The Fantastic Machine - the story of a man who struggles to keep family & friends safe when evil visits 1905 Portland, Oregon.

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No description available.

No description available.

A young man disappointed with the way his life has turned out is forced to live two other versions of himself from other universes that made different choices in life.

A fictional novel utilizing third person limited narration from the perspective of the primary character, Ilya Kollide, who narrates the story as though it were happening in his head as it occurred, with frequent embellishments. He has come to live near an old mansion on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, named Neimasaurus, to find an antiquated, dusty world of faded aristocracy. Temporarily orphaned at the age sixteen by the recent death of his parents, he has traveled four thousand miles to live with his last living relative, an uncle named Demetri, whom he has never met. The year is 1990, only this is not a world where the rule of the Tsar was supplanted by the Soviet Union. Instead, it is a logical exploration of what Russia might resemble, had communism never taken root. While the fantastical may or may not occur, depending upon how the reader chooses to interpret the point of view of the narrator, the setting in and of itself is not meant to be fantastical. Ilya discovers that all the servants who work there are deaf, as is his uncle and his own now deceased parents, whom he carries around in an urn after mixing their ashes together. While working at the great estate of the Neimasaurus family, Ilya discovers a surprising numbers of stories and people who both parallel his own experiences and serve as allegorical warnings toward his future mistakes in life. He becomes obsessed with the idea that he is to blame for his parents’ death and sets out on a quest to bring redemption to the wounded inhabitants of the estate, only to discover that not everyone wants to be helped. In fact, they want him dead. They see him as an allegory, just as he sees them. To the young man Shoji Yamano, iii Ilya represents everything he was, and can no longer be. As such a reflection, he resolves to shatter Ilya like a mirror. The novel charts Ilya’s personal growth from a neurotic wreck, incapable of normal interaction with people, to a young man capable of not just self-sacrifice, but an understanding of what it actually means to literally sacrifice himself for the well-being of someone he barely knows. He learns to value time spent with others rather than dwelling within a narcissistic and lonely fantasy world.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in the number of abuse cases, with bruising being the most common indicator. Often when a victim comes forward to report an assault, only slight redness may be observed, which may not accurately represent the injury severity. This study focuses on the use of Alternate Light Source (ALS) to detect and document such injuries more effectively. Following institutional approval, blunt trauma was inflicted on fifty-five healthy participants with no known medical conditions. The participant was seated while a spherical object weighing 465 grams was dropped at a height of 1.5 meters through a vertical tube onto the ventral/anterior surface of the participant’s forearm. The injury site was observed under four different lighting conditions. Findings were documented with photography over specific time intervals over 21 days. A comparison was made between body composition and skin tone on their effect on the visibility of the bruise. Our findings concluded that bruising in females persisted for a longer period, and the optimal wavelength for documentation of bruises is 415 nanometers with a yellow filter. A blinded study was conducted using the same methodology to assess the accuracy of ALS for detection of bruises. The blinded study results showed an accuracy of 75%. Although the results showed high accuracy, it was determined that the results rely on the researcher’s perception of bruising. Therefore, the results of the blinded study were inconclusive. Subsequently, peer review of the photographs was conducted to evaluate the effect of bias in detection of bruises. Similar to the results from the blinded study, the observation of the bruise remains highly subjective. The representative sample size was insufficient to provide statistical analysis between the observations of each reviewer. Therefore, the results from the peer review study were also inconclusive. Although ALS is effective in the documentation of bruises, caution is advised when using ALS to detect bruises as skin pigments, and pre-existing skin conditions may interfere with the interpretation.

When an item is submitted to a crime laboratory, the first step in analysis is to examine the item under white light. The next step in examination often involves the use of alternate light sources (ALS) to search for potential biological evidence. Dark adaptation has been suggested as a method to maximize benefits from fluorescent evidence examinations. Dark adaptation refers to the ways the human eye adapts to low light conditions through pupil dilation and rod cell activation. This study evaluates the Crime-lite Eye®, a device designed to help forensic scientists determine their level of dark adaptation before commencing an ALS examination. When tested, the use of the Crime-lite Eye® device resulted in 14% more visualization of fluorescence and 11% more accuracy in pattern recognition, though results were not statistically significant. Since results were more accurate overall, however, and because allowing for a period of dark adaptation would not significantly delay investigation efforts, laboratories should consider implementing a dark adaptation period into their workflow during fluorescent examinations. Additionally, some ALS manufacturers have begun to include a strobing feature in their devices, such as the GlowTorch FN Forensic Light™. It is known from studies on human attention that flickering stimuli are very effective at capturing attention. Any material fluorescing in response to a strobing ALS would look to the examiner to be suddenly appearing and disappearing as a series of sudden onset stimuli, potentially making weak fluorescence easier to see. Participants in this study were asked to examine four plaid shirts in ambient light conditions and dark conditions, while using either a solid ALS or a strobing ALS. Participants were slightly more accurate while using the strobing ALS device (90% vs 82% in ambient light conditions and 93% vs 92% in dark lighting conditions). However, many of them reported feeling eye strain and annoyance while using the strobing feature. As the change in accuracy was not statistically significant, there is no evidence at present that suggests forensic laboratories need to implement a strobing ALS device into their protocols.

In Canada, patients who occupy hospital beds but do not require that intensity of care are called Alternate Level of Care (ALC) patients. ALC has numerous negative implications on patient health and the health care system. Early identification of patients who are at risk of becoming ALC could help decision-makers better manage the situation and alleviate this problem. This thesis evaluates the use of various ML algorithms in predicting ALC at two different time points in the patient’s trajectory. Moreover, it identifies the most important predictors of ALC in each time point and provides insights on how adding more information, at the expense of time for decision-making, would improve the predictive accuracy. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

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