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Coastal cities are grappling with how to shift their approach in designing the built environment to respond to global warming and sea level rise. With the potential increase of sea level rise by 1 metre by the year 2100, and climate change projecting more intense and frequent storms to British Columbia’s coasts, Vancouver will need to consider more resilient approaches to address flood risk along its shores. One area that will be exposed to flood risks includes the False Creek Flats, a historic tidal flat converted to rail and industrial hub in the core of the city, and on the cusp of transforming into the city’s next employment hub. At present, it is indiscernible that the False Creek Flats at one time was a historic tidal flat with a rich ecology supporting a variety of plants and wildlife, providing food and sustenance to the Indigenous people whose traditional territory included this land. The emergence of the rail and industry erased this history, the connection to the water, and the dynamic coastal processes that shaped the landscape. With the False Creek Flats undergoing a significant transformation over the next number of years, there is a window of opportunity to reconnect False Creek Flats to the coastal landscape, while also making room for flood waters and shifting perspectives on how we live with and build with water. This practicum seeks to develop a resilient design approach for False Creek Flats through three lenses: robustness, ensuring people are safe; adaptive, making room for the water; and transformative, shifting perspectives through design interventions. Leveraging the opportunity to make False Creek Flats resilient to climate change and flooding will benefit Vancouver by creating opportunities to shift public perspectives on how the city should adapt to sea level rise and climate change, while also bolstering public policy that will make the city and its residents more adaptive and resilient to change.

HIV/AIDS, discovered in the early 1980s, has now become a world-wide epidemic. The most affected area is Africa, in particular sub-Saharan Africa. This exploratory research project examined the challenges facing grandmothers and focused on Zambia because with 1,291,079 orphans, Zambia has the highest proportions of orphans in the world. Evidence demonstrates that grandmothers care for approximately 43% of the 845,546 AIDS orphans. Young men and women aged between 15 and 49, despite good health and higher education, have continued to die from AIDS, leaving behind children who are cared for by their grandparents and in particular their grandmothers. The experiences of these grandmothers are not known due to a paucity of studies on the subject. This study is a scoping review of literature on HIV/AIDS in Zambia and its impact on the family. A number of journals, books, and reports were investigated. The major themes arising from the literature were identified and discussed; they include HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and HIV/AIDS in Zambia, impact of HIV/AIDS on households and Zambia’s response to the epidemic. This research uses three perspectives: conflict theory, social capital and role conflict to guide the exploration of the social impact of HIV/AIDS on families and society. The study provided an opportunity to identify and examine the challenges facing grandmothers who care for their AIDS orphans and consequently to offer potential solutions. It also contributed to a broader understanding of the social significance of HIV/AIDS.

Persistent object stores (POS) provide a good foundation for distributed applications. By executing nested object transactions, the application programmer can make updates to shared objects from different processing nodes across the network without having to manage the communications or con-currency control aspects of data access in the distributed environment. In such systems, the shared objects are "cached" in the nodes' local memories and these copies must be kept consistent in order to ensure correct execution of the transactions. Therefore, the memory consistency protocol has a great impact on the efficiency and usability of the POS. The LOTEC protocol was designed to maintain data consistency while reducing the associated consistency maintenance communication overhead for shared objects in a distributed shared virtual memory (DSVM) environment. While LOTEC achieves its goal, the use of fixed-size memory pages limits the performance improvement. Also, the locking protocol reduces the potential for concurrent execution of the nested object transactions. In this thesis, a new memory consistency protocol is presented in the context of a distributed shared data (DSD)-based POS. This protocol improves performance and reduces overhead by managing concurrent data access using versions of smaller groups of an object's attributes. When compared with LOTEC, the new protocol reduces a number of delay-causing situations that may arise during transaction execution. In addition, a new algorithm for creating smaller groups of attributes from an object called object chunking is presented and analyzed. Simulation results indicate that object chunking can significantly reduce the amount of data that must be moved in order to maintain memory consistency.

This thesis focuses on the role of industrialization in the development process for a region within a nation state. Specifically, it uses the Province of Manitoba as an example. An attempt is made to formulate a logical and consistent approach to identify the industries which a regional authority might promote to achieve regional economic development. The criteria for the selection of industries to be included in a development plan are: a)linkage effects; b)labour intensity; c)growth potential; and d)whether the industry is "footloose" or not. The intention is to provide the regional authority with a basis upon which to make decisions. These decisions relate to the type of industry which will best assist in achieving regional development, thus contributing to the alleviation of regional economic disparity in Canada. The discussion addresses itself to the nature and the reason for the existence of the problem of regional disparity; the relevant considerations of a development strategy at the regional level; the formulation of a procedure incorporating past efforts in the field; and an example using the Province of Manitoba. The role of government and industrialization are examined in formulating the method for industry selection. The resultant procedure is policy oriented. The direct empirical results were developed using an input-output framework. While noting the limitations of the approach, the decision maker is afforded the opportunity to study both the effects of industrialization and the role of value judgments on the attainment of the objective. The demonstration of the model exhibited the glaring data constraint to effective regional analysis in Canada today. However, an application of priorities, designed to minimize the incentive paid to industry per unit of gain received, was demonstrated. The thesis does accomplish its objective of identifying the nature of regional problems and forwards one possible solution.

The Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) continues to grow throughout life, though the process by which muscle stem cells, called satellite cells (SCs) contribute to formation of fibers in the myotome is largely unknown in this endangered fish. Since muscle function and growth are critical to survival, it is important to understand the functional basis of fiber growth, and how SCs provide daughter cells that fuse into fibers in myotome development and regeneration. The hypotheses are that during aging: the cell cycle of SCs lengthens, the ratio of SCs to myonuclei decreases, and myonuclear domain increases. This experiment used the single fiber model and a pulse-chase design in which exposure to bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) labeled S-phase for the first 2 hr in culture. Myofibers were isolated from 20-40 fish per age (1-6 months post-hatch). After fiber culture for 24 hours, fibers were fixed and stained for BrdU or Pax7 (expressed by myogenic stem cells) with colour detection. The number of Pax7- or BrdU-positive nuclei and the total number nuclei associated were counted per fiber in 8-20 fibers per dish. Results showed a significant change in the ratio of Pax7+ SCs to myonuclei as the fish age (p < 0.05) with an apparent decrease in cell cycle duration with increasing age (p < 0.05). This investigation adds to our understanding of SC contributions to myofiber growth in the developing Lake Sturgeon and results will be a new foundation for future research on the role of environmental influences on muscle in Lake Sturgeon.

Background: There is impaired neurotrophic growth factor signaling, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activity and mitochondrial function in dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of animal models of type 1 and type 2 diabetes exhibiting diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy (DSPN). We hypothesized that loss of direct insulin or insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) signaling in diabetes drives depression of AMPK activity and mitochondrial function, both contributing to development of DSPN. Methods: Age-matched control Sprague-Dawley rats and streptozotocin (STZ)-induced type 1 diabetic rats with/without IGF-1 therapy or insulin implants were used for in vivo studies. For in vitro studies, adult DRG neurons derived from control or STZ-diabetic rats were cultured under defined conditions and treated with/without IGF-1 or insulin. Activators or inhibitors targeting components of the insulin/IGF-1 signaling pathways were used to unravel the mechanism of insulin/IGF-1 action in DRG neurons. Results: Insulin increased Akt phosphorylation and neurite outgrowth, and augmented mitochondrial function in DRG cultures derived from control or type 1 diabetic rats. In STZ-diabetic rats insulin implants reversed thermal sensitivity, increased dermal nerve density and restored the expression/activity of respiratory chain proteins in DRG. Decreased expression of mRNAs for IGF-1, AMPKα2 and ATP5a1 (subunit of ATPase) occurred in DRG of diabetic vs. control rats. IGF-1 up-regulated mRNA levels of these genes in cultured DRG neurons from control or diabetic rats. IGF-1 elevation of mitochondrial function, mtDNA and neurite outgrowth was suppressed by inhibition of AMPK (via siRNA). IGF-1 therapy in diabetic rats reversed thermal hypoalgesia, raised corneal nerve density and prevented tricarboxylic acid (TCA) pathway metabolite build-up in the sciatic nerve. Endogenous IGF-1 gene expression in neurons of the DRG was suppressed by hyperglycemia and rescued by treatment with IGF-1 or the aldose reductase inhibitor, sorbinil. Transcription factors NFAT1 and CEBP-β bound to the IGF-1 promoter in DRG tissue at higher levels in control vs diabetic rats. Inhibition of endogenous IGF-1 down-regulated Akt S473 phosphorylation and background neurite outgrowth in cultured DRG neurons. Conclusions: Insulin/IGF-1 therapy elevates mitochondrial function via AMPK to drive axonal repair in DSPN. Downregulation of endogenous IGF-1 in DRG neurons in diabetes may contribute to the pathogenesis of DSPN.

The accelerated durability test is an important part for design and manufacturing ground vehicles. It consists of test designed to quantify the life characteristics of a ground vehicle component under normal use conditions by testing the unit at higher stress levels to accelerate the occurrence of failures. The challenge of conducting accelerated durability tests is to create the driven profile. In general, the mission profiles of the accelerated durability test can be generated via the acceleration data of the events experienced by the vehicle during the field test. Accurately separating the time series signal that correlate the load events becomes essential to efficiently generate the mission profiles for the accelerated test analysis. The representative Power Spectrum Density (PSD) profile can be generated based on the mission profiles. Then, the driven profile for the sub-scaled accelerated durability test, i.e., the acceleration data can be generated based on the PSD data.

The educational needs of adolescent girls have never really been met by schools leading to a variety of social, emotional and aspirational problems for girls and women alike. In this speculative inquiry I have explored the work of care ethicists, imaginative educators, critical theorists and groups outside of schools to develop a new framework for educating girls based upon the needs that I have identified as critical and unmet for far too many girls. I have surmised that girls’ needs for belonging, identity, competency and caring spirit could be better met and could lead to voice, agency and freedom for girls if schools were to implement the ideas contained in my critical framework.