions productively engaging with concepts in defiance of passive representation."

“Technologies to Support Community-Dwelling Older Adults with Compromised Health and Independence
Community dwelling older adults with complex health conditions often experience a decline in independence and need support from family members (informal) or paid (formal) caregivers. In-home monitoring technologies offer great potential in reducing caregiver load. Effective caregiving support will arise from highly integrated systems that make intelligent decisions based on continuous, multidimensional data collection that captures variations in health, behavior, mobility and cognition. Modern computational methods can use the data to predict adverse events, detect unnoticed deterioration, and even intervene in the caregiver’s absence. The present study is unique in that it matches continuous sensor-based activity data from the home to gold standards of day-to-day functioning and cognitive function. We will gather sensor data in the homes of four at-risk clients. Patterns in the sensor data will be correlated with RAI-Homecare and independent measures of cognitive functioning and more immediate adverse events (e.g., delirium, falls, wondering). This study pilots a crucial step in the evolution of technology-driven caregiver support. It identifies algorithms that will be validated in the next study. Once validated, technology becomes a partner in caregiving.”

"This year I will be tackling one of the most important and renowned pieces in the violin repertoire, Bach’s Ciaconna. A work for solo violin lasting fifteen minutes, it is  technically challenging with long and demanding chordal passages that require vast attention to detail, particularly voicing and left-hand gymnastics that have to be executed with utter precision.  As a result not only does the product have to be completely accurate – it is impossible to hide your mistakes, however minimal – but the performer alone has to also emotionally carry the audience, taking them on a journey that will remain fascinating throughout the length and intimacy of this solo work.

In order to achieve a high standard in its presentation, I propose a harmonic analysis of the Ciaconna as well as historical research regarding the era of its composition, with special focus on the performance practice of the time. This summer I participated in a two-week seminar with the renowned Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik. This gave me a platform from which to begin my research and achieve a historically informed rendition the Ciaconna. By March 9^th I will be ready to present my research in a performance of a piece that has remained integral to the violin repertoire for four hundred years."

"Thomas Heywood (ca 1570-1641) may have been the most prolific of all early modern English playwrights; he claimed to have had “an entire hand or at least a maine finger in two hundred and twenty plays.” Only a few of these plays, however, are available in well-edited modern textbooks, much less regularly studied by undergraduate students. Even the few that do receive attention, however, such as A Woman Killed with Kindness, suggest that he was strongly interested in wide-ranging women’s experiences.

A first edition of Gynaikeion (1623), Heywood’s treatise on historical and mythic women from the classical period to the seventeenth century, is available in UVic’s Special Collections. By reading a selection of Thomas Heywood’s plays, as well as the obscure Gynaikeion in its entirety, I aim to answer the following questions: Which common or obscure themes link the different women in Heywood’s plays? What is in Gynaikeion that can deepen my insight into female characters in Heywood’s plays? And, finally, how are the ways women are portrayed in Heywood’s plays similar or different to other early modern plays?"

"Reconstructing sea surface salinity change in the western North Pacific over the last ~18,000 years, using Operculodinium centrocarpum process length variation
My research project tests a method of quantitatively reconstructing past sea-surface salinity change in the North Pacific, using dinoflagellate cyst process lengths from the sedimentary record. Dinoflagellates are a group of marine plankton that produces resting stages or cysts. I will complete biometric measurements of cysts Protoceratium reticulatum (Operculodinium centrocarpum sensu Wall & Dale 1966) from a sediment core representing paleoceanographic change over the last 40 ka in the northern Japan Sea. Mertens et al. (2012) have shown that the average process length variation of Operculodinium centrocarpum can be related to seawater density or salinity. This work will use the proposed method for paleoenvironmental reconstruction and it has potential to reconstruct oceanographic conditions and document its variability well beyond the existing instrumental records at a sub-millennial scale resolution."

"Recent research suggests that queer individuals are at increased risk for depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide, substance abuse, and other serious mental health issues. Moreover, several studies indicate that queer people face unique barriers to accessing mental health services and receiving appropriate care for their mental health. The University of Victoria has recently affirmed its commitment to supporting student mental health by implementing the UVic Mental Health Strategy. A study on the accessibility and inclusivity of on-campus counselling services for queer students could potentially contribute to this larger project, especially in relation to its stated goals of eliminating barriers and building more inclusive campus services. In our study, we will conduct semi-structured interviews with queer students about the ideas they may have to make on-campus counselling services more accessible and inclusive. We will also interview counsellors at UVic Counselling Services to determine what policies and practices currently exist to promote a safe and inclusive environment for queer clients. The results of our study could potentially inform future counselling practices at UVic Counselling Services."

“How did Japanese Canadians challenge their dispossession during World War II?: Inside the case files of the Custodian of Enemy Property
Following the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, the Canadian government began enacting “security measures” against Japanese Canadians living on the west coast of British Columbia. These included the immediate seizure of more than 1000 fishing boats owned by Japanese Canadians and the internment of male Japanese nationals. Japanese Canadians of all ages and origins were quickly classified as “enemy aliens” under the War Measures Act and, beginning in February 1942, 23000 were forced to leave their coastal homes and communities for internment camps in BC’s interior or for destinations east of the Rocky Mountains. During this displacement, Japanese-Canadian property, possessions, and finances were placed under the control of the Custodian of Enemy Property, which mediated access to property and held the power to dispose of it without consent.

The records of the Vancouver Office of the Custodian of Enemy Property offer insight into the experiences and mechanisms of this displacement and dispossession. Each case file contains correspondences between the Custodian and Japanese Canadians, mainly concerning access to finances and the status and sale of property and possessions. These records provide detailed narratives of family and economic life that can inform us on where displaced Japanese Canadians went and what was important to them. Most importantly, they reveal a dialogue between Japanese Canadians and the government that can deepen our understanding of how power functions. The dynamics of these correspondences were diverse, affected by factors of gender, class, time, and space, and they unfolded according to certain rules of argument that could enable Japanese Canadians to strategically gain access to possessions and freedoms by appealing to the practical, economic, and moral sensibilities of the Custodian. Analysis of these records can lend us a better understanding of how power operates and allow us to consider Japanese Canadians not simply as victims of oppression, but as agents of their own lives.”

"Working with Margaret-Anne Story and the CHISEL Group we are building innovative tools for the visual analysis of big data. I hope to help analysts make sense of large data sets by helping them identify the key concepts and structures expanding their knowledge from the bottom up. The tools will be centered around three domains.

• Cyber Forensics — including network analysis and malware analysis.
• Social Media — including data from Twitter and Reddit over time as well as geographic data.
• Assembly Code — including malware disassembly and identification.

The tools developed will aim to support discovery, documentation, backtracking and collaboration over these data sets. In particular, these tools will attempt to bridge the gap between the machine and the analyst — allowing the machine to leverage its computational power and the analyst to leverage their decisional and intuitive powers. Another goal for the tools will be to assist the analyst in identifying starting points for their bottom up investigation, previously a pain point for large data sets."

"For my Honours research project, I will focus on the deployment of instrumentation for the assessment of submarine slope stability in the Kitimat Arm Fjord, British Columbia. The project is an extension of research that I began during a Co-op work term with the Geological Survey of Canada at the Pacific Geoscience Centre, and it will contribute to a larger-scale geohazard assessment of waterways in northern British Columbia.

The Kitimat Arm Fjord is vulnerable to submarine slope failures that may cause tsunamis. In 1974 and 1975 dock facilities at Kitimat were impacted by significant tsunamis generated by submarine slope failures. Future failures remain a concern, especially given the extensive development at the head of the fjord.

Submarine slope stability is strongly affected by marine sediment pore pressure. If the pore pressure is greater than the hydrostatic pressure the slope may be unstable. Groundwater leaching into the slope can cause heightened pore pressure. Monitoring of slopes affected by groundwater leaching will provide critical data on conditions leading to slope failure.

My objective is to analyze available data, including multibeam sonar, seismic reflection data, and marine sediment cores, to determine ideal locations for the deployment of instruments in submarine slopes of the Kitimat Arm Fjord. Locations of possible groundwater leaching will be identified and targeted for deployment of piezometers, which will provide measurements of marine sediment pore pressure for submarine slope stability assessment. The project will also involve instrument testing to determine optimum deployment strategies."

"Predictive validity of gait parameters and gait initiation for prospectively identifying fall risk in older adults.

Gait has been investigated in order to assess whether it can be useful as a way of predicting healthy older adults at risk of falling, however, there is little information with regards to this and gait initiation. The objective of this study will be to investigate the differences in gait parameters and initiation in healthy older adults with no history of falling, and healthy older adults with history of falling, and to investigate if these characteristics can be used to make predictions about future falls in older adults.  Participants will be 25 healthy older adults (aged 70+) with no history of falling, and healthy older adults (70+) who have fallen at least once in the last year. A history will be taken of the participants to track any fall incidences in the past and the participants will track any falls that may occur in the future for a period of one year. Outcomes measures will be CoM, CoP, step variability, and velocity. Data gathering procedures will be done with two force plates and gaitRite mat. Participants will perform gait initiation on the force plates 10 times and on the gaitRite 20 times, both cognitively loaded and unloaded. This study aims to identify whether gait can be used as a prospective fall intervention method, allowing for early prevention and thereby reducing the expenses and increasing the quality of life of at risk adults."

"The purpose of the research project is to design and optimize the mechanical and controls systems of an experimental small wind turbine. Wind power is an integral part of the quickly expanding renewable energy industry and small wind turbines can be used to provide power to residential areas, cabins, off grid developments or large ships. Preliminary testing has confirmed that the essential systems of the wind turbine are operational. The next step is to design and integrate a yaw drive controller to continuously track the wind direction and adjust the turbine accordingly to maximize efficiency and power harnessed from the wind.

The preliminary results revealed that there may be laminar separation bubbles forming along the airfoils, negatively affecting the lift coefficient. Methods to avert this, such as tripping the flow at the leading edge of the airfoils, will be investigated. This is projected to dramatically improve performance.

Once the yaw controller is installed and the separation bubbles are mitigated, steady state tests will be conducted to study the turbine under known conditions. Once the data from the initial tests is analyzed, the turbine will be stationed in normal environmental conditions where data will be collected to determine how the turbine functions in routine operating conditions."                     

Phase 1:  (1 month) Review existing results on domination critical graphs beginning with the original paper by Sumner and Blitch from 1983, the forthcoming survey paper by Fujita, Furuya and MacGillivray, and finally the recently submitted manuscript on structural properties of dynamic domination vertex-critical graphs by Klostermeyer and MacGillivray.

Phase 2:  (1.5 months) Search for constructions and examples of dynamic-domination edge-critical graphs, bounds on the number of vertices required in the dynamic dominating set, and a characterization of the graphs where the number of required vertices is small. The starting point will be the results of a similar flavour as those reviewed in phase one.

Phase 3:  (1.5 months) Investigate which of the structural properties of domination critical graphs (such as Hamiltonicity) may also be properties of dynamic domination edge-critical graphs.

Phase 4:  (1 month) Prepare a poster for the research fair and a manuscript detailing the research done."

The student will support and review qualitative coding of service user interviews regarding their experiences in supported housing programs. This will allow the student to become familiar with the study, the prevailing issues in each agency, and to gain skills in qualitative data analysis.

In partnership with the research team, the student will incorporate results from the service user interviews into program logic models that each agency is developing for its programs.

The student will be responsible for creating a standardized logic model format or infographic to be used for each of the four agencies involved in the project. Standardizing logic models will allow the research team to draw conclusions about a final outcomes measurement tool."

"If my application is successful, I hope to explore the student experience of navigating religion and/or spirituality while at university. I think that spiritual life is an oft-neglected piece at university, and I hope to draw more attention to this vital component of wellbeing and stimulate dialogue. I believe that this topic could speak meaningfully to many students of various religious and spiritual journeys.

I am involved with MultiFaith Services in the creation of a survey for students. This survey will aim to find ways to improve their services for students. I have been given permission to consider the results of the survey in my own research explorations. I would like to embark on a study of existing literature on the topic of university and religious and spiritual life, and incorporate what I have learnt through my work with MultiFaith services into a comprehensive report/presentation. I hope to have student voices woven throughout my project. If possible, I would like to create an informal platform—such as an anonymous blog—for students to share their stories regarding this topic. I think this platform could serve as a meaningful site of qualitative research, and ultimately, social support for students."

"Playing with the Past: Video Games, The Great War and Popular Memory

As Robert Rosenstone argued for historical film in 1988, historians cannot simply use the same methods and standards for games as they would in the analysis of a historical monograph. Using video games which represent the Great War (1914 – 1918), my thesis will argue that while historians can and should analyze games in terms of their visual and textual representations of history, the most important aspect is a game's procedural rhetoric – i.e. how a game makes arguments about (past) reality through the rules that it imposes on players.

While my thesis will consider the entire corpus of the Great War's video game historiography, it will focus its analysis on three games in particular: Valiant Hearts, Verdun and Commander: The Great War. Each of these games will be analyzed for its portrayal of a certain aspect of the Great War: Valiant Hearts for its use of artifacts to tell stories, Verdun for its simulation of trench warfare through game levels and Commander: The Great War for its emphasis on the grand strategy in the war."