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Abstract: This study explores the history of excursions, tourism, and resorts at Cooking Lake from 1894 to 1938. Cooking Lake was considered Edmonton’s favourite resort for summer recreation and tourism in the early 1900s, yet its recreational landscape history is largely obscure. Analysis centres the questions: why was Cooking Lake the site chosen for these activities and what drew people back to the lake for repeated visitation? The thesis addresses these questions related to private and public views of the landscape. I argue that recreation and leisure on Cooking Lake allowed individuals to feel connected to the place and to each other, encouraging them to dwell in the landscape as a living community of relationships that then formed a land ethic in the Beaver Hills. Cooking Lake’s tourism and resort offerings developed to promote excursions for regional visitors. Local business owners, the Grand Trunk Pacific railway, and resort developments facilitated the transformation of the lake into a favourite destination for summer amusement and entertainment. The Koney Island Club initiated early hunting and boating on the lake followed by cottage sales. With families and visitors of various classes spending weekends, holidays, and summers at the lake, Cooking Lake gained a seasonal tourism identity that was influenced by the rise of weekend excursions, train tourism, and a carnivalesque ‘anti-culture.’ These practices were also seen in the expansion of private cottages and subdivision communities where visitors enjoyed the lake and experienced the local leisure and recreational culture. Clubs and camps emerged to provide activities for groups, including the YMCA, military regiments, and Girl Guides, that fostered belonging and further enforced place identity ideals of the lake. The development of the Lakeview resort and dance hall at South Cooking by 1930 was the culmination of a recreational tourism node. Archival newspapers provide a basis for engaging with the historic context of Cooking Lake’s popularity. Additionally, the voices and perspectives of visitors to the lake are brought into analysis through the use of archived oral history interview transcripts and popular community histories. The interdisciplinary analytical framework of this study incorporates concepts from history, philosophy, and anthropology. The production of place identity and landscape commodification is examined through understandings of place and recreational development. Martin Heidegger, Tim Ingold, and Catherine Palmer’s conceptions of dwelling within a landscape form the theoretical basis for understanding social interaction at Cooking Lake. The study aids in understanding excursions, landscape commodification, tourism nodes, society and communities of resorts, and place identity in a central lake district east of Edmonton, Alberta.

Background: Dental articulation is a method of approximating the patient's mandibular motion in order to allow for analysis of dental relations and fabrication of appliances. The most prevalent method used in teaching institutions is the semi-adjustable articulator. Several of these instruments claim interchangeability without loss of clinical accuracy and studies have supported this claim. No studies to date have assessed the interchangeability of the articulators in any relation other than hinge axis closure. Assessment of the accuracy of interchangeability of calibrated articulators will inform the profession of this parameter of articulation and allow for informed decisions on whether or not to rely on interchangeability in analysis and fabrication. Objectives: To examine the ability of an operator to set condylar inclination repeatedly on a semi-adjustable articulator. To assess the utility of a new measurement jig to assess the calibration status of articulators and to measure sample of instruments repeatability in hinge axis closure and then in measured lateral excursion to assess eccentric interchangeability. Method: 78 Unused Whip Mix 2240 and 71, 1 year-old Whip Mix 2240 semi-adjustable articulators were placed in a custom made measurement jig following calibration. Condylar inclination was evaluated with a digital angle meter and gauge blocks were utilized as reference points to measure the position (X and Y axes) of the test gauge and a height meter was used to measure the vertical (Z axis) in hinge axis closure position and in a measured lateral excursion. Results: The data suggests that: (1) A single operator was able to program the horizontal condylar inclination of the Whip Mix 2240 with 95% confidence within one degree of his target value. (2) A prescribed lateral movement on a series of new articulators was able to position a specific measurement point (maxillary first bicuspid facial cusp tip) in the same spatial location within tolerance reported for hinge axis closure of calibrated instruments. (3) A prescribed lateral movement on a series of used articulators positions a specific measurement point (maxillary first bicuspid facial cusp tip) in the same spatial location within tolerance reported for hinge axis closure of calibrated instruments (4) 88.5% of 1 year‑old instruments verified as interchangeable with the 2245 check gauge. (5) A calibrated Whip Mix 2240 can be eccentrically positioned with 95% confidence within +/‑ 0.2mm vertically and +/‑ 0.1mm horizontally.

Propagation of functional or pathological ionic disturbances in biological systems plays an important role in normal regulatory mechanisms and in disease. Potassium diffusion in brain tissue is involved in spreading excitation. Models of this type of phenomenon often take the form of a reaction-diffusion system in one spatial dimension with continuous dynamic variables. Examined here is propagation in three spatial dimensions through a network of discrete dynamic elements coupled by diffusion. Conditions permissive of pulse origination and propagation can be determined analytically for systems in one spatial dimension. However, in three spatial dimensions or in dynamic systems containing discontinuities, explicit solutions may not exist. Instead, the local dynamics of the excitable system at a point in space are analyzed. The effective diffusive flux or current at a point is interpreted as a slowly varying parameter. The bifurcation structure of the dynamics with respect to this parameter and the effect of waveform on the time course of the parameter are examined. Propagation results when an excursion at a point produces a diffusion current sufficient to move its resting neighbor above some threshold value. The formation of a pulse back depends on the stability of equilibria of the local dynamics. Propagation in some cases may also depend on the geometry of the wavefront. Predictions are verified by numerical simulation using a software package developed by the author for this dissertation. A three dimensional lattice allows for description of the local dynamics at nodal elements and diffusion between elements and throughout the lattice. Three models are studied using the method developed. First, the Fitzhugh-Nagumo equation is used to illustrate the method. Second, the continuous Nelkin-Yaari model, describing spreading excitation in brain tissue, is examined. Third, a novel model of non-synaptic pulse propagation in hippocampal slices is developed and analyzed. Investigation of this new model shows that potassium wave behavior in the CA1 region can be explained using descriptions of only two phenomena: action potential spike dynamics in response to elevated potassium and simple sink functions that allow for the formation of a wave backside and refractory time.

The purpose of the investigation was two fold: first, to analyze the school excursion as a teaching and learning aid; and second, to develop a suggested school-excursion program for the social studies in the junior high schools of Dallas, base upon the findings and evaluations reported by educational observers and by experienced users of excursions.