Laboratory Study on an eRoad Pavement Structure Utilizing Accelerated Loading Tests

The rise in electric vehicle (EV) adoption has spurred the integration of inductive charging systems into road pavements. However, the impact of the inclusion of inductive charging coils in the pavement structure on the overall performance and structural integrity of the road needs to be characterised. This study evaluates this impact using a heavy vehicle simulator (HVS) on a pavement structure built in a laboratory test pit at Laval University. The test pit comprises a control section representing the standard Québec pavement structure and two sections incorporating inductive charging coils. Various sensors such as strain gauges and load cells were used to monitor the behavior of each pavement component during dynamic loading tests, from the surface course to the underlying soil. This paper outlines stress measurements at the top of the granular base layer in all sections exposed to different load amplitudes, positions of the load, temperatures, and two water table conditions: high and low.The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the pdf file of the accepted manuscript may differ slightly from what is displayed on the item page. The information in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript reflects the original submission by the author

Water-Column Zone Impacts Non-Essential Heavy Metal Accumulation in Fish Occupying Different Zones

The Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy have documented increases in heavy metals with specific properties, resulting in differing concentrations throughout the water column. Whether this impacts metal accumulation in fish that occupy different zones of the water column is unknown; as such, this was the focus of this work. Commercially harvested fish spanning the epipelagic, mesopelagic, and demersal zones of the water column had weight for length (LWR) recorded and biopsies taken. Demersal fish had the highest levels of arsenic and nickel, whereas fish in the epipelagic and demersal zones showed the highest levels of cadmium, lead, mercury and thallium. Compared to historic data, LWR was reduced in one epipelagic species (15%) and two demersal species (24%, 25%). Mesopelagic species showed increased LWR (23%) concurrent with overall lowest metal exposure. These findings demonstrate that fish accumulate non-essential metals at levels dependent on location in the water column, impacting their growth

Going National: Lessons Learned from Opening Up Submissions to Authors Across Canada

Slides presented at Student Journal Forum, February 18-20, 2025. Presenting journal: The iJournal Session recording is available at: https://play.library.utoronto.ca/watch/178572cbf77c19edf12193ad992eac6dIn 2023, The iJournal opened its call for submissions to students and recent graduates across Canada for the first time. Previously, it had accepted and published submissions only from students at its home faculty, the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. In this presentation, The iJournal team will reflect on the two years since expanding their scope for submissions, share challenges and successes, and give tips for journals considering an expansion themselves. This presentation will address the big-picture questions to consider: does expanding your submission scope make sense for your journal? Does it fit your journal’s mission? The presentation will also offer practical, strategic advice, such as the importance of clarifying your eligibility criteria and identifying which schools and programs to reach out to. Editors at The iJournal will share their experiences communicating and working with authors based in different geographic and academic contexts. They will also share submission and publication data, revealing the outcomes of two years of expanded submissions and discussing how these results have begun to inform an evolving strategy for their journal. Accepting submissions from across Canada has certainly come with challenges for The iJournal, including an increased volume of submissions and inquiries, and needing to orient its reviewers to a broader, national context. But the expansion has also led to valuable network-building and the publication of even stronger research. The iJournal hopes to start a dialogue exploring these benefits and challenges with other student journals considering expanding their submission scope

Enhancing Nurse Practitioners’ Emergency Care Competency and Self-Efficacy Through Experiential Learning: A Single-Group Repeated Measures Study

Background/objective: Nurse practitioners serve a vital role as first responders in emergencies. This study investigated the effectiveness of experiential learning in enhancing emergency care competency and self-efficacy among nurse practitioners. Methods: A single-group repeated measures design was implemented from June to August 2023 at a regional teaching hospital in southern Taiwan, involving 95 nurse practitioners and NP trainees. Participants completed a baseline (T0) three-minute emergency simulation test, followed by one-on-one guidance, an immediate post-test (T1), and a follow-up test one month later (T2). The “Emergency Care Capability Checklist” (ECCC) was used to assess performance after each test, and the “General Self-Efficacy Scale” at T1 and T2. Results: The mean age of the participants was 42.1 years (SD = 6.7), with 91 out of 95 participants (95.8%) being female. ECCC scores increased significantly from a baseline mean of 34.6 (standard deviation [SD] = 8.8 at T0 to 46.4 (SD = 4.3) at T1 (p < 0.001). Scores remained elevated at T2, with a mean of 44.7 (SD = 4.9), which was significantly higher than T0 (p < 0.001). However, scores at T2 were slightly lower than at T1 (p = 0.018). GSES scores also increased significantly from T1 (mean = 26.2, SD = 0.6) to T2 (mean = 28.0, SD = 0.6) (p = 0.009). Conclusions: This study found that experiential learning was able to significantly improve nurse practitioners’ emergency care competencies and self-efficacy. Future research should explore the application of experiential learning in diverse clinical settings to further advance emergency preparedness and self-efficacy among nurse practitioners

Towards Robust and Actionable Explanations in Machine Learning Systems

In the last few decades, organizations have collected vast quantities of data about the world. The capabilities of machine learning systems have also increased dramatically. These two intertwined developments have opened the door for automation on an unprecedented scale, but many critics have expressed concern. Machine learning has the potential to improve the efficiency of many existing processes, but it also poses a substantial technological risk. The nature of most modern machine learning algorithms makes it very difficult for a human to understand what has been learned by a model. As such, any software built on these models has the potential to behave in unexpected ways. The field of explainability research has grown in response to the opaque nature of modern machine learning algorithms. Explanations, whether produced post-hoc or inherent to a model's design, aim to bridge the gap between what a model has learned and what human users can understand. In this dissertation, we stress the importance of two properties of explanations: robustness and actionability, whose characteristics vary depending on the target user and use case. We present four investigations which contribute to the body of explainability research. In the first, we show how the method of influence functions can be used to identify documents which have contributed to the biases learned by a language model. In the second, we present a reformulation of the influence function objective. We show how this reformulation enables the method to produce explanations which are more robust to atypical data points. In the third, we explore the effects of model indeterminacy (underspecification and the Rashomon effect) on the consistency of explanations. In the fourth, we expand on the traditional definition of an explanation to include directives from a human to a large language model. We propose a Markup-like syntax to aid in the design of in-context learning prompt templates. Through theoretical analysis and experimentation, we explore the benefits and limits of the methods we propose. We discuss the implications of our findings, both in the context of each individual investigation, and in relation to the robustness and actionability of explanations.Ph.D

Conservation Tillage: Effect on Soil Properties and Crop Productivity

n/aThe presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the pdf file of the accepted manuscript may differ slightly from what is displayed on the item page. The information in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript reflects the original submission by the author

Lost Institutional Memory and Policy Advice: The Royal Society of Arts on the Circular Economy Through the Centuries

Circular economy theorists and advocates typically describe traditional market economies as linear “take, make, use and dispose” systems. Various policy interventions, from green taxes to extended producer responsibility, are therefore deemed essential to ensure the systematic (re)introduction of residuals, secondary materials and components in manufacturing activities. By contrast, many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers documented how the profit motive, long-distance trade and actors now largely absent from present-day circularity discussions (e.g., waste dealers and brokers) spontaneously created ever more value out of the recovery of residuals and waste. These opposite assessments and underlying perspectives are perhaps best illustrated in the nineteenth classical liberal and early twenty-first century interventionist writings on circularity of Fellows, members and collaborators of the near tricentennial British Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. This article summarizes their respective contributions and compares their stance on market institutions, design, intermediaries, extended producer responsibility and long-distance trade. Some hypotheses as to the sources of their analytical discrepancies and current beliefs on resource recovery are then discussed in more detail. A final suggestion is made that, if the analysis offered by early contributors is more correct, then perhaps the most important step towards greater circularity is regulatory reform (or deregulation) that would facilitate the spontaneous recovery of residuals and their processing in the most suitable, if sometimes more distant, locations

The Role of Frailty and Myosteatosis in Predicting All-Cause Mortality in Older Adults with Cancer

Frailty and myosteatosis are each prognostic of all-cause mortality (ACM) in patients with cancer. However, it is unclear whether myosteatosis adds value to frailty for predicting ACM. We assessed whether myosteatosis improves the predictive ability of frailty for ACM in older adults undergoing chemotherapy. This was a retrospective study of older adults (≥65 years) initiating chemotherapy between June 2015 and June 2022. Frailty was assessed using a 24-item frailty index (FI). Myosteatosis was evaluated via computed tomography scans at the third lumbar vertebra (L3).. Multivariable Cox regression and Uno’s c-statistic determined the predictive performance of the FI and myosteatosis. In total, 115 participants (mean age: 77.1 years) were included. Frailty alone (adjusted hazards ratio (aHR) = 1.68, 95% confidence intervals (CIs) = 1.03–2.72, p = 0.037) and myosteatosis alone (aHR = 2.14, 95%CI = 1.07–4.30, p = 0.032) exhibited similar performance (c-statistic = 0.66) in predicting ACM in multivariable analyses adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, and treatment intent. However, the highest predictive performance for ACM was observed after inclusion of both myosteatosis and frailty in the multivariable model (c-statistic = 0.70). Myosteatosis improves the performance of frailty for predicting ACM in older adults with cancer. Prospective studies to assess the effect of exercise on myosteatosis in older patients are warranted

Physical and numerical investigation of deformation mechanisms of jointed pipelines due to passive face instability of EPB shield tunnelling

The serviceability and safety of existing pipelines may be adversely affected by differential ground movements resulting from inappropriate control of face pressure of EPB shield tunnelling. However, previous studies mainly concentrated on deformation mechanisms of continuous pipelines resulting from tunnel face active instability. In this study, sixteen three-dimensional physical model tests were conducted to explore the effects of tunnel cover-to-diameter ratio (C/D) and relative tunnel-pipeline position (H/D) on deformation mechanisms of jointed pipeline due to tunnel face passive instability. Moreover, a systematic numerical parametric study was performed to develop calculation charts for estimating joint rotation angle subjected to ground heaves. For tunnel C/D ratios of 1.0 and 1.5, the existing jointed pipeline at 0.7 D and 1.2 D ahead of tunnel face experiences the highest heave and joint ration angle, respectively. By increasing C/D ratios from 1.0 to 1.5, the maximum pipeline deformation decreases by up to 84.5%. A dimensionless group, namely relative pipe segment-soil stiffness, is proposed to distinguish relatively rigid and flexible jointed pipelines, and normalised pipe segment length and relative pipe-soil stiffness are also proposed to establish calculation charts for predicting joint rotation angles of relatively rigid and flexible jointed pipelines, respectively.The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the pdf file of the accepted manuscript may differ slightly from what is displayed on the item page. The information in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript reflects the original submission by the author

Safety and Efficacy of a 48-Month Efinaconazole 10% Solution Treatment/Maintenance Regimen: 24-Month Daily Use Followed by 24-Month Intermittent Use

Background/Objectives: In an 18- to 24-month Treatment Phase with once-daily efinaconazole 10% solution, subjects with onychomycosis showed an increased rate of cure at Month 24 versus the phase III trials. In order to further improve efficacy, we initiated an extended intermittent efinaconazole Maintenance Phase with use 2–3 times weekly for an additional 24 months from Month 24 to Month 48. These are the first data presented for a 48-month efinaconazole use period. Methods: For patients completing 18–24 months of once-daily efinaconazole, the target great toenail from the Treatment Phase was graded as ‘Clinical Cure’ (≤10% affected area) or ‘No Clinical Cure’ (>10% affected area) at Month 24. Mycological and clinical outcomes were assessed every 4 months from Month 24 to Month 48. There were 35 patients who enrolled in the extension and continued intermittent efinaconazole use to Month 48. Patients with ‘Clinical Cure’ at M24 were reviewed for sustained cure at M48; patients with ‘No Clinical Cure’ were reviewed for development of ‘Cure’ at M48. All patients were reviewed at all visits for adverse events that may be related to efinaconazole use. Results: ‘Clinical Cure’ was found in 6 of 35 enrolled patients at Month 24, and clinical cure status was sustained to Month 48 with intermittent efinaconazole maintenance use. For 29 patients with ‘No Clinical Cure’, 3/29 achieved ‘Clinical Cure’ status at Month 48 with intermittent efinaconazole. Effective Cure and Complete Cure rates improved over the maintenance period to Month 48 in subjects without clinical cure at Month 24. Younger patients showed higher cure rates over the maintenance period, but age group cure differences did not reach statistical significance in this dataset, and 49% of the ≥70-year population had at least a 20% reduction in nail area with maintenance therapy to Month 48. There was only 1 case of possible efinaconazole application site reaction in the Intermittent Maintenance Period to Month 48; prolonged efinaconazole use to Month 48 does not appear to increase the risk of reaction. Efinaconazole use periods are associated with very low positive culture rates in this dataset, including typical contaminant organisms, suggesting efinaconazole presence in the nail plate is providing prophylactic therapy. Conclusions: Intermittent efinaconazole may provide suitable prophylaxis of onychomycosis relapse. Prolonged efinaconazole therapy to Month 48 appears to be safe for all ages and can continue to provide prophylaxis of onychomycosis with Intermittent Maintenance use beyond Month 24 to Month 48