This study asks how the media perpetuates the cycle of racism, colonialism and stereotyping of Indigenous youth in Thunder Bay, and how Indigenous news sources participate in giving voice to Indigenous peoples. The research methodology is a discourse analysis examining both mainstream and Indigenous newspaper articles on the subject of the First Nations youth deaths in Thunder Bay. The methodology is also influenced by critical and decolonizing theories. Findings show that Indigenous newspaper articles are overall more inclusive of Indigenous voice, therefore providing an Indigenous perspective on the issue of First Nations youth dying in Thunder Bay and leaving out racist portrayals. On the other hand, non-Indigenous newspaper articles include less Indigenous voice and use the opinion of individuals in powerful positions. They also tend to portray Indigenous people in a negative light when compared to Indigenous newspapers. Outcomes from this research include implications for social workers such as: developing an understanding of how the media perpetuates racism, colonialism and stereotyping against Indigenous youth, advocating for and empowering Indigenous youth so they can come together and fight for change in First Nations education, and improving education within schools of social work regarding advocacy in the media. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

This research discusses the mechanical characteristics of laminated piezoelectric actuators that are manufactured at an elevated temperature, to cure the adhesive bonding the layers together, or to cure the layers made of polymeric composite material, and then cooled to a service temperature. Mainly discussed are actuators that are composed of layers of passive materials and a layer of piezoelectric material. THUNDER (THin layer UNimorph ferroelectric DrivER and sensor) and LIPCA (LIghtweight Piezo-composite Curved Actuator) actuators, which consist of layers of metal, adhesive and piezoelectric material, and carbon-epoxy, glass-epoxy and piezoelectric material, respectively, are studied and investigated in detail to understand the thermal effects due to the elevated manufacturing temperature. Owing to the large out-of-plane deformations of the THUNDER actuators as a result of cooling to the service temperature, inclusion of geometric nonlinearities in the kinematic relations is taken into consideration for prediction of the thermally-induced deformations and residual stresses. The deformations and residual stresses are predicted by using a 23-term Rayleigh-Ritz approach and more rigorous, time-consuming, finite-element analyses performed with ABAQUS. The thermally-induced deformations of THUNDER actuators can result in multiple room-temperature manufactured shapes, whereas those of LIPCA actuators (LIPCA-C1 and LIPCA-C2) exhibit single room-temperature manufactured shape. Actuation responses of these actuators caused by a quasi-static electric field applied to the piezoelectric layer are also studied with the Rayleigh-Ritz approach. It is shown that geometrical nonlinearities play an important role in the actuation responses, and these nonlinearities can be controlled by the choice of actuator geometry and the materials in the passive layers. In addition, blocking forces representing load-carrying capability of THUNDER and LIPCA actuators are determined. Support conditions and again geometrical nonlinearities are vital factor in load-resisting performances. Amongst the actuators considered, the actuated deflection and blocking forces are compared. Finally, based on the outcome of this study, new criteria for designing a new type of laminated piezoelectric actuators with improvement of performance characteristics are proposed. / Ph. D.

[pt] A presente tese tem como objetivo avaliar a interação trovão-solo no que toca a ocorrência de trovões e suas características microssísmicas, apontando a influência de vibrações induzidas para a redução do fator de segurança em uma análise (pseudo-estática) de estabilidade de encostas. Considerando a abordagem inédita, foi efetuado um levantamento teórico com o intuito de apresentar as principais características dos relâmpagos e suas correlações com o solo. Como material, foi utilizado um solo coluvionar, composto principalmente de quartzo, feldspato e biotita. O referido foi caracterizado através de métodos padrão (complementados com o uso da microtomografia 3D), e a retenção e disponibilidade de água foram reveladas. Foi efetuado um monitoramento de campo de longo prazo para avaliar a correlação entre os dados climáticos (incluindo incidência de raios) e o potencial hídrico dos solos. Por fim, foi utilizado uma estação para monitoramento sismográfico para captar as vibrações induzidas por trovões nos solos. Os resultados mostram 39 ocorrências de raios próximos ao local de monitoramento de campo. O monitoramento sísmico mostrou que os trovões causam sinais microssísmicos compostos por acelerações de pico do solo até 0,02 m/s ao quadrado. Em conclusão, para fins geotécnicos, o trovão é um assunto que pode ser avaliado à luz de um carregamento sísmico. / [en] The present thesis aims to evaluate thunder-soil interaction verifying the influence of its induced vibrations to the reduction of the factor of safety in a pseudo-static slope stability analysis. In order to carry out this research, considering the unpublished approach, a theoretical survey was made in order to present the main characteristics of the lightning and its correlations with the soil. As a material, a colluvial soil, mainly composed of quartz, feldspar and biotite was characterized by standard methods (supplemented with the use of 3D microtomography) in order to reveal its mineral composition, structural arrangement and water retention. After field and laboratory calibration of the water potential and volumetric moisture sensors, a long-term field monitoring was performed to evaluate the correlation between climatic data (including lightning incidence) and soil water potential. Finally, a seismographic monitoring station was used to capture the vibrations induced by thunder in the soils. The results depicted 39 lightning events near the field monitoring site. However, no rapid variation of water potential was revealed during thunderstorm days. Seismic monitoring showed that thunder caused micro-seismic signals composed of ground peak accelerations up to 0.02 m/s squared. In conclusion, for geotechnical purposes, thunder is a subject that can be evaluated in the light of pseudostatic loads. However, further researches are required to verify the vibrations of larger magnitudes, induced by rays that occur at smaller distances of the seismic monitoring point.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alethea Aires Pecora.pdf: 4253473 bytes, checksum: 07cc92471284be95c776bd7cb4cfb4b1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-15 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation focuses on Thunder: Perfect Mind, cryptic writing found among the dozens of other titles (mostly unknown until then) that make up what is now called the Nag Hammadi Library, produced between the third and fourth centuries of our era. After a presentation of the latter, with the codex that make up (a task we set ourselves in the first chapter of this work), we propose an approach to Thunder, that offer a translation and a commentary on all the units that compose it (Chapter II). From here we review the opinions that have been issued regarding this writing, and especially question the characterization of the writing as a Gnostic (Chapter III). At the end we launched a few suggestions for a renewed approach of the writing, pointing to the possibility of a dual origin for it, sending it to both the mythical universe of Middle Eastern world as to the everyday of violence experienced particularly by women of that social-history context / A presente dissertação concentra-se em Trovão: Mente Perfeita, enigmático escrito encontrado em meio a dezenas de outros títulos (quase todos desconhecidos até então), que compõem o que hoje se chama Biblioteca de Nag Hammadi, produzida entre os séculos III e IV de nossa era. Após uma apresentação desta última, com os códices que a compõem (tarefa a que nos propusemos no primeiro capítulo deste trabalho), propomos uma aproximação a Trovão, de que oferecemos uma tradução e um comentário do conjunto das suas unidades (capítulo II). A partir daí passamos em revista as opiniões que têm sido emitidas a respeito desta obra, e especialmente questionamos a caracterização do escrito como gnóstico (capítulo III). Ao final, lançamos algumas sugestões para uma renovada abordagem do escrito, apontando para a possibilidade de uma dupla origem para ele, remetendo-o tanto ao universo mítico do mundo médio-oriental como para a experiência cotidiana de violência vivida particularmente por mulheres daquele contexto sócio-histórico.

Artwork / Streetlives is a community-based, arts-informed, research project which addresses harm reduction amongst street youth in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Nine street-involved participant researchers (supported by a team of researchers and community organizations) used art making and storytelling as ways of understanding the risks specific to street-involved youth in Thunder Bay. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the participant researcher group and a majority of Aboriginal research participants, a novel approach was used to create principles of research collaboration, in pursuit of the principles of ownership, control, access and possession for ethical research with Aboriginal peoples. The participant researchers found that their most common experience was their vulnerability to governmental social services and law enforcement personnel and policies. They further agreed that the risk of losing their children to child protection services is a source of increased vulnerability and a barrier to accessing treatment. They all agreed that the process of art making was fruitful and were surprised by the clarity and evocative nature of their artwork, finding that meeting weekly to do art is gratifying and therapeutic. They were interested to discover that the art they created, just by telling their stories, contained strong prevention messages they would have been influenced by as younger people. As such the participants want to continue making art, and showing their work, particularly to young people, social service providers, and law enforcement officers, who they think are in the best position to learn from it. This project is building capacity in the community (by teaching artmaking, group work, organizing, critical thinking, and presentation skills), is contributing to scholarship, and significantly and positively impacting the lives of the participant researchers. This work is represented in traditional academic prose and as collaborative fiction.

Artwork / Streetlives is a community-based, arts-informed, research project which addresses harm reduction amongst street youth in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Nine street-involved participant researchers (supported by a team of researchers and community organizations) used art making and storytelling as ways of understanding the risks specific to street-involved youth in Thunder Bay. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the participant researcher group and a majority of Aboriginal research participants, a novel approach was used to create principles of research collaboration, in pursuit of the principles of ownership, control, access and possession for ethical research with Aboriginal peoples. The participant researchers found that their most common experience was their vulnerability to governmental social services and law enforcement personnel and policies. They further agreed that the risk of losing their children to child protection services is a source of increased vulnerability and a barrier to accessing treatment. They all agreed that the process of art making was fruitful and were surprised by the clarity and evocative nature of their artwork, finding that meeting weekly to do art is gratifying and therapeutic. They were interested to discover that the art they created, just by telling their stories, contained strong prevention messages they would have been influenced by as younger people. As such the participants want to continue making art, and showing their work, particularly to young people, social service providers, and law enforcement officers, who they think are in the best position to learn from it. This project is building capacity in the community (by teaching artmaking, group work, organizing, critical thinking, and presentation skills), is contributing to scholarship, and significantly and positively impacting the lives of the participant researchers. This work is represented in traditional academic prose and as collaborative fiction.

What happens after a place has been exploited, isolated, and neglected? What occurs when that place is bound – confined – by impenetrable voids of dereliction? Its core, slowing diffracting, with no opportunity to perceive outward – beyond the derelict terrain to the boundless expanses of earth and water that have perpetuated its vitality. And what then, if for a moment, this decaying place is given a view beyond these boundaries? Deindustrialization has invariably altered modern cultural conceptions of control over nature. The terrain remaining after decades of resource exploitation is composed of deep voids and fissures that reside physically, psychologically, and theoretically in-between the accepted realms of culture and nature. This thesis explores the perversion and dissolution of these two opposing realms within the sublime and fantastical derelict landscape of a declining town. Deindustrial voids are considered as both barrier and bridge; serving as persistent symbolic reminders of the volatile and hubristic relationship between culture and nature, and offering potential reconnection to the natural landscape of a city’s foundation. Reacting to collective nostalgia through memorialisation, totemism, and erasure, typical design interventions continue to prioritize cultural domination and emphasize the designer as creator in order to reassert control over the chaos of deindustrialization, often resulting in placeless infilling of the void. Ideas of extimacy, alterity, and ruination, with influences from the fields of industrial archaeology and landscape architecture, ground contemporary reactions to the deindustrial void and explore the role of landscape in the creation and fragmentation of ideas of place for the dissolving North American industrial city. Both inspired and situated within the declining former town of Fort William, Ontario, this thesis surveys an abandoned industrial corridor that encircles the town, severing it from the liminal water’s edge and landscape beyond. Viewed as a palimpsest, this site is considered beyond its most recent industrial usage to expose a place-specific natural/cultural terrain comprised of material and immaterial layers of evolution and exploitation. This thesis positions the architect as perceiver, hoping to inspire sensitivity, pause, and reflection and resists ideas of forced transformation as a means of outwardly expressing progress. It immerses itself within the in-between places that blur preconceived boundaries – natural and cultural, past and future, controlled and chaotic – in order to encounter the inherent existential qualities of a site in transition.

This thesis discusses the progress made towards a formal total synthesis of triptolide, a naturally occurring diterpenoid triepoxide molecule. Isolated from a Chinese vine, triptolide features some interesting structural characteristics and has demonstrated a broad range of interesting medicinal effects. It has demonstrated remarkable cytotoxicity against a number of cancer cell lines, immunosuppressive activity, and reversible male sterility. This biological activity has made it a target of a number of total syntheses spanning from 1980 to 2010. Gold-catalyzed transformations are an emerging field in synthetic organic chemistry, but their efficacy and potential uses are gaining much recognition among the synthetic organic community. Our research group is extremely interested in the applications of such gold-catalyzed organic transformations in natural product synthesis. Here, we discuss our investigations towards accessing the tetracyclic core of triptolide using a gold-catalyzed cyclization cascade reaction. We explored a number of synthetic routes towards a common linear precursor, and our successes and failures are discussed herein. We also report numerous unsuccessful efforts towards an oxidative gold-catalyzed cyclization cascade to form the tetracyclic core of triptolide. Finally, we investigated the use of a photocatalytic radical cyclization cascade to access the desired core. We report some promising preliminary results, and this study is ongoing in the Barriault group.

What happens after a place has been exploited, isolated, and neglected? What occurs when that place is bound – confined – by impenetrable voids of dereliction? Its core, slowing diffracting, with no opportunity to perceive outward – beyond the derelict terrain to the boundless expanses of earth and water that have perpetuated its vitality. And what then, if for a moment, this decaying place is given a view beyond these boundaries? Deindustrialization has invariably altered modern cultural conceptions of control over nature. The terrain remaining after decades of resource exploitation is composed of deep voids and fissures that reside physically, psychologically, and theoretically in-between the accepted realms of culture and nature. This thesis explores the perversion and dissolution of these two opposing realms within the sublime and fantastical derelict landscape of a declining town. Deindustrial voids are considered as both barrier and bridge; serving as persistent symbolic reminders of the volatile and hubristic relationship between culture and nature, and offering potential reconnection to the natural landscape of a city’s foundation. Reacting to collective nostalgia through memorialisation, totemism, and erasure, typical design interventions continue to prioritize cultural domination and emphasize the designer as creator in order to reassert control over the chaos of deindustrialization, often resulting in placeless infilling of the void. Ideas of extimacy, alterity, and ruination, with influences from the fields of industrial archaeology and landscape architecture, ground contemporary reactions to the deindustrial void and explore the role of landscape in the creation and fragmentation of ideas of place for the dissolving North American industrial city. Both inspired and situated within the declining former town of Fort William, Ontario, this thesis surveys an abandoned industrial corridor that encircles the town, severing it from the liminal water’s edge and landscape beyond. Viewed as a palimpsest, this site is considered beyond its most recent industrial usage to expose a place-specific natural/cultural terrain comprised of material and immaterial layers of evolution and exploitation. This thesis positions the architect as perceiver, hoping to inspire sensitivity, pause, and reflection and resists ideas of forced transformation as a means of outwardly expressing progress. It immerses itself within the in-between places that blur preconceived boundaries – natural and cultural, past and future, controlled and chaotic – in order to encounter the inherent existential qualities of a site in transition.

This thesis discusses the progress made towards a formal total synthesis of triptolide, a naturally occurring diterpenoid triepoxide molecule. Isolated from a Chinese vine, triptolide features some interesting structural characteristics and has demonstrated a broad range of interesting medicinal effects. It has demonstrated remarkable cytotoxicity against a number of cancer cell lines, immunosuppressive activity, and reversible male sterility. This biological activity has made it a target of a number of total syntheses spanning from 1980 to 2010. Gold-catalyzed transformations are an emerging field in synthetic organic chemistry, but their efficacy and potential uses are gaining much recognition among the synthetic organic community. Our research group is extremely interested in the applications of such gold-catalyzed organic transformations in natural product synthesis. Here, we discuss our investigations towards accessing the tetracyclic core of triptolide using a gold-catalyzed cyclization cascade reaction. We explored a number of synthetic routes towards a common linear precursor, and our successes and failures are discussed herein. We also report numerous unsuccessful efforts towards an oxidative gold-catalyzed cyclization cascade to form the tetracyclic core of triptolide. Finally, we investigated the use of a photocatalytic radical cyclization cascade to access the desired core. We report some promising preliminary results, and this study is ongoing in the Barriault group.