Missing Patients Research Guide and Video Modules

This Missing Patients Research Guide contains directions for finding out more about Indigenous patients who entered tuberculosis (TB) sanatoriums and hospitals in Manitoba and never returned home. Part One of the guide presents helpful start-up information. First it explains how to gather useful details including names, dates, and locations that will help in the search as well as how to move forward with your research. Then it outlines three useful “Research Tips”: all of the various names of TB treatment hospitals in Manitoba commonly attended by Indigenous patients; instructions for undertaking database searches using keywords; and techniques for linking information between Indian Residential Schools and hospitals. Last, a “Research Case Study” demonstrates some of the techniques and challenges you may encounter when researching Vital Statistics and Indian Residential School records by looking at the lives of three TB patients, Elie Caribou, Joseph Michel, and Albert Linklater. Part Two of the guide explains how to research the location of patient burials associated with nine hospitals where Indigenous patients were treated in Manitoba, including treatment for TB: Dynevor Indian Hospital, Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital, Brandon Indian Sanatorium, Ninette Sanatorium, St. Boniface / St. Vital Sanatorium, Fort Churchill Military Hospital, Norway House Indian Hospital, Fisher River Indian Hospital and Pine Falls Indian Hospital at Fort Alexander. Some of the general research information found in Part One is repeated under the individual hospitals and sanatoriums along with the specific information that may assist in searching for missing patients at each location. At the end of the guide, in Appendix A, you will find a checklist to help you in your research. Appendix B provides contact information for the organizations mentioned in this guide so that you can reach out by phone, email, or mail. Appendix C discusses accessing the records held by The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation."This guide draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Province of Manitoba, the Manitoba Lung Association, and the University of Winnipeg.

Growing a Writing Practice: Non-Extractive Writing

Essays for sale, AI, plagiarism, grade seeking: clearly it’s time to revamp research and writing. Students have not learned to write well, they’ve learned to game the system, get the grade, and move on. The dominant colonized system of higher education is seeking to reinvent itself to be more accessible, equitable, and inclusive. Growing a Writing Practice begins with exercises such as writing prompts to create a practice of writing on demand. Then guides the student through a series of exercises that build a toolbox that can be utilized for any research and writing demands. What are those tools? Growing a Writing Practice begins with asking good questions and learning how to draft questions in several ways providing several lenses through which to view the question and possible answers. A culture of extractivist research and writing has emerged. Decolonizing the extractivist approach requires shifting the focus away from bias confirming, data extracting, merely citing toward a process of honouring authors as teachers, published research as teachings, a habit of ethical considerations, and research and writing not as grade seeking but as balanced and purposeful exploration of curiosity and learning. The toolbox includes clarifying search terms, creating a body of work, exploring ethical teachers, assembling envelopes, organizing themes and data, constructing useful outlines, seeking feedback, and producing writing not just for a grade, but to produce mastery. Strongly influenced by Indigenous methodologies, epistemologies, and pedagogy, Growing a Writing Practice provides an opportunity to decolonize writing

Métis Knowledges and Climate Change: Towards Adaptation in Southeastern Manitoba Michif Communities

Climate change poses a global existential threat, with Indigenous knowledges gaining momentous recognition for their critical role in addressing this challenge. Manitoba, experiencing rapid warming, faces ecological, social, and economic challenges, particularly negatively impacting Indigenous communities. This research, guided by my epistemological position as a Red River Métis woman, explores the contribution of Métis knowledges for climate change adaptation in the Homeland of the Red River Métis. The main objective of this thesis is to characterize Métis knowledges in Michif communities in Southeastern Manitoba to understand the linkages between colonization, land use, and climate change risks to develop adaptation approaches based on Métis knowledges. Crucially, this thesis will also aid in advocating for the inclusion of Métis ways of knowing in climate change adaptation policies. Grounded in relationships, experiential knowledge, and kinship, this research follows Indigenous Research Methodologies, fostering respect, relevance, responsibility, and reciprocity. This research is also based on Farrell Racette's Métis Kitchen Table Theory (Farrell Racette, 2004) a community-centred, anti-patriarchal, and anti-colonial approach that aligns with a more holistic approach to information exchange based on Métis culture and traditions. This research has the potential to foster effective climate adaptation planning and policy recommendations for Indigenous communities, with a specific focus on Métis knowledges and Métis communities. It addresses the challenges and opportunities faced by these communities to respond to climate change while fore fronting reconciliation and returning sovereignty to these communities. By bringing Métis knowledges into the climate change adaptation policy discourse, this research aims to increase Métis-led cultural and environmental security and sustainability in so-called Canada, initiating a crucial dialogue around including Métis knowledges at policy tables.University of Winnipeg; Research Manitoba; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Manitoba Métis FederationMaster of Arts in Environmental and Social Chang

Trust, Risk, and Dissonance: Prairie Agriculture and Canada’s Environmental Farm Plan

In the wake of combined economic and ecological pressure, Prairie farmers and the Canadian ministries responsible for agriculture are pressed to instigate sustainable agricultural development. However, Canada’s central agri-environmental program, the Environmental Farm Planning program (EFP), faces low uptake in the Prairie region. In this thesis, I explore the nature of the dissonance between the EFP and Prairie farmers to understand why participation is so low, the issues embedded in the EFP, and how to develop better agri-environmental policy for the Prairie region. I employ multiple methods, including survey, discourse, and institutional analyses, to make sense of the dissonance. Survey analysis is used to explore the social psychology of risk and characterize participant’s knowledge, risk perceptions, and trust regarding environmental action. Next, I employ discourse analysis to examine taken-for-granted notions embedded in how interviewees articulate their relationship to themselves, society, the environment, and the state. Finally, I utilize an institutional analysis to look at the mechanisms and values built into the EFP and the Prairie context and theorize how these institutional factors affect the EFP dissonance. Using the process of triangulation, I mix my methods to conclude that risk perceptions, economic constraints, and governmental trust are at the core of the EFP dissonance.Social Science and Humanities Research Council; Prairie Climate CentreMaster of Arts in Environmental and Social Chang

Inclusion or imposition? The life-story interview as knowledge production

This article considers the implications of conducting life story interviews. It argues that the life story interview is a method of knowledge production that is based on a number of underlying assumptions about what constitutes a life story, how it is best captured, and who can and should tell a life story. The life story interview produces knowledges through several phases, including the interview, its archiving and its online dissemination. While the underlying assumptions of life story interviewing are generally understood to make this particular oral history practice more inclusive, this article asks what kinds of impositions this practice places on interviewees (as well as interviewers and audiences)

Review of The Undead Archive: 100 Years of Photographing Ghosts, curated by Serena Keshavjee

The Undead Archive: 100 Years of Photographing Ghosts. Gallery 1C03, Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 7 – November 10, 2023; University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 21, 2023 – April 21, 2024; School of Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 21 – November 10, 2023. Curated by Dr. Serena Keshavjee.https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/1396

Determination of the Effect of Minor Chemical Modification of β-Galactosidase on Electrophoretic Mobility and Development of a Stereospecific Method for the Analysis of Tartaric and Malic Acids

Studies in single molecules are a relatively new field of research in biochemistry. Research in this area looks at how enzyme activity can vary compared to a typical ensemble environment. This field of study covers a wide variety of environments where single molecules can be located, such as in a gaseous mixture in spectroscopy experiments or inside the body. Single molecule enzymology has grown greatly because there has been an interest in technology to measure the activity of single molecules. Ensemble methods of analysis only provide information about the average state of a large number of molecules, whereas in methods such as capillary electrophoresis, the researcher can see the active state of each individual protein molecule. However, dynamic conformation changes in ensembles can mask individual changes in structure or any small changes that do not conform to the average. Suppose one is only looking at the state of a single enzyme. In that case, there is a lot of information that can be gained from that single enzyme such as conformation and activity; as well as intermediates can easily be detected. An important aspect of these studies to note is that in large scale enzyme studies, there are also interactions between the molecule of interest and the solvent. The other molecules in solution are not typically of interest but they can easily influence the characteristics of the molecule of interest due to chemical bonding. This bonding is important for catalysis studies but is not vital to any studies of single enzyme molecules, as the substrate bonding data is not being collected. Related to this, during the reaction in a large-scale enzyme setting, there are instances where multiple turnovers may occur, and also, not all the enzyme molecules will be in the same active state during these reactions. This is not a concern in single molecule reactions as the reaction sequence of each enzyme molecule can easily be observed. This is particularly important in reactions that involve protein folding and DNA synthesis. Studies have utilized the enzymes β-galactosidase and alkaline phosphatase, and have shown that many different types of information can be gathered from the study of an individual molecule. For example, a study has looked at how temperature affects the active conformations of these enzymes. This study showed that an enzyme has many different active conformations that can be observed, and that heating the enzyme can induce a conformational change. However, as is already known, an enzyme can only be heated to a certain point, as there is a process of denaturation.NSERC; University of WinnipegMaster of Science in Bioscience, Technology, and Public Polic

The Detection of Fusarium Head Blight in Multiple Species of Wheat Using a Multispectral UAV in Southern Manitoba

Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) is a fungal disease that affects cereals such as wheat, severely damaging the plant, reducing its yield and value, and potentially rendering it unsafe for human or animal consumption. Detection of FHB in wheat fields is essential due to the threat it presents to Canada’s agricultural production. UAV’s and remote sensing techniques have been adopted within precision agricultural approaches for canopy scale detection of the disease. These approaches have focused on the detection of the disease in a singular species of wheat in an experimental field. The goal set out by this thesis is the detection of FHB across a diversity of wheat species using a multispectral UAV in an experimental field, and the transfer of the detection model to a monoculture commercial wheat field. We collected multispectral UAV imagery, and ground-based measures of the state of FHB in randomly sampled plots in both the experimental and commercial fields. A selection of 15 Vegetation Indices (VIs) were then extracted from the multispectral imagery, chosen for their past FHB detection performance. Three supervised machine learning classification models were selected, support vector machines, random forest, and extreme gradient boosting based on their prior applications in disease detection in wheat. We determined a set of Key VIs sensitive to FHB across wheat species using Spearman’s Ranked correlation, feature importance in RF and XGB models, and replacement sampling. These key VIs along side the ground-based measures were used for the training and testing of the FHB detection models, and applied to the experimental and commercial field. In our results Green Leaf Index (GLI), Anthocyanin Reflectance Index (ARI), Plant Senescence Reflectance Index – red-edge (PSRI-RE), and Enhanced vegetation index (EVI) emerged as the Key VIs for their effectiveness across wheat species. Amongst the three models, XGB offered the greatest overall accuracy at 87% for disease detection, but all models were successful in distinguishing healthy and FHB diseased wheat in the experimental field. When applied to the commercial field, the models successfully distinguished healthy from non-healthy stressed wheat, but had difficulty with the interrow spacing from the experimental site. In this thesis we successfully detected FHB across a diverse collection of wheat species, and identify challenges when transferring from an experimental to commercial field.Master of Science in Environmental and Social Chang

Solving Scalar Fields in AdS Space-Time using Parallel Computing and GPUs

Computers have been around a long time and used for many resources like gaming, emailing and science. Concerning the sciences, computers are excellent at repetitive tasks and crunching numbers without (much) error. In data science there are two methods of programming - serial and parallel. Both have the same goal and endpoint however depending on the problem, one might be more efficient in solving the problem. My thesis is on using parallel computing with GPUs to numerically solve a system of non-linear first order differential equations that describe scalar fields in AdS space-time. Since this has been done by another using CPUs, it will be important to compare that the simple case matches that of the previous paper. However once we have confirmed that our results match the previously found results, we can use graphic processing units to solve the problem to higher order and more accuracy.Master of Science in Applied Computer Scienc

On Temporal Bipartite Graphs and Their Application in Disease Spread Prediction

The original temporal bipartite graph is flawed in the context of disease spreading models as it does not account for concepts such as virus incu-bation and recovery periods. In this thesis, a new graph structure, referred to as the improved temporal bipartite graph is introduced with these two concepts incorporated to enhance accuracy in predicting disease spreading. To facilitate arbitrary reachability queries, another concept, the transmission graph, is introduced. It is derived from a temporal bipartite graph based on a series of reachability query evaluation. We distinguish between two types: single-path transmission graph and multi-path trans-mission graph. Based on them, four algorithms are proposed for evaluating reachability queries on a temporal bipartite graph, with a label-based technique used to achieve high efficiency. Both single-path transmission graphs and multi-path transmission graphs are in fact a kind of extension of the reachability query evaluation. By establishing indexes over them, the reachability query evaluation for disease spreading prediction can be very efficiently conducted.Master of Science in Applied Computer Science and Societ