Factors associated with suicidal ideation for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples using the 2017 Aboriginal Peoples Survey

Suicide is a global problem that results in a significant number of deaths and disabilities every year. In Canada, approximately 4,500 people die by suicide annually. Indigenous peoples are at an increased risk for suicide, and First Nations and Métis adults experience twice as many suicides as non-Indigenous peoples. The rate of suicide is even higher for Inuit adults, at four times that of non-Indigenous peoples. This project utilized the 2017 Aboriginal Peoples Survey (APS) with a sample of (N = 20,660) to examine unique protective and risk factors associated with suicidal ideation among Canada’s First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. The prevalence rate of Indigenous respondents who experienced suicidal ideation during the lifetime and last 12 months was found to be 18.9% and 5.6%, respectively. Three protective factors (language, cultural activities, sense of belonging) and nine risk factors (alcohol, drugs, mental health, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, health status, income, housing, and residential school attendance) were analyzed using various statistical tests, including Chi-squared analyses, logistic regression, and multiple logistic regression on the outcome variable of suicidal ideation during the lifetime and last 12 months. Findings revealed only partial support for the hypothesized protective factors and overwhelming support for risk factors.February 2025Paul First Nation

Transnational circuits of precarity: a qualitative examination of temporary worker wellbeing in Manitoba

ABSTRACT Background In western Canada, Manitoba is a critical hub for a large population of migrant workers. Usually with limited English or French language ability and possessing limited rights and protections under the current TFWP, Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) are often tied to a single employer, leaving them vulnerable to employer abuse and the under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses due to the threat of deportation. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, when my dissertation research began, the many cases seen among TFWs in Manitoba raises additional important public health questions on the health and wellbeing of migrant workers in Manitoba that I discuss in this dissertation. Methodology In close collaboration with Migrante Manitoba (MB), I conducted a qualitative study to explore the precarious lives of migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I virtually interviewed 20 migrant workers who entered Canada through the TFWP, employed either as seasonal agricultural workers (n=7) or TFWs (n=13). Thirteen TFWs came from Philippines and seven farmworkers from Mexico (n=6) and Jamaica (n=1). Theoretical contribution I developed the notion of transnational circuits of precarity to understand the multiple temporal-spatial layers of precarity that migrant workers encounter along their journeys to Manitoba. This multivalent concept is comprised of the following interconnected pieces: 1) a broader political economic “force-field” that compels the movement of human labour resources from the global South to the global North; 2) the rigid and regulated pathway put in place to ensure workers arrival at their work destinations; 3) the process of making “model minorities” through training programs that ensure the “smooth” transition of workers in their host country; and 4) the affective economy that is fueled by workers’ hopes, dreams, and desires. All together, these seemingly disparate processes articulate to produce complex temporal and spatial realities that shape the precarious trajectories of migrant workers. Such a paradigm shift away from the narrow temporal and spatial limits of a focus on “occupational health hazards” will be critical if workers are to realize any meaningful and substantive changes to their overall physical and mental well-being.May 202

Investigating ubiquitin dynamics and its impact on chromosome instability and colorectal cancer pathogenesis

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality in Canada. These statistics underscore the need to develop more effective therapies, which requires a deeper understanding of CRC pathogenesis. Chromosome instability (CIN) is characterized by an increased rate of chromosome gains and losses and occurs in approximately 85% of CRC cases. However, the aberrant genes driving CIN (i.e., CIN genes) are largely unknown. Emerging data suggest ubiquitin homeostasis is crucial for maintaining chromosome stability, and ubiquitylation and deubiquitylation genes undergo copy number losses in CRC. Thus, I hypothesized that diminished expression of ubiquitylation and deubiquitylation genes induce CIN and cellular transformation, promoting CRC development. This thesis utilized an established research pipeline coupling gene silencing with quantitative imaging microscopy (QuantIM) to investigate 581 ubiquitylation and 94 deubiquitylation genes for impacts on CIN across three karyotypically stable cell lines (HCT116, 1CT and hTERT) (Chapter 4). This screen assessed CIN-associated phenotypes, including changes in nuclear areas and increases in micronucleus formation. Subsequent direct tests in non-malignant colonic epithelial cell lines confirmed that silencing 10 prioritized genes, including USP4 and SKP2, induces significant changes in chromosome numbers and thus, CIN. As USP4 copy number losses occur in ~16% of CRC cases and correspond with worse patient outcomes relative to diploid counterparts, heterozygous and homozygous CRISPR/Cas9 USP4-knockout clones were generated in two non-malignant colonic epithelial cell lines (Chapter 5). Although these knockout clones did not form subcutaneous tumours in mice within the constraints of this study, they exhibited dynamic CIN and cellular transformation phenotypes, suggesting USP4 copy number loss may be an early etiological event in CRC pathogenesis. Parallel research in our laboratory showed that reduced SKP2 expression induces CIN through mechanisms not fully explained by the established substrates Cyclin E1 and P27. To expand these findings, TurboID was employed, which identified the actin-binding proteins Caldesmon and Transgelin as putative SKP2 substrates (Chapter 6). These data implicate novel roles for SKP2 in modulating actin dynamics that may impact chromosome stability. Collectively, these findings provide novel insights into how aberrant ubiquitin regulation impacts CIN and may contribute to CRC pathogenesis.February 2025Paul Albrechtsen Research Institute University of Manitoba Research Manitoba Graduate Enhancement of Tri-Council Stipends Canadian Institute of Health Research Caroline A. Cope Award for Excellence in Oncology Research Paul Albrechtsen Research Institute CancerCare Manitoba Major Student Research Award

For God, King, and the soul of Canada: Christianity, First World War remembrance culture, and early Canadian nationalism

The depth to which Christianity influenced Canadian culture and war mobilization has been insufficiently considered. The Churches have long been understood to have played a supporting role in Canada’s First World War, but where major studies have looked at Britain and Germany’s participation in terms of ‘holy war,’ Canada has generally been considered only for its place in the British Empire and not for its own religious motivations. Similarly, the start of Canadian nationalism is often deemed a result of the First World War. This study challenges these ideas by looking at the place the Churches and religion played in Canadian culture at the time, exploring in depth the huge influence religion had in Canadian society and through their support of the war and the significant impact they had on Canada’s participation and national sentiments. It explores how the Churches’ concern for the “soul of Canada,” a term used which appeared even before the war to describe Canada’s character and identity, drove the Churches’ active involvement in, and their understanding of, events. Because of their desire to keep Canada Christian and British, goals they thought could be achieve through the war, they whole-heartedly embraced the First World War. The Churches’ motivations and the results of their support, from the ways they justified participation in the war to the effects they had on the Canadian population, ensured that a Christian interpretation of the war and the deaths of soldiers became the dominant cultural interpretation of the war. The Churches’ long-standing desire to shape “Canada’s soul,” combined with Canadians' desire for meaning in the First World War, led to increased nationalistic sentiments. This impacted the development of a robust “remembrance culture” in Canada, one that favoured religious and national interpretation of the war and continues to influence Canadian symbols and ceremonies. Combining the results of Christian cultural influence, religious justification and memorialisation of the war, and the Churches’ concern for the “soul of Canada,” this study shows the strong Christian culture influence and the religious-based development of remembrance culture and early Canadian nationalism.February 202

Exploring representation-level augmentation and RAG-based vulnerability augmentation with LLMs for vulnerability detection

Using deep learning (DL) for detecting software vulnerabilities has become commonplace. However, data shortage remains a significant challenge due to the scarce nature of vulnerabilities. A few papers have attempted to address the data scarcity issue through oversampling, creating specific types of vulnerabilities, or generating code with single-statement vulnerabilities. In this thesis, we aim to find a general-purpose methodology that covers various types of vulnerabilities and multiple-statement ones while beating previous methods. Specifically, we first explore traditional mixup-inspired augmentation methods that work at the representation level and show that these methods can be useful, although they cannot beat random oversampling. One possible reason is that mixing samples heavily degrades the integrity of the code. Hence, we introduce VulScribeR, a RAG-based vulnerability augmentation pipeline that leverages LLMs and maintains code integrity, unlike mixup-based methods. We show that VulScribeR outperforms the state-of-the-art (SOTA), oversampling, and representation-level augmentation methods.May 2025- Dr. Lorenzo Livi's Support (Initial Supervisor fund) - FGS Research Completion Scholarship - Award Number: 47255 - International Graduate Student Entrance Scholarship - Mitacs Accelerate Internshi

Reconstructing tradition and social engagement in Buddhist studies: The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition

In Buddhist Studies, forms of Buddhism their practitioners call “traditional” are often excluded from research, stereotyped in negative ways, or deemed modern. This practice affects two sub-fields of Buddhist Studies: studies of contemporary Buddhism and of Buddhist social engagement. Overlooking traditional-identified forms of Buddhism when studying contemporary Buddhism or categorizing them as modern has led to not exploring their histories, features, and activities. Overlooking traditionalist Buddhists’ socially beneficial activities has led to portraying modernists’ engagement as all of Buddhists’ engagement and not identifying features of engagement particular to traditionalists. Both sub-fields thus produce incomplete pictures of today’s Buddhisms and Buddhists. To address these gaps, ethnographic and textual research was undertaken on the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a large transnational organization that describes its Buddhism as traditional. Research determined the bases on which people in FPMT label their Buddhism “traditional” and used these to develop a stipulative definition of “traditional Buddhism” that avoids stereotypes and enables scholars to distinguish traditional from other forms of Buddhism. Adding a category for “traditional Buddhism” to Buddhist Studies, paralleling “modern Buddhism” and “postmodern Buddhism,” will make understudied types of Buddhism more visible, increasing research on them and improving understanding. The dissertation then addresses scholars’ view that social engagement is undertaken only by modernist Buddhists by showing that FPMT is socially engaged and describing the impetus, nature, and features of its engagement. It then posits that a category of “traditionalist social engagement,” with particular characteristics, can usefully be added to the study of engaged Buddhism. The dissertation thus finds its place within scholarship on contemporary Buddhism and Buddhist social engagement, adding data and advancing theoretical discussions in these areas as well as contributing new research on FPMT, an influential and globally active, but little-studied, Buddhist organization.May 202

Dominant eigenvalue and universal winners of digraphs

Let A be a nonnegative irreducible matrix of order n and Ai(t) be the matrix obtained by increasing its ith diagonal entry by a positive number t. An index i ∈ [n] = {1, . . . , n} is called a universal winner for A, if, letting ρ(·) denote the spectral radius, ρ(Ai(t)) ≥ ρ(Aj (t)) for j ∈ [n] and for t ∈ (0, ∞). Let G be a strongly connected digraph with vertex set [n]. Let WG be the set of all nonnegative matrices whose underlying graph structure is G. We say a vertex u structurally dominates another vertex v in G, if ρ(Au(t)) ≥ ρ(Av(t)) for all t ∈ (0, ∞) and for all A ∈ WG. We characterize the class of digraphs G that do not have a vertex that structurally dominates all other vertices. We say two vertices u and v structurally tie if they structurally dominate each other in G. We supply an equivalent graph theoretic condition for the structural tying of two vertices in G. Let S ⊆ [n] be nonempty. We characterize the class of strongly connected digraphs G with vertex set [n] such that S is the set of universal winners for each A ∈ WG. We also characterize the strongly connected digraphs whose vertex set can be partitioned into subsets P1, P2, . . . , Pk such that vertices inside a part Pi structurally tie with each other and vertices of Pi structurally dominate vertices of Pj strictly (without tying) for i < j

CANreduce: Findings from a randomized controlled trial testing a novel online evidence-based intervention for individuals with heavy cannabis use

As cannabis use increases, so does the need for treatment. There is a current lack of evidence-based treatment programs for heavy cannabis use, and challenges around recruitment and retention for extant programs are common. The goals of this dissertation were to develop an online treatment program for adults with heavy cannabis use and examine the efficacy of a therapist-guided introduction. Study 1 (N = 152) was a 3-arm RCT examining the efficacy of CANreduce, a 6-week, self-guided program using principles of cognitive behaviour therapy and motivational interviewing. Participants were randomized into a motivational enhancement therapist guided (MET) introduction, a nontherapist (non-MET) research assistant guided introduction, or waitlist control. Assessment data were collected at baseline, end of treatment (6 weeks) and follow up (10 weeks). All participants reduced their cannabis consumption frequency, quantity, and cannabis-related problems at 6 and 10 weeks. Participants in the MET-therapist condition showed significantly greater reductions in cannabis quantity compared to the control. Participants in the non-MET research assistant condition showed significantly greater reductions in cannabis problems compared to control. There was no significant effect of condition on cannabis frequency, anxiety, depression or quality of life. Study 2 examined the challenges in recruiting and engaging individuals in the CANreduce program. Despite following the core elements of published treatment retention protocols, significant recruitment challenges were experienced. Of the 801 people that completed screeners, 31.3% (n = 251) were eligible for the program. Of those eligible, 54.3% (n = 51) assigned to the MET therapist condition and 45.7% (n = 43) assigned to the non-MET research assistant condition initiated treatment. Treatment initiation predictors included higher cannabis use problems score, lower family history density, increased alcohol use frequency, and more positive attitudes towards treatment. Treatment engagement (i.e., percentage of program completed) predictors included increased social motives for cannabis use and a more positive attitude towards treatment. Overall, this dissertation provided initial evidence for the Canadian CANreduce program, benefits of the MET therapist guided introduction, as well as provided insight into the difficulties recruiting and engaging individuals with heavy cannabis use in online treatment.May 2025Liquor, Gaming, and Cannabis Authority of Manitoba (x2) James Gordon Fletcher Graduate Research Award in Arts, University of Manitoba Sam and Esther Sair Scholarship, University of Manitoba Alfred Rea Tucker Memorial Scholarship, University of Manitoba University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowshi

Community and malleable identity in the furry fandom

This thesis examines the social and personal aspects of identity creation in the furry fandom – a fandom centred around anthropomorphic characters. Based on data collected from 25 online interviews of furry community members, I learned that furries challenge and create social norms outside of the mainstream to find belonging within the furry fandom. The various furry spaces populated by members (e.g., furry-specific websites or conventions) encourage the safe exploration and assertion of identities that may be maligned in other spaces. The data is analyzed in two broad categories: external elements addressed in the sections on norms and belonging; and internal dynamics examined in the sections on fursona (anthropomorphic avatar) embodiment and identity. This thesis concludes that furries construct malleable identities through the creation and use of fursonas, and based on one interviewee’s assertion, fully explores the concept of identity as a form of collaborative fiction.May 202

Differential effects of type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes on maternal and cord blood adipokines and newborn weight

Abstract Background Dysregulated adipokine levels are associated with type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes. Adiponectin and leptin are involved in nutrient transport, thereby affecting fetal growth and metabolism. We aimed to determine whether type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes were associated different levels of serum and cord blood adiponectin, leptin, insulin and offspring birthweight. Methods Serum, cord blood, gestational age and birthweight were collected for First Nations mothers and infants who were enrolled in the Next Generation Cohort Study. A total of 173 maternal and 188 neonatal samples were available for analysis. Of those, 136 were matched maternal infant dyads that we used for paired mother-infant analyses. Pairs were sorted into groups based on maternal diagnoses of pre-existing type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes or no diabetes (control). Adiponectin and leptin were measured by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. Results Mothers with gestational diabetes had lower serum adiponectin (6.48 ± 3.64 µg/mL) in the third trimester relative to mothers with type 2 diabetes (8.55 ± 5.24 µg/mL, p < 0.05) or no diabetes (7.73 ± 3.47 µg/mL). However, cord blood adiponectin was lower only in normal weight pregnancies complicated by type 2 diabetes. Cord blood glucose, insulin and leptin were increased in infants of type 2 diabetes mothers and increased leptin was positively correlated with maternal leptin and birth weight. Female infants exposed to pregestational type 2 diabetes had a significantly higher birthweight z-score than female control infants. Conclusions In this study, exposure to type 2 diabetes, but not gestational diabetes, impacted cord blood levels of glucose, insulin and leptin and birthweight. Collectively, these factors may contribute to the greater impact of pregestational type 2 diabetes exposure on offspring health relative to gestational diabetes