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Combined paper mill biosolids (PB) and forest-derived liming by-products improve soil properties, but their residual effects following several years of application have hardly been investigated. A 13-year (2009–2021) field study was initiated at Yamachiche, QC, Canada, to assess the residual effects of PB and liming materials on the properties of a loamy soil. The PB was applied during nine consecutive years (2000–2008) at 0, 30, 60, and 90 Mg wet·ha−1, whereas the 30 Mg PB·ha−1 rate also received one of three liming materials (calcitic lime, lime mud, wood ash) at 3 Mg wet·ha−1. No amendment was applied during residual years. Past liming materials continued to increase soil pH but their effect decreased over time; meanwhile, past PB applications caused a low increase in residual soil NO3-N. Soil total C, which represented 40% of added organic C when PB applications ceased, stabilized to 15% after six years. Soil Mehlich-3-extractable contents declined over the thirteen residual years to be not significant for P, K, and Cu, while they reached half the values of the application years for Zn and Cd. Conversely, Mehlich-3 Ca was little affected by time. Therefore, land PB and liming material applications benefited soil properties several years after their cessation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a collaborative interdisciplinary examination of the scientific, political, and cultural determinants of the conservation status of mammal species that occur in both Canada and the USA. We read Canada's Species at Risk Act as a document of bio-cultural nationalism circumscribed by the weak federalism and Crown–Indigenous relations of the nation's constitution. We also provide a numerical comparison of at-risk species listings either side of the US–Canada border and examples of provincial/state listings in comparison with those at a federal level. We find 17 mammal species listed as at-risk in Canada as distinct from the USA, and only 6 transboundary species that have comparable levels of protection in both countries, and we consider several explanations for this asymmetry. We evaluate the concept of 'jurisdictional rarity', in which species are endangered only because a geopolitical boundary isolates a small population. The paper begins and ends with reflections on interdisciplinary collaboration, and our findings highlight the importance of considering and explicitly acknowledging political influences on science and conservation-decision making, including in the context of at-risk-species protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the usefulness of comprehensive payments data for macroeconomic predictions in Canada. Specifically, we evaluate which type of payments data are useful, when they are useful, why they are useful, and whether machine learning (ML) models enhance their predictive value. We find payments data with a factor model can help improve accuracy up to 25% in predicting GDP, retail, and wholesale sales; and nonlinear ML models can further improve the accuracy up to 20%. Furthermore, we find the retail payments data are more useful than the data from the wholesale system; and they add more value during crisis and at the nowcasting horizon due to the timeliness. The contribution of the payments data and ML models is small and linear during low and normal economic growth periods. However, their contribution is large, asymmetrical, and nonlinear during crises such as COVID-19. Moreover, we propose a cross-validation approach to mitigate overfitting and use tools to overcome interpretability in the ML models to improve their effectiveness for policy use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the current literature regarding nurse scheduling and physician scheduling in Canada is reviewed. Staff scheduling is a vital aspect of healthcare which has immediate positive benefits when optimized. It is also a very complex optimization problem, often involving conflicts, human evaluation and time constraints. Four categories of problems are reviewed: staff scheduling, physician scheduling, operating room scheduling, and outpatient scheduling, each focusing on a different aspect of resource scheduling and involving unique considerations. Numerous different heuristics and algorithms have been implemented and tested in dozens of hospitals across Canada with nearly universal positive results. Despite the obvious benefits, continued implementations of the optimization software is uncommon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: ADHD is recognized as one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders. The worldwide prevalence of ADHD is estimated at 5.3%; however, estimates vary as a function of a number of factors, including diagnostic methods, age, sex and geographical location. A review of studies is needed to clarify the epidemiology of ADHD in Canada. (2) Methods: A search strategy was created in PubMed and adapted for MEDLINE and PsycINFO. Papers were included if they examined diagnosed ADHD prevalence and/or incidence rates in any region of Canada, age group and gender. A snowball technique was used to identify additional papers from reference lists, and experts in the field were consulted. (3) Results: Ten papers included in this review reported on prevalence, and one reported on incidence. One study provided an overall prevalence estimate across provinces for adults of 2.9%, and one study provided an overall estimate across five provinces for children and youth of 8.6%. Across age groups (1 to 24 years), incidence estimates ranged from 0.4% to 1.2%, depending on province. Estimates varied by age, gender, province, region and time. (4) Conclusions: The overall Canadian ADHD prevalence estimate is similar to worldwide estimates for adults. Most studies reported on prevalence rather than incidence. Differences in estimates across provinces may reflect the varying number of practitioners available to diagnose and prescribe medication for ADHD across provinces. To achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the epidemiology of ADHD in Canada, a study is needed that includes all provinces and territories, and that considers estimates in relation to age, gender, ethnicity, geographical region, socioeconomic status and access to mental healthcare coverage. Incidence rates need further examination to be determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The building sector is responsible for nearly 40% of the total global direct and indirect CO2 emissions. Urban green infrastructure, which includes features such as urban trees, vegetation, green roofs, and green facades, are examples of nature-based solutions often employed as municipal climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. This approach offers a range of cost-effective strategies for reducing municipal CO2 emissions and presents compelling public policy co-benefits such as improved urban livability and enhanced environmental conditions. For municipalities to confidently deploy these solutions at a scale necessary to achieve climate benefits, acquiring knowledge of quantifiable and demonstrated outcomes is an essential requirement. The objectives of this paper are to (1) provide a comprehensive analysis of the advantages and limitations of nature-based solutions (NBS) to address the challenge of reducing CO2 emissions; (2) evaluate existing design guidelines and policies as may be available across Canada, and that that support the of implementation of NBS in urban agglomerations; (3) identify knowledge gaps and research needs to address challenges to the implementation of NBS. In this review, suggestions and requirements as presented in these documents are examined while giving due consideration to the scientific evidence available in research papers. It was found that the adoption of NBS can contribute to carbon neutral communities through reduced building energy consumption and carbon sequestration. Supportive guidelines and policies have been developed, or are in development, to promote the implementation of NBS at the city scale, despite challenges in assessing, quantitatively, their impact due to uncertainties in data, methods, and scale. Nonetheless, existing research provides sufficient evidence to qualify the measures and suggestions outlined in the guidelines and policies described in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of breast cancer amongst older adults in Canada is increasing. This patient population faces unique challenges in the management of breast cancer, as older adults often have distinct biological, psychosocial, and treatment-related considerations. This paper presents an expert consensus of the Canadian treatment landscape, focusing on key considerations for optimizing selection of systemic therapy for advanced breast cancer in older adults. This paper aims to provide evidence-based recommendations and practical guidance for healthcare professionals involved in the care of older adults with breast cancer. By recognizing and addressing the specific needs of older adults, healthcare providers can optimize treatment outcomes and improve the overall quality of care for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies related to oil and gas wells have attracted worldwide interest due to the increasing energy shortfall and the requirement of sustainable development and environmental protection. However, the state of oil and gas wells in terms of research characteristics, technological megatrends, article-produced patterns, leading study items, hot topics, and frontiers is unclear. This work is aimed at filling the research gaps by performing a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 6197 articles related to oil and gas wells published between 1900 and 2021. VOSviewer and CiteSpace software were used as the main data analysis and visualization tools. The analysis shows that the annual variation of article numbers, interdisciplinary numbers, and cumulative citations followed exponential growth. Oil and gas well research has promoted the expansion of research fields such as engineering, energy and fuels, geology, environmental sciences and ecology, materials science, and chemistry. The top 10 influential studies mainly focused on shale gas extraction and its impact on the environment. More studies were produced by larger author teams and inter-institution collaborations. Elkatatny and Guo have greatly contributed to the application of artificial intelligence in oil and gas wells. The two most contributing institutions were the Southwest Petr Univ and China Univ Petr from China. The People's Republic of China, the US, and Canada were the countries with the most contributions to the development of oil and gas wells. The authoritative journal in engineering technology was J Petrol Sci Eng, in environment technology was Environ Sci Technol, in geology was Aapg Bull, and in materials was Cement Concrete Res. The keyword co-occurrence network cluster analysis indicated that oil well cement, new energy development, machine learning, hydraulic fracturing, and natural gas and oil wells are the predominant research topics. The research frontiers were oil extraction and its harmful components (1992–2016), oil and gas wells (1997–2016), porous media (2007–2016), and hydrogen and shale gas (2012–2021). This paper comprehensively and quantitatively analyzes all aspects of oil and gas well research for the first time and presents valuable information about active and authoritative research entities, cooperation patterns, technology trends, hotspots, and frontiers. Therefore, it can help governments, policymakers, related companies, and the scientific community understand the global progress in oil and gas well research and provide a reference for technology development and application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mean square synchronization problem of the complex dynamical network (CDN) with the stochastic link dynamics is investigated. In contrast to previous literature, the CDN considered in this paper can be viewed as consisting of two subsystems coupled to each other. One subsystem consists of all nodes, referred to as the nodes subsystem, and the other consists of all links, referred to as the network topology subsystem, where the weighted values can quantitatively reflect changes in the network's topology. Based on the above understanding of CDN, two vector stochastic differential equations with Brownian motion are used to model the dynamic behaviors of nodes and links, respectively. The control strategy incorporates not only the controller in the nodes but also the coupling term in the links, through which the CDN is synchronized in the mean-square sense. Meanwhile, the dynamic stochastic signal is proposed in this paper, which is regarded as the auxiliary reference tracking target of links, such that the links can track the reference target asymptotically when synchronization occurs in nodes. This implies that the eventual topological structure of CDN is stochastic. Finally, a comparison simulation example confirms the superiority of the control strategy in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian Prairies are associated with high natural hydroclimatic variability including the frequent periodic occurrence of droughts and pluvials. These extremes carry various risks including significant damage to the economy, environment and society. The well-documented level of damage necessitates further risk assessment and planned reductions to vulnerability, particularly in light of a warming climate. A logical starting point involves awareness and information about the changing characteristics of such climate extremes. We focus on the compound occurrence of droughts and pluvials as the risks from this type of event are magnified compared to the hydroclimatic extremes in isolation. Compound droughts and pluvials (CDP) are drought and pluvial events that occur in close succession in time or in close proximity in area. Also, research on CDP is limited even for the worldwide literature. Therefore, the purposes of this paper are to synthesize recent literature concerning the risks of CDP, and to provide examples of past occurrences, with a focus on the Canadian Prairies. Since literature from the Prairies is limited, global work is also reviewed. That literature indicates increasing concern and interest in CDP. Relationships between drought and pluvials are also characterized using the SPEI Global Monitor for the Prairies, emphasizing the recent past. Research mostly considers drought and pluvials as separate events in the Prairies, but is integrated here to characterize the relationships of these extremes. The spatiotemporal patterns showed that several of the extreme to record pluvials were found to be closely associated with extreme droughts in the Prairies. The intensities of the extremes and their dry to wet boundaries were described. This is the first research to explore the concept of and to provide examples of CDP for the Prairies and for Canada. Examples of CDP provide insights into the regional hydroclimatic variability. Furthermore, most literature on future projections strongly suggests that this variability is likely to increase, mainly driven by anthropogenic climate change. Therefore, improved methods to characterize and to quantify CDP are required. These findings suggest means of decreasing vulnerability and associated damages. Although the study area is the Canadian Prairies, the work is relevant to other regions that are becoming more vulnerable to increasing risks of and vulnerabilities to such compound extremes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, there is almost 30 years of experience in developing tiered and triggered adaptive monitoring programs focused on looking at whether environmental concerns remain when pulp and paper mills, or metal mines, are in compliance with their discharge limits. These environmental effects monitoring programs were based on nationally standardized designs. Many of the programs have been developed through multi-stakeholder working groups, and the evolution of the program faced repeated frictions and differing opinions on how to design environmental monitoring programs. This paper describes key guidance to work through the initial steps in program design, and includes scientific advice based on lessons learned from the development of the Canadian aquatic environmental effects monitoring program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geothermal energy exploration, development, and research have been ongoing in Canada for several decades. The country's cold climate and the push to develop renewable energy sources have driven interest in geothermal energy. Despite this drive, regulatory complexities and competition with other relatively inexpensive energy sources with existing infrastructure have hindered development. As such, interest has grown and waned with changes in the energy economy over several decades, leaving many projects at a standstill. As of January 2023, there are currently no operational geothermal power projects in Canada. Many hot spring pool and spa complexes remain active, and Canada is a leading country in the installation of ground source heat pumps (GSHPs; also called geo-exchange systems). However, in the last decade, the interest in deep geothermal systems has renewed, with many new projects starting up across several provinces and territories. Moreover, projects that had shown limited progress for many years—such as Mount Meager in British Columbia—have begun to renew their development efforts. Research is also expanding within prominent research groups and universities. The areas of focus include both building upon previous studies (such as thermal gradients and the heat flow in sedimentary basins) and researching new methods and resources (such as GSHPs, closed-loop systems, integrated geothermal operations, and hybrid systems, including heat storage). The development is supported by federal, provincial, and territorial governments through grants and the development of regulatory frameworks. Although challenges still remain for Canada to develop its geothermal energy resources, several power, thermal, and co-production projects, ongoing research, funding, and regulatory acts are all moving forward to support geothermal development. This paper aims to study Canada's geothermal energy update in 2023 regarding the aspects mentioned above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 15–16 June 2023, healthcare professionals and breast cancer patients and advocates from across Canada met in Toronto, Ontario, for the 2023 Canadian Breast Cancer Symposium (CBSC.). The CBSC. is a national, multidisciplinary event that occurs every 2 years with the goal of developing a personalized approach to the management of breast cancer in Canada. Experts provided state-of-the-art information to help optimally manage breast cancer patients, including etiology, prevention, diagnosis, experimental biology, and therapy of breast cancer and premalignant breast disease. The symposium also had the objectives of increasing communication and collaboration among breast cancer healthcare providers nationwide and providing a comprehensive and real-life review of the many facets of breast cancer. The sessions covered the patient voice, the top breast cancer papers from different disciplines in 2022, artificial intelligence in breast cancer, systemic therapy updates, the management of central nervous system metastases, multidisciplinary management of ductal carcinoma in situ, special populations, optimization-based individual prognostic factors, toxicity management of novel therapeutics, survivorship, and updates in surgical oncology. The key takeaways of these sessions have been summarized in this conference report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, patient engagement in cancer research has evolved significantly, especially in addressing the unique challenges faced by adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer populations. This paper introduces a framework for meaningful engagement with AYA cancer patient research partners, drawing insights from the "FUTURE" Study, a qualitative study that utilizes focus groups to explore the impact of cancer diagnosis and treatment on the sexual and reproductive health of AYA cancer patients in Canada. The framework's development integrates insights from prior works and addresses challenges with patient engagement in research specific to AYA cancer populations. The framework is guided by overarching principles (safety, flexibility, and sensitivity) and includes considerations that apply across all phases of a research study (collaboration; iteration; communication; and equity, diversity, and inclusion) and tasks that apply to specific phases of a research study (developing, conducting, and translating the study). The proposed framework seeks to increase patient engagement in AYA cancer research beyond a supplementary aspect to an integral component for conducting research with impact on patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's universities each receive an annual operating grant from their provincial government to partially finance operating expenses. This paper estimates the sensitivity of provincial operating grants to the business cycle by disentangling the effects of procyclical income on government revenue and the countercyclical effect on student demand by utilizing an economic regression model composed of three equations. Our panel data include the total real operating grant paid to all universities within a province, total student enrolment, real per capita government revenue, and real per capita gross domestic product for Canada's ten provinces over the 1992–2019 sample period. The results confirm that real per capita government revenues are procyclical and that full-time equivalent student enrolments are counter-cyclical. The total real operating grant is only weakly associated with cyclical changes in provincial government revenue. Instead, the total real operating grant is mainly determined by countercyclical changes in student demand. This partially offsets the potential reduction in funding to universities during an economic downturn. Provincial governments in Canada can smooth the total allocation over the business cycle by adjusting other expenditures and using debt financing. Our results suggest they do this to some extent, but not enough to avoid a net reduction in real operating grants during an economic downturn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of fifteen energy audits conducted on industrial sites in Canada's Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The audits covered a range of industries including food processing, packaged goods, and finishing processes (powder-coating). The primary focus of the audits was to analyze the natural gas consumption and the performance of major-gas-consuming equipment. The audits identified natural-gas-consuming equipment that could be optimized to yield energy and operational cost savings and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction opportunities. Food production plants' energy intensity ranges from 5.59 m3/ft2 to 17.73 m3/ft2. Therefore, there is a significant opportunity to improve energy consumption through better technology integration. The results of the audits indicate a trend of an increase in the percentage of non-productive consumption with non-productive time. The proposed energy-saving measures include reducing non-productive natural gas consumption, gas-fired equipment tune-up, optimizing boiler loads, and reducing oven exhaust by using variable frequency drives (VFDs). The findings of this study could be used to develop a demand-side management program specifically for small- and medium-sized industrial facilities in the Greater Toronto Area and other parts of Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a consensus-based Canadian guideline whose primary purpose is to standardize and facilitate the management of chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGvHD) across the country. Creating uniform healthcare guidance in Canada is a challenge for a number of reasons including the differences in healthcare authority structure, funding and access to healthcare resources between provinces and territories, as well as the geographic size. These differences can lead to variable and unequal access to effective therapies for GvHD. This document will provide comprehensive and practical guidance that can be applied across Canada by healthcare professionals caring for patients with cGvHD. Hopefully, this guideline, based on input from GvHD treaters across the country, will aid in standardizing cGvHD care and facilitate access to much-needed novel therapies. This consensus paper aims to discuss the optimal approach to the initial assessment of cGvHD, review the severity scoring and global grading system, discuss systemic and topical treatments, as well as supportive therapies, and propose a therapeutic algorithm for frontline and subsequent lines of cGvHD treatment in adults and pediatric patients. Finally, we will make suggestions about the future direction of cGvHD treatment development such as (1) a mode-of-action-based cGvHD drug selection, according to the pathogenesis of cGvHD, (2) a combination strategy with the introduction of newer targeted drugs, (3) a steroid-free regimen, particularly for front line therapy for cGvHD treatment, and (4) a pre-emptive approach which can prevent the progression of cGvHD in high-risk patients destined to develop severe and highly morbid forms of cGvHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada has one of the most complex and rigorous drug approval and public reimbursement processes and is, unfortunately, one of the countries with the longest delays in drug access. To assess the overall impact of systemic delays in access to cancer therapy, a targeted literature review (TLR) was performed to identify studies associated with the clinical, economic, and quality of life impacts of delayed access to oncology drugs. Using MEDLINE/PubMed databases and snowballing, four unique records met the eligibility criteria. Results revealed that clinical outcomes were the most impacted by systemic delays in access to oncology drugs (e.g., life years lost, overall survival, and progression-free survival). The four articles retrieved by the TLR specifically illustrated that a substantial number of life years could potentially be saved by increasing systemic efficiency regarding the development, approval, and reimbursement processes of new drugs for advanced malignancies. It is imperative that initiatives are put in place to improve the performance and speed of Canadian drug regulatory and health technology assessment (HTA) processes, especially for new cancer therapeutics. The proposed solutions in this paper include better coordination between HTA and Canadian payers to harmonize coverage decisions, international collaborations, information sharing, and national standards for timeliness in oncology drug access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous Peoples in Canada have shown great strength and resilience in maintaining their cultures and ways of life to date in the face of settler colonialism. Centering the Water crises within Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, we explore the impacts these crises have on community members. Particularly, the continuous failure of the Canadian government to end the Water crises in remote Indigenous communities, Star Blanket Cree Nation, is investigated in this paper. What implications have these Water governance gaps had on Indigenous Peoples' sovereignty and self-determination? We adopted an Indigenist theoretical framework to guide the study. Additionally, a community-based participatory research approach was adopted. To achieve our research goals of investigating the implications of the current Water crises for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, specific methods of sharing circles were used to gather knowledge from community members, Elders, and knowledge keepers. The research findings strongly highlight the strength and resilience shown by remote Indigenous communities in the face of the current Water crises and continuous government failure. Solving the current Water crises will involve remote Indigenous communities taking charge of their own Water governance through Indigenous-led Water governance systems. Additionally, taking steps to rebuild trust through genuine reconciliation will be key. Therefore, listening to remote Indigenous communities and taking collaborative action are fundamental. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plastic contamination is commonly reported in urban and rural soils, as well as in fresh and ocean waters. Canada's government has attempted to limit the contamination of single-use plastic by banning the manufacturing and selling of specific types of plastic. In British Columbia, current regulations governing commercial composting state that when compost has less than 1% of its dry weight representing foreign materials (including plastic), it can be sold and used in soils. However, due to the low density of plastic and its potential to break down into microparticles, this amount may be enough to become toxic when used in agricultural soils. This paper studies contamination of plastic in garden soils and summarizes how this can affect the environment with a preliminary examination of a garden soil sample. The examination showed that the garden soil sample contained mainly low-density polyethylene, polyethylene and polypropylene plastics (identified through ATR-FTIR) in oxidized and unoxidized forms that can come from commercial composting and hypothesizes that this plastic could break down into microplastic particles. In order to limit the amount of plastic contamination in agricultural soils, it is necessary to modify current compost regulations in order to treat plastic differently than other foreign materials (glass, metal, wood). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil sands, as unconventional oil, are so essential to both Canada and the world that special attention should be paid to their extraction status, especially their energy efficiency. One of the most commonly used methods to evaluate energy efficiency is the Energy Return on Investment (EROI) analysis. This paper focuses on EROI analysis for both in situ oil sands and mining oil sands over the period of 2009 to 2015. This time period represents an extension to periods previously considered by other analyses. An extended Input-Output model is used to quantify indirect energy input, which has been ignored by previous analyses of oil sands extraction. Results of this paper show that EROI of both mining oil sands (range of value: 3.9–8) and in situ oil sands (range of value: 3.2–5.4) display an upward trend over the past 7 years; EROI of mining oil sands is generally higher, but is more fluctuating than the EROI of in situ oil sands. Compared with EROI of other hydrocarbons, the EROI of oil sands is still quite low, despite the fact that it is increasing gradually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been widely used in image denoising, and their performance has been enhanced through residual learning. However, previous research mostly focused on optimizing the network architecture of CNNs, ignoring the limitations of the commonly used residual learning. This paper identifies two of its limitations, which are the neglect of image information and the lack of effective consideration of image self-similarity. To solve these limitations, this paper proposes a compositional denoising network (CDN), which contains two sub-paths, the image information path (IIP) and the noise estimation path (NEP), respectively. IIP is trained via an image-to-image method to extract image information. For NEP, it utilizes image self-similarity from the perspective of training. This similarity-based training method constrains NEP to output similar estimated noise distributions for different image patches with a specific kind of noise. Finally, image information and noise distribution information are comprehensively considered for image denoising. Experimental results indicate that CDN outperforms other CNN-based methods in both synthetic and real-world image denoising, achieving state-of-the-art performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increased access to and improvements in contraceptives, unintended pregnancy continues to be a problem globally and is associated with adverse outcomes for mothers and infants. This paper seeks to unravel the mediators of intended versus unintended pregnancies among Black women living with HIV. The paper draws on survey data from a broader multi-country mixed methods study that used a community-based participatory research approach to investigate the psychosocial experiences of Black mothers living with HIV. The study participants were Black mothers living with HIV drawn through venue-based sampling from Ottawa, Canada (n = 89), Port Harcourt, Nigeria (n = 400), and Miami, Florida, United States (n = 201). We used Hierarchical Binary Logistic Regression Modelling (HBLM) to estimate the independent associations of pregnancy intention (intended versus unintended) with blocks of predictor variables (sociodemographic, sociocultural, and psychosocial predictors) at alpha level of 0.5. Specifically, 44.2%, 67.3%, and 17.7% of the women had unintended pregnancies in Ottawa, Miami, and Port Harcourt, respectively. There were important results from the HBLM. The odds of intended relative to unintended pregnancies were (i) reduced in larger households (OR = 0.56, 95% CI = 0.36/0.87), but increased with employment (OR = 7.84, 95% CI = 1.52/40.54) and HIV knowledge (OR = 3.13, 95% CI = 1.42/6.90) in Ottawa; (ii) reduced with age (OR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.88/0.98), but increased with marriage (OR = 2.90, 95% CI = 1.43/5.88) and social support (pregnancy (OR = 3.77, 95% CI = 1.98/7.19) in Port Harcourt; (iii) reduced with social support (OR = 0.95, 95% CI = 0.91/1.00) but increased with HIV status disclosure (OR = 1.73, 95% CI = 1.01/2.97) and the influence of specific referent (OR = 1.68, 95% CI = 1.13/2.52) in Miami-FL. The incidence of unintended pregnancy is more prevalent among Black women living with HIV in the North American cities relative to the African city. Also, unique combinations of sociodemographic, sociocultural, and psychosocial factors influence pregnancy intention in each city. This implies that policy and practices to address reproductive health needs of WLHIV must consider these contextual issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global health crisis directly impacting the healthcare system. Healthcare leaders influence and shape the ability of an organization to cope with and recover from a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Their actions serve to guide and support nurses' actions through unpredictable health service demands. The purpose of this paper was to examine frontline managers' experiences and organizational leadership responses that activated organizational resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to learn for ongoing and future responses to healthcare crises. Fourteen managers participated in semi-structured interviews. We found that: (1) leadership challenges (physical resources and emotional burden), (2) the influence of senior leader decision-making on managers (constant change, shortage of human resources, adapting care delivery, and cooperation and collaboration), and (3) lessons learned (managerial caring behaviours and role modelling, adaptive leadership, education and training, culture of care for self, and others) were evidence of managers' responses to the crisis. Overall, the study provides evidence of managers experiences during the early waves of the pandemic in supporting nurses and fostering organizational resilience. Knowing manager's experiences can facilitate planning, preparing, and strengthening their leadership strategies to improve work conditions is a high priority to manage and sustain nurses' mental health and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The risk of developing chronic postsurgical pain (CPSP) in youth is related to psychological factors, including preoperative anxiety, depression, patient/caregiver pain catastrophizing, and poor self-efficacy in managing pain. While interventions exist to address these factors, they are generally brief and educational in nature. The current paper details patient partner feedback on the development of a psychologist-delivered perioperative psychological program (PPP) designed to identify and target psychological risk factors for CPSP and improve self-efficacy in managing pain. Methods: Qualitative interviews were conducted with two patients and their caregivers to discuss their surgical and pain management experience and to advise on components of the PPP. Results: Reflexive thematic analysis of interviews generated the following themes, which were incorporated into the content and implementation of the PPP: caregiver involvement, psychological and physical strategies for pain management, biopsychosocial pain education, intervention structure, and supporting materials. Conclusions: The development of a novel psychologist-led PPP is a promising approach to mitigate mental health risks associated with pediatric CPSP and potentially boost postoperative outcomes and family wellbeing. Integrating patient partner feedback ensures that the PPP is relevant, acceptable, and aligned with the needs and preferences of the patients it is designed to serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the study of deep learning techniques for underwater acoustic channel estimation has gained widespread attention. However, existing neural network channel estimation methods often overfit to training dataset noise levels, leading to diminished performance when confronted with new noise levels. In this research, a "bias-free" denoising convolutional neural network (DnCNN) method is proposed for robust underwater acoustic channel estimation. The paper offers a theoretical justification for bias removal and customizes the fundamental DnCNN framework to give a specialized design for channel estimation, referred to as the bias-free complex DnCNN (BF-CDN). It uses least squares channel estimation results as input and employs a CNN model to learn channel characteristics and noise distribution. The proposed method effectively utilizes the temporal correlation inherent in underwater acoustic channels to further enhance estimation performance and robustness. This method adapts to varying noise levels in underwater environments. Experimental results show the robustness of the method under different noise conditions, indicating its potential to improve the accuracy and reliability of channel estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding landslide kinematics, their characteristics, and contributing factors is crucial for decision-making regarding mitigation strategies for infrastructure projects. These characteristics depend on the geomorphology of the area, climate, and proximity to water bodies and anthropogenic activity. Some geomorphological features are shared between some western Canadian regions, particularly within the Canadian Interior Plains (Interior Plains). This paper synthesizes the failure mechanisms, kinematics, triggering events, and contributing factors associated with 11 landslides in the Interior Plains, with detailed qualitative descriptions of two of them. The paper discusses the commonalities of bedrock formations that contain thin sub-horizontal and continuous deposits of weak materials as the main geomorphological predisposing factor for landslides in this region. The findings show commonalities in the effect of seasonal fluctuations in the characteristics of water bodies in contact with these landslides, driving episodes of landside reactivation, acceleration and deceleration. Importantly, anthropogenic activity as a trigger for the initiation of some of these landslides suggests a high susceptibility of certain slopes in the Interior Plains to instability resulting from relatively small changes in in-situ stresses. This information becomes critical for assessing the landslide susceptibility of valley slopes in this region for infrastructure planning, design, and operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional fault diagnosis methods are limited in the condition detection of shore bridge lifting gearboxes due to their limited ability to extract signal features and their sensitivity to noise. In order to solve this problem, an adaptive fusion convolutional denoising network (AF-CDN) was proposed in this paper. First, a novel 1D and 2D adaptive fused convolutional neural network structure is built. The fusion of both 1D and 2D convolutional models can effectively improve the feature extraction capability of the network. Then, a gradient updating method based on the Kalman filter mechanism is designed. The effectiveness of the developed method is evaluated by using the benchmark datasets and the actual data collected for the shore bridge lift gearbox. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is proved through the experimental validation in the paper. The main contributions of this paper are described as follows: the proposed AF-CDN can improve the diagnosis accuracy by 1.5–9.1% when compared with the normal CNN methods. The robustness of the diagnostic network can be significantly improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming might be mitigated if emissions were interrupted through carbon capture technologies, as there is a significant amount of comprehensive studies on them. An outline of the main gaps and trends of a technology is critical for further development. In this context, this study provides an overview of calcium looping carbon capture processes that have proven their potential and commercial viability. A bibliometric analysis is conducted on both Scopus and Web of Science database by seeking the keywords "calcium looping", "co2 capture", and "fluidized bed" in titles, abstracts, and keywords. Word selection was based on a list of relevant papers on the topic. These items of data have been processed and analyzed based on the number of publications and citations by emphasizing recent publication evolution, journal influence, the use of specific keywords, and co-citation. Results reveal that the European Union (EU) leads the rankings on the topic, followed by Canada. Keyword choice might have affected the number of citations. Recent studies used limestone as a sorbent and a dual fluidized bed reactor with a calciner or resistance depending on its size. Most studies are focused on technology scale-up. Although scale-up seems to be a priority, multiple studies are designed to assess the effect of steam generation and SO 2 on the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Honour-based violence has garnered significant attention within Canadian national discourses, especially within popular media and political rhetoric. Frequently conceptualized as a culturally specific form of violence embedded with patriarchal understandings of honour, these crimes have been mobilized within mainstream media to vilify certain ethnic and racial communities, particularly from the Global East. Relying on ethnocentric explanations, honour crimes are imagined as foreign phenomena that have been imported into Canada by immigrant populations who actively resist assimilation and fail to adopt liberal Western values of equality and freedom. This paper seeks to unsettle these very tropes surrounding the "honour crime" label using a postcolonial feminist lens. Drawing on the murder case of Aqsa Parvez, this paper calls into question the discursive strategies used to construct "honour crimes" and the racialized tropes that they perpetuate. Further, this paper examines how this label is mobilized to carry out "political work" and support certain political agendas, which include managing immigrant populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large portion of Canada is covered by wetlands; mapping and monitoring them is of great importance for various applications. In this regard, Remote Sensing (RS) technology has been widely employed for wetland studies in Canada over the past 45 years. This study evaluates meta-data to investigate the status and trends of wetland studies in Canada using RS technology by reviewing the scientific papers published between 1976 and the end of 2020 (300 papers in total). Initially, a meta-analysis was conducted to analyze the status of RS-based wetland studies in terms of the wetland classification systems, methods, classes, RS data usage, publication details (e.g., authors, keywords, citations, and publications time), geographic information, and level of classification accuracies. The deep systematic review of 128 peer-reviewed articles illustrated the rising trend in using multi-source RS datasets along with advanced machine learning algorithms for wetland mapping in Canada. It was also observed that most of the studies were implemented over the province of Ontario. Pixel-based supervised classifiers were the most popular wetland classification algorithms. This review summarizes different RS systems and methodologies for wetland mapping in Canada to outline how RS has been utilized for the generation of wetland inventories. The results of this review paper provide the current state-of-the-art methods and datasets for wetland studies in Canada and will provide direction for future wetland mapping research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unconventional oil and gas formations are abundant, have become an increasingly important part of the global energy supply, and are attracting increasing attention from the industry. Predicting key reservoir properties plays a significant role in both geological science and subsurface engineering workflows. With the advent of horizontal well drilling and multiple-stage hydraulic fracturing, the Montney Shale formation is one of the most promising and productive shale plays in Canada. However, very few academic papers discuss its in situ stress, reservoir pressure, and permeability, which are essential for the development of the Montney Shale. The objective of this study is to analyze the geo-stress, the pore pressure, and several key reservoir properties by using diagnostic fracture injection test (DFIT) data from the Montney Shale. One horizontal well from the Wapiti field has been analyzed with a set of DFIT data, and its results show that the general pressure and Gdp/dG responses from Well-A indicate a signature of height recession/transverse storage. In the study, the Tangent Line method, the Compliance method, and the Variable Compliance method have been applied to estimate the key reservoir properties. As a result, the Well-A DFIT analysis estimates that the closure pressure is ranging from 34.367 to 39.344 MPa, contributing to the stress gradient from 14.09 to 16.13 KPa/m for the formation. The pore pressure is ranging from 20.82 to 24.58 MPa, contributing to the pore pressure gradient from 8.54 to 10.07 KPa/m for the formation. The porosity is ranging from 3% to 6%. These reservoir properties are contoured cross the Montney Shale formation. Using the DFIT's numerical simulation and history matching, the reservoir permeability is 0.024 md, fracture length is 13.44 m, and fracture geometries are analyzed by different models. Moreover, the physics behind the DFIT are analyzed and discussed in detail. For the first time, three different analysis methods have been applied to estimate a series of key reservoir properties for the case wells in the Montney Shale formation. This approach can not only reduce the potential prediction error caused by a single method application but also increase the persuasiveness of the assessment and save time, ensuring the efficient implementation of engineering operations. Given the significance of quantifying in situ stress and reservoir pore pressure in unconventional hydrocarbon exploration and development, this study could help the operator to quickly understand the stress regimes, the fracture geometry, and the formation properties of the Montney Shale formation in the Wapiti field. Furthermore, the interpreted results demonstrated in this paper are adding substantial business value to the asset, especially in terms of improving the hydraulic fracturing design and, thus, accelerating the cashflow from production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how experiences with a previous pandemic, particularly HIV/AIDS, may have informed approaches to COVID-19, with a focus on sexual orientation. Method: The sample was drawn from an online survey of Canadians 55+ conducted in 2020, comprising 1143 persons (mean age = 67; 88 gay or bisexual (GB) men, 65 lesbian or bisexual (LB) women, 818 heterosexual women, and 172 heterosexual men). Respondents reported if they, or someone close to them, "had been affected by" one or more pandemics and whether COVID-19 led them to "think more about their prior epidemic/pandemic experiences" and/or feel they "couldn't handle it again". Correlated items reflecting feeling "they have been here before"; "prepared for what is happening"; and "like they needed to act or do something" formed a scale named "agentic familiarity". Results: About half of respondents reported thinking about their previous pandemic experience; about 5% reporting feeling like "they couldn't handle it again" with no gender or sexual orientation differences. Higher agentic familiarity scores were found for GB men and for those with experience with HIV/AIDS vs. other pandemics. Discussion: These outcomes speak to resilience and growth experienced by LGBT (and especially GB) persons through shared stigma and trauma—with implications for current pandemic experiences and future actions, like advance care planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial development of tidal stream energy is hampered by technical and financial challenges, and impeded by uncertainty about potential environmental effects that drive environmental risk assessments and permitting (consenting) processes. The effect of greatest concern for operational tidal stream energy devices is the potential for marine animals to collide with turbine blades, resulting in injury or death. Due to the turbulent and often turbid waters that frequently characterize tidal turbine sites, there is an absence of empirical evidence about collisions with marine animals. This paucity of observations often leads to risk-averse permitting decisions that further restrict the deployment of tidal energy devices that are needed to collect this evidence. This paper relies on the framework of stressors and receptors that is widely used in marine energy studies and outlines a stepwise probabilistic methodology that applies existing knowledge to further elucidate the risk to marine animals from operational tidal turbines. A case study using striped bass from the Bay of Fundy, Canada, accompanies the methodology, to partially demonstrate its application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forestry offsets, recognized for their diverse environmental and social co-benefits, are gaining a growing interest as nature-based solutions to combat climate change. Despite Canada's extensive forest resources, its potential for carbon credit remains largely untapped. This study aims to unveil the prevailing challenges in developing forestry offsets in Canada and propose potential solutions, drawing on insights from in-depth semi-structured interviews (SSIs) with 23 experts in the field. A qualitative thematic analysis highlighted 14 challenges under four major frequently discussed themes: methodological (37%), social (29%), economic (22%), and implementation challenges (12%). Our findings highlighted the urgency of addressing key obstacles, including the impermanent nature of forestry carbon offsets, substantial public knowledge gaps, uncertainties in the cost-effectiveness impacting financial viability, and the need for enhanced capacity for project implementation. Building on the discussions on the identified challenges, this study further presented a comprehensive analysis of the future directions for Canada, emphasizing the importance of addressing key methodological issues, enhancing public and Indigenous education and engagement, and leveraging advanced technologies and innovative approaches like ton-year accounting for economic viability. This paper delivers pivotal insights that have the potential to shape the direction and integrity of the forestry offset markets in both Canada and globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vineyards are agroecosystems of great importance in the Niagara Region, Ontario (Canada). Due to its microclimate, this region is projected to be impacted by climate change with temperature increases, changes in precipitation patterns in all seasons, and greater frequency of extreme weather events. The aim of this review paper is to summarize which seasonal changes are expected to occur in the Niagara Region and assess how such changes are likely to affect the main components of the vineyard ecosystem (i.e., soil, vines, invertebrates, and pathogens). It is expected that by 2080 the region will experience an increase in temperature in all four seasons; an increase in precipitation during the fall, winter, and spring; and a decrease in precipitation during summer months. Impacts of the projected changes will likely lead to vine water stress, yield loss, increases in incidents of diseases, increases in the spread of new pests, and changes in grape quality ultimately resulting in lower wine quality and/or production. Current management practices will need to be better understood and adaptive strategies introduced to enhance grape growers' ability to minimize these impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, Indigenous populations are disproportionately threatened by wildfire smoke and the associated adverse health impacts. This paper presents the results of a narrative review of 51 academic and related resources which explored protective action decision making during wildfire smoke events within Indigenous communities in Canada. A search of scholarly articles and other relevant sources yielded resources which were subject to thematic analysis and described in order to present a narrative review of current knowledge and gaps in research. A small and growing literature provides insights into protective actions taken by the general population during wildfire smoke events, but very little is known about protective actions taken by Indigenous peoples in Canada during wildfire smoke events. This lack of understanding hinders the capacity of decision makers to improve emergency management and minimize community health impacts of wildfire smoke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper overviews our recent results of energy market modeling, including The option pricing formula for a mean-reversion asset, variance and volatility swaps on energy markets, applications of weather derivatives on energy markets, pricing crude oil options using the Lévy processes, energy contracts modeling with delayed and jumped volatilities, applications of mean-reverting processes on Alberta energy markets, and alternatives to the Black-76 model for options valuation of futures contracts. We will also consider the clean renewable energy prospective in Canada, and, in particular, in Alberta and Calgary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Special Issue, "Featured Papers in Organometallic Chemistry", we report on the synthesis and characterization of [IPr#–PEPPSI], a new, well-defined, highly hindered Pd(II)–NHC precatalyst for cross-coupling reactions. This catalyst was commercialized in collaboration with MilliporeSigma, Burlington, ON, Canada (no. 925489) to provide academic and industrial researchers with broad access to reaction screening and optimization. The broad activity of [IPr#–PEPPSI] in cross-coupling reactions in a range of bond activations with C–N, C–O, C–Cl, C–Br, C–S and C–H cleavage is presented. A comprehensive evaluation of the steric and electronic properties is provided. Easy access to the [IPr#–PEPPSI] class of precatalysts based on modular pyridine ligands, together with the steric impact of the IPr# peralkylation framework, will facilitate the implementation of well-defined, air- and moisture-stable Pd(II)–NHC precatalysts in chemistry research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to understand organisational context and culture's influence on engaging First Nations People in Canada in work. Organisations have many opportunities to attract and engage Indigenous people, who have distinct worldviews and unique cultural customs not necessarily reflected in a North American workplace. Indigenous people also grapple with the historical and ongoing disparate impacts of settler colonialism that intersect colonial systems in most every area of their lives. This study worked within Indigenous research principles to encourage the articulation of deeply felt experiences and points of view of how First Nations people viewed and interacted with their work. The findings reviewed the experiences of twelve First Nations individuals working in non-Indigenous organisations. Through anti-colonial and critical organisational theoretical lenses, the study reveals how the context and culture that defined this sample of First Nations people shaped their views of what is essential to engaging them in the workplace. The findings illustrate what First Nations people would like to see in a workplace culture, what they feel needs to be recognised as part of their unique Indigenous context, and the approaches and practises that are most important for engaging them. Understanding the effect of context and culture on positive work interactions provides new information for organisational leaders, managers, diversity officers, and Human Resource practitioners to better support First Nations engagement in the workplace. It may also offer an approach to better engaging other culturally diverse organisational groups. The results add value to the fields of critical theory, anti-colonial theory, critical management studies, and Indigenous wholistic theory. The results further the discussion on the processes of decolonization and the recognition of Indigenous and minority rights in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to resources can take many forms: digital access via an onsite network, through an external site, website, etc., or physical access to labs, machines, information repositories, etc. Whether access to resources is digital or physical, it must be allowed, denied, revoked, or disabled using robust and coherent access control (AC) models. What makes the process of AC more complicated is the emergence of digital transformation technologies and pervasive systems such as the internet of things (IoT) and industry 4.0 systems, especially with the growing demand for transparency in users' interaction with various applications and services. Controlling access and ensuring security and cybersecurity in IoT and industry 4.0 environments is a challenging task. This is due to the increasing distribution of resources and the massive presence of cyber-threats and cyber-attacks. To ensure the security and privacy of users in industry sectors, we need an advanced AC metamodel that defines all the required components and attributes to derive various instances of AC models and follow the new and increasing demand for AC requirements due to continuous technology upgrades. Due to the several limitations in the existing metamodels and their inability to answer the current AC requirements, we have developed a Hierarchical, Extensible, Advanced, Dynamic (HEAD) AC metamodel with significant features that overcome the existing metamodels' limitations. In this paper, the HEAD metamodel is employed to specify the needed AC policies for two case studies inspired by the computing environment of Institut Technologique de Maintenance Industrielle (ITMI)-Sept-Îles, QC, Canada; the first is for ITMI's local (non-IoT) environment and the second for ITMI's IoT environment. For each case study, the required AC model is derived using the domain-specific language (DSL) of HEAD metamodel, then Xtend notation (an expressive dialect of Java) is utilized to generate the needed Java code which represents the concrete instance of the derived AC model. At the system level, to get the needed AC rules, Cypher statements are generated and then injected into the Neo4j database to represent the Next Generation Access Control (NGAC) policy as a graph. NGAC framework is used as an enforcement point for the rules generated by each case study. The results show that the HEAD metamodel can be adapted and integrated into various local and distributed environments. It can serve as a unified framework, answer current AC requirements and follow policy upgrades. To demonstrate that the HEAD metamodel can be implemented on other platforms, we implement an administrator panel using VB.NET and SQL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presented a two-dimensional, well-balanced hydrodynamic and sediment transport model based on the solutions of variable-density shallow-water equations (VDSWEs) and the Exner equation for bed change for simulating sediment transport in unsteady flows. Those equations are solved in a coupled way by the first-order Godunov-type finite volume method. The Harten–Lax–van Leer–Contact (HLLC) Riemann solver is extended to find the local Riemann fluxes to maintain the exact balance between the momentum term and the bed slope term. A well-balanced scheme is superior to an unbalanced scheme to minimize numerical dispersion as demonstrated by the synthetic standing contact-discontinuity test case. Following this, the model is employed to simulate two laboratory experiments and a field case, the 1996 Lake Ha! Ha! flood event in Canada. The results of water surface elevations and bed surface profiles agree well with the measurements. The accuracy and robustness of the numerical schemes make the model a good candidate for practical engineering applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The labour market for care professionals has experienced significant changes, resulting in critical shortages globally. Nurses represent the largest share of health workers worldwide; nonetheless, an estimated 13 million more nurses will be needed over the next 10 years. Prior to the pandemic, the domestic supply of nurses in Canada had not kept pace with the ever-increasing demand for services. Pre-pandemic age- and needs-based forecasting models have estimated shortages in an excess of 100,000 nurses nationwide by 2030. While COVID-19 has accelerated the demand for and complexity of service requirements, it has also resulted in losses of healthcare professionals due to an increased sick leave, unprecedented burnout and retirements. This paper examines key factors that have contributed to nursing supply issues in Canada over time and provides examples of policy responses to the present shortage facing the healthcare system. To provide adequate care, the nursing workforce must be stabilized and—more importantly—recognized as critical to the health of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems play a crucial role in either increasing or decreasing the risk of airborne disease transmission. High ventilation, for instance, is a common method used to control and reduce the infection risk of airborne diseases such as COVID-19. On the other hand, high ventilation will increase energy consumption and cost. This paper proposes an optimal HVAC controller to assess the trade-off between energy consumption and indoor infection risk of COVID-19. To achieve this goal, a nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC) is designed to control the HVAC systems of a university building to minimize the risk of COVID-19 transmission while reducing building energy consumption. The NMPC controller uses dynamic models to predict future outputs while meeting system constraints. To this end, a set of dynamic physics-based models are created to capture heat transfer and conservation of mass, which are used in the NMPC controller. Then, the developed models are experimentally validated by conducting experiments in the ETLC building at the University of Alberta, Canada. A classroom in the building is equipped with a number of sensors to measure indoor and outdoor environmental parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, and CO 2 concentration. The validation results show that the model can predict room temperature and CO 2 concentration by 0.8%, and 2.4% mean absolute average errors, respectively. Based on the validated models, the NMPC controller is designed to calculate the optimal airflow and supply air temperature for every 15 min. The results for real case studies show that the NMPC controller can reduce the infection risk of COVID-19 transmission below 1% while reducing energy consumption by 55% when compared to the existing building controller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When there is direct competition for a position of power (promotion, elected office, etc.), competitors are tempted to cheat to increase their chances of winning. If they do so successfully, then how they rationalize their cheating can determine how they treat the losers of the competition. In this paper, we explore how the winners of a promotion tournament treat the losers, using a two stage laboratory experiment run in Canada and the United Arab Emirates. In the first stage, subjects compete to earn the role of the dictator in a dictator game, which takes place in the second stage. We vary whether or not subjects can cheat during the competition. The results of the experiment can be summarized as follows: (1) cheating significantly increases altruism in some tournament winners, (2) winners who cheat the most are significantly less altruistic than winners who cheated only a little, (3) there are significant differences in cheating behavior across the two populations, and (4) cheating behavior can be at least partially attributed to differences in intelligence and beliefs across the two populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence-based guidance on the management of a positive human papilloma virus (HPV) test and to provide guidance around screening and HPV testing for specific patient populations. The guideline was developed by a working group in collaboration with the Gynecologic Oncology Society of Canada (GOC), Society of Colposcopists of Canada (SCC), and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer. The literature informing these guidelines was obtained through a systematic review of relevant literature by a multi-step search process led by an information specialist. The literature was reviewed up to July 2021 with manual searches of relevant national guidelines and more recent publications. The quality of the evidence and strength of recommendations were developed using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) framework. The intended users of this guideline include primary care providers, gynecologists, colposcopists, screening programs, and healthcare facilities. The implementation of the recommendations will ensure an optimum implementation of HPV testing with a focus on the management of positive results. Recommendations for appropriate care for underserved and marginalized groups are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American lobster (Homarus americanus) is the most valuable seafood on Canada's Atlantic coast, generating over CAD 800 million in export revenue alone for New Brunswick. However, labor shortages plague the lobster industry, and lobsters must be processed quickly to maintain food safety and quality assurance standards. This paper proposes a lobster estimation orientation approach using a convolutional neural network model, with the aim of guiding the FANUC LR Mate 200 iD robotic arm for lobster manipulation. To validate this technique, four state-of-the-art object detection algorithms were evaluated on an American lobster images dataset: YOLOv7, YOLOv7-tiny, YOLOV4, and YOLOv3. In comparison to other versions, YOLOv7 demonstrated a superior performance with an F1-score of 95.2%, a mean average precision (mAP) of 95.3%, a recall rate of 95.1%, and 111 frames per second (fps). Object detection models were deployed on the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX, with YOLOv7-tiny achieving the highest fps rate of 25.6 on this platform. Due to its outstanding performance, YOLOv7 was selected for developing lobster orientation estimation. This approach has the potential to improve efficiency in lobster processing and address the challenges faced by the industry, including labor shortages and compliance with food safety and quality standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since individual neural networks have limited deep expressiveness and effectiveness, many learning frameworks face difficulties in the availability and balance of sample selection. As a result, in change detection, it is difficult to upgrade the hit rate of a high-performance model on both positive and negative pixels. Therefore, supposing that the sacrificed components coincide perfectly with the important evaluation objectives, such as positives, it would lose more than gain. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a multi-visual collaborative deep network (MV-CDN) served by three collaborative network members that consists of three subdivision approaches, the CDN with one collaborator (CDN-C), CDN with two collaborators (CDN-2C), and CDN with three collaborators (CDN-3C). The purpose of the collaborator is to re-evaluate the feature elements in the network transmission, and thus to translate the group-thinking into a more robust field of vision. We use three sets of public double-temporal hyperspectral images taken by the AVIRIS and HYPERION sensors to show the feasibility of the proposed schema. The comparison results have confirmed that our proposed schema outperforms the existing state-of-the-art algorithms on the three tested datasets, which demonstrates the broad adaptability and progressiveness of the proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The import demand for energy resources, including liquefied natural gas (LNG), has been steadily increasing in the Asia-Pacific region. Australia, the Middle East (Qatar), the Russian Federation, and the U.S. are the major players who compete strategically to capture this ever-growing market for LNG. The objective of this paper is to examine the potential for Canada's entry into this market as another LNG exporter and what impact that can have on the existing suppliers. Using a game-theoretic LNG export competition model, we explore the conditions under which Canada can make a profitable entry. We also investigate the effect of Canada's entry on the profitability of the four incumbent exporters. Employing a multi-leader Stackelberg model, we found that Canada's entry could be a Pareto superior outcome under certain conditions because it benefits all competing firms and consumers. Further, Canada's entry into the LNG export market always helps the low-cost incumbent firms by increasing their output and profit. However, the high-cost incumbent firms' output falls, while their profit may increase or decrease depending on the unit cost and market size parameters. With differential export costs between Canada and the U.S., the latter has an incentive to act strategically to affect the entrance of the former. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]