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Selective laser melting (SLM) popularity is increasing day by day because of its ability to produce a satisfactory part quality. For getting the desired qualities of the product, the process parameters play a vital role in manufacturing. Therefore, the process parameters need to tune appropriately to get good products. Besides, researchers use quality predictive analysis with different combinations of the process parameters to improve the product quality in manufacturing. To predict product quality, the existing methods mostly focus on multiple inputs and one or two outputs-based prediction modeling, which is insufficient. Because more qualities of the products often test for qualifying a good product. That is why this thesis presents a multi-inputs and multi-outputs (MIMO) artificial neural network (ANN) model to predict the SLM product qualities. Among all process parameters used for SLM, four process parameters, that are laser power, scan speed, overlap rate, and hatch distance, have been chosen as the model inputs. And four of the important product’s quality measures, that are relative density, hardness, tensile strength, and porosity, are used as the model's outputs. In order to obtain an accurate neural network model, there are parameters such as the number of hidden layers and neurons in each hidden layer to optimize. This thesis uses the genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize the hidden layer and the number of neurons in each hidden layer from a given bound. After model optimization, sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the importance of the input parameters. Regarding the increased demand in SLM, it is also important to reduce its energy consumption. Therefore, an energy optimization method is developed using the neural network and genetic algorithm in this thesis. The objective of the optimization is to minimize the energy consumption of SLM manufacturing with a reduced compromisation of the quality requirements. The results presented in this thesis show a reduction in energy consumption of the selected SLM printer by 26% as compared to one existing study. The results of this study can be used in the industry to decrease their energy consumption further while maintaining the required quality.

Ice is a prominent characteristic of water bodies in cold regions. For rivers regulated for hydropower operations, the production of ice particles can result in obstructions and subsequent performance issues during energy production. Rough and thickened ice covers resulting from high flow conditions can also lead to substantial hydraulic losses. While ice formations impact hydropower operations, a river’s flow hydrograph also influences ice processes from freeze-up through break-up. Research investigations into the influence of regulation on ice processes benefits not only hydropower practioners, but also those who are impacted by hydropower operations. Further, understanding these cause-and-affect relationships supports design of innovative tools to quantify the impact of ice on river hydraulics. In this study, a detailed characterization of ice processes is presented for the regulated Upper Nelson River region located at the outlet of Lake Winnipeg in Northern Manitoba, Canada. With a focus on freeze-up and mid-winter processes, this characterization informed design of a 2D numerical modelling methodology to simulate ice-affected winter hydraulics. Model development included simulation of both thermal and dynamic ice phenomenon, which relied on derivation of numerous site-specific hydraulic functions. The presence of significant skim ice runs in this region inspired development of a novel treatment to simulate freeze-up jamming of skim ice floes on very mild-sloped rivers. The modelling methodology shows strong performance in simulating both freeze-up and mid-winter hydraulics, which is a signficiant contribution considering the complexity of this lake-outlet system. A quantitative evaluation of the effects of climate change on river ice hydraulics is included, with future projection of shorter and warmer winters leading to greater cumulative discharge from Lake Winnipeg. While discharge increases may lead to increased power production in future years, concurrent projections of increased inter-annual variability may present new operational challenges. Findings from this original research can be applied not only to the Nelson River, but also other regulated regions that are impacted by river ice.

Decapod crustaceans regularly face intrinsic and extrinsic stressors that challenge pH homeostasis, which is compensated through the process of acid-base regulation. Prior research on acid-base regulation in crustaceans has focused on stressors commonly experienced during day-to-day life like exercise or that experienced in estuarine environments such as changes in O2, CO2, and salinity. More recent work has centralized on ocean acidification. However, the effects of global change on freshwater crustaceans (chapter 2) and the effects of elevated CO2 in aquaculture (chapter 3) have been largely ignored. In addition, the effects of feeding on acid-base regulation (chapter 4) have gone unstudied and may have direct implications on responses to global change and aquaculture. This thesis addressed this gap in the literature using the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis, Whiteleg shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei, and Green crab Carcinus maenas as models. In chapter 2, I identified that freshwater acidification leads to a greater reliance on protein catabolism and an energetic trade-off allowing for compensation of pH homeostasis but impairment of other physiological processes like calcification and locomotory behaviour. In chapter 3, I determined that chronic growth of Whiteleg shrimp in CO2 levels found in aquaculture facilities did not affect growth or survival when reared in brackish water as opposed to what is seen when reared in full-strength seawater. While growth and survival are unimpaired, extracellular acid-base status varies between shrimp grown at low and high CO2, suggesting a potential for chronic impairment of pH homeostasis. In chapter 4, I found that feeding leads to respiratory acidosis, likely driven by increased acid production from postprandial aerobic metabolism. This acid-base disturbance was not compensated through the accumulation of HCO3- as is seen with respiratory acidosis caused by increased environmental CO2. Instead, acidosis was mainly recovered through large increases in ammonia and to a lesser degree titratable acid excretion. Overall, the data in this thesis provides valuable insights into understanding how global change and aquaculture influences the physiology of decapod crustaceans and provides fundamental information on feeding physiology to stimulate future research into the combined effects of feeding during aquaculture acid-base stressors.

"According to Statistics Canada, fewer than 1,000 people speak fluent Michif - and most of them are over the age of 70,"says Dr. Melanie Griffith Brice, the Gabriel Dumont Research Chair in Métis/Michif Education for the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. Brice says this puts pressure on those fluent in the language, and means there is a lot of urgency to passing Michif on to younger generations. "Two fluent Michif speakers have died since the first Michif immersion language-learning camp that Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP) put on last summer. So it's a priority to work with other language activists to design projects to help to pass Michif on before it's too late and the language and all its fluent speakers are gone,"says Brice. Staff no

Accurate information about forestry roads is a key aspect of forest management in terms of economy (e.g. accessibility, cost, optimal path) and ecology (e.g. wildfire and wildlife protection). In Canada, and in fact, globally, most provincial, state or territory governments maintain vectorial information on the forestry roads under their jurisdiction. However, official maps are not always accurate, may lack road attributes of interest and are not always up-to-date. Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) has become an established technology to accurately characterize and map broad territories by providing high density 3D point-clouds with, at least, 3 or 4 measurements per square meter. This paper addresses the problem of the automatic updating, fixing, and enhancement of vectorial forestry road maps over large landscapes (¿10000 km2). For this purpose, we developed a production ready, documented and open-source software. From metrics derived from the point-cloud the method produces a raster of road probability. It then uses an existing, inaccurate, map of the road network to define approximate start and end points for each road. Then, a pathfinder retrieves the accurate road shape by computing the least cost path between the two points on the probability raster. Using the accurate road position given by the algorithm, road width and road state are then estimated based the on characteristics of the point-cloud. We demonstrate that our algorithm retrieves the centrelines of roads in a natively vectorial form with an error below 3 m in 95% of the roads using a fully automatic method. The accuracy of the road location allows us to derive other accurate measurements, including the state of the roads.

L'objectif de ce mémoire est de développer une approche pour évaluer, à l'échelle régionale, l'impact des changements climatiques sur l'évolution des habitats des poissons en régions nordiques. En première partie, les performances du modèle unidimensionnel de lac MyLake ont été évaluées dans le contexte d'une étude internationale de comparaison de modèles (ISIMIP). Cela a permis de vérifier que le modèle est applicable à une large gamme de lacs. 62 lacs ont été calibrés en utilisant un algorithme d'évolution différentielle. Le nombre de mesures de température, la superficie de lacs et leur localisation géographique jouent un rôle sur les performances du modèle. Les indicateurs de performance suggèrent que le modèle performe bien, même pour les lacs en dehors des régions nordiques pour lesquels le modèle a été conçu. Ensuite, MyLake a été utilisé pour simuler la dynamique couplée de la température, de l'oxygène et la lumière dans 210 lacs suédois. Le modèle a d'abord été calibré pour 12 lacs pour lesquels une grande quantité de données de terrain était disponible. Par la suite, les paramètres du modèle ont été extrapolés avec des régressions linéaires en utilisant les caractéristiques morphométriques des lacs comme prédicteur. Cela a permis de modéliser le reste des lacs sans avoir à calibrer le modèle, c'est-à-dire en l'absence d'observations in situ. Les simulations ont été forcées par la météo locale issue des scénarios climatiques, projetés par six modèles de circulation générale. Elles montrent que les petits lacs deviendront plus chauds dans le futur, avec une durée plus courte du couvert de glace. L'oxygène dissous devrait augmenter à la fin de l'hiver, et diminuer en fin d'été, entrainant une perte d'habitat pour les poissons prédateurs d'eaux froides. Ces résultats montrent la faisabilité de la modélisation à une échelle régionale lorsque peu de données de terrain sont disponibles. This Master's thesis aims to develop an approach to assess at the regional scale, the impact of climate change on the evolution of fish habitats in northern regions. In the first part, we evaluated the performance of the one-dimensional lake model MyLake in the context of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP). This analysis verifies that the model applies to a wide range of lakes. We conducted a calibration of 62 lakes using the differential evolution algorithm. The number of temperature observations, the surface area of lakes, and their geographical location exert control over the performance of the model. Nevertheless, the performance indicators show the model performs well even for lakes outside the northern regions. Then, the MyLake model was used to simulate the coupled dynamics of temperature, oxygen, and light in 210 Swedish lakes. We first calibrated MyLake for 12 lakes, for which a large number of field data was available. Next, the model parameters were extrapolated with linear regressions using the morphometric characteristics of the lakes as a predictor. Those relationships between parameters and characteristics made it possible to simulate the rest of the lakes without having to calibrate the model in the absence of in situ data. Climate projections drove the model from six global climate models (GCM) produced by the CORDEX project, along with the two climate scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5). The simulations show that the small lakes will become warmer in the future, with a shorter duration of the ice cover. The simulations also predict that the dissolved oxygen to increase at the end of winter and decrease at the end of summer, leading to a loss of habitat for cold water predatory fish. These results show the feasibility of modelling at a regional scale when little field data is available.

Detect-and-avoid (DAA) systems equipped with non-cooperative sensors for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) operation is of interest to many researchers and industries today. Planning trajectories for UAS DAA in real-time requires fast and efficient trajectory generation algorithms. This thesis presents an airborne radar based non-cooperative DAA system that aims to detect moving obstacles such as aircraft and birds within the collision avoidance threshold and generate the desired trajectory as a resolution advisory for a pilot and UAS control commands. For collision detection, coordinate system transformation with quaternions is applied to process and display the obstacles detected by the airborne radar in the world frame as well as to construct a simulated airborne radar for the software-in-the-loop (SWIL) DAA system simulation. First, a reactive collision cone approach is presented for collision avoidance. In particular, software-in-the-loop simulation with test vectors from the minimum operational performance standards (MOPS) for DAA systems are used for the validation and verification of the system. Then, a non-linear model predictive control (NMPC) that utilizes the differential flatness of the UAV is presented to generate dynamically feasible collision-free trajectories in real-time. In order to overcome the limited performance of this NMPC approach due to the non-convexity of the solution space and high computational complexity, a hierarchical architecture is designed and presented. The efficiency of this approach is achieved by making use of: (i) the idea of global and local planners for the decomposition of trajectory planning and tracking, (ii) the fast analytic collision cone technique for path planning, and (iii) efficient generation of trajectories with minimum snaps as initial guesses for a low-level motion planner. This new DAA system is distributed over a local area network (LAN), which incorporates various design patterns and principles, including multi-threaded object orientation, command query segregation, finite state machine, reader-writer locks, and heartbeat event to address: (i) future demand for on-board and on-cloud computing, (ii) expandability to other unmanned aircraft traffic management (UTM) services, and (iii) system operation and monitoring.

Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global health burden that affects upwards of 13.4% of the population and costs health systems billions annually. Guidelines to identify and manage CKD have been published for over twenty years. Thus finding effective interventions to stem this global health burden is an essential focus of current research. Objective: This literature review attempts to answer the question: Do interventions directed to primary care providers such as education, awareness of clinical practice guidelines, and electronic clinical decision support tools improve the confidence that PCPs have in managing and caring for CKD patients? Methods: A literature search of PubMed, CINAHL, and SCOPUS databases using the key terms ‘CKD’, ‘chronic kidney disease’, ‘PCP’, ‘primary care provider’, and ‘education’ was performed. Results were limited to articles within the past decade and included only randomized controlled trials to maintain the power of results. Results: Five articles met the criteria for inclusion in this literature review, with a further two articles included after reviewing reference lists. The seven articles included in this review employed a variety of primary care provider educational interventions and several system-level computerized interventions using electronic patient record systems. Conclusion: Despite various interventions to assist with adopting previously published guidelines in both educational and system-level spheres, minimal impact on the confidence level of primary care physicians and impact on those living with CKD was observed. Implementation of integrated and interdisciplinary interventions may be necessary for evaluation in future studies.

L'identité de chaque individu se forge en grande partie sur des éléments de culture, qu'il s'agisse des sphères spirituelle, idéologique ou des valeurs. Pour les femmes autochtones, l'identité n'est pas toujours en cohérence avec leur expérience universitaire, ce qui entraîne une détresse sociale, académique et psychologique. La présente étude porte sur l'identité, ou les identités, des femmes autochtones poursuivant des études universitaires selon leur perspective. L'objectif principal est de répondre à la question suivante : comment est vécue l'identité des femmes autochtones au sein des milieux universitaires? Pour ce faire, les théories de l'identité de Phinney & Devich-Navarro (1997), de Benet-Martínez, Leu, Lee, & Morris (2002), de Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martínez (2000) et d'Amiot, De La Sablonnière, Terry, & Smith (2007) sont prises en compte dans le cadre théorique. Une attention particulière a également été portée à l'expérience subjective détaillée des participantes en-dehors des catégories proposées par ces théories. Les 8 participantes constituant l'échantillon ont plus de 18 ans et s'identifient comme autochtones en plus d'être inscrites à un programme universitaire. L'expression identitaire, la configuration identitaire et les processus de négociation identitaire des participantes dans un contexte universitaire sont explorés grâce à des entrevues individuelles semi-dirigées basées sur une grille d'entrevue. Ces données sont ensuite soumises à une analyse thématique grâce au logiciel QDA Miner. Les résultats de cette étude permettent de repérer une variété de configurations et de processus de négociation identitaires chez les participantes en plus de représenter leur vécu et leur expression identitaires dans leurs milieux universitaires. Les récits des participantes soulignent le besoin de créer des environnements universitaires plus inclusifs des réalités des étudiantes autochtones et devraient contribuer à une meilleure compréhension des expériences variées de ces femmes pour tou·te·s les intervenant·e·s. Cette étude démontre l'intérêt d'étudier davantage l'expérience identitaire des personnes autochtones dans les universités québécoises et comment celle-ci s'inscrit dans leur histoire de vie.