Alberta Academic Review最新文献

{"title":"Role of Immature Red Blood Cells in Neonatal Immunity","authors":"Brandi S. Goddard, J. Grewal, Lai Xu, G. Dunsmore, S. Elahi","doi":"10.29173/aar43","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar43","url":null,"abstract":"Newborns are highly susceptible to diseases. Infections such as Bordetella Pertussis (i.e. whooping cough) and Listeria (i.e. food poisoning) can result in the death of neonates while causing little harm to older children and adults. Although previously attributed to an underdeveloped immune system, recent research has shown that this susceptibility is due to the high presence of immature red blood cells or CD71+ cells. These cells possess immunosuppressive properties. By interfering with the function of other immune cells, they can prevent an effective pathogenic immune response. In this study, the changes in the amount of CD71+ cells were observed throughout the different age points of mice as well as in mice infected with Bordetella pertussis and Listeria. This study aimed to gain a better understanding of the development of the immune system as to better aid neonates in fighting infection. Flow cytometry was used to determine the amount of CD71+ cells in the spleens of mice at different age points. The results showed that overall the amount of CD71+ cells decreased as the age of the mouse increased, paralleling the decrease in susceptibility of the immune system. Furthermore, the change in CD71+ cells was also observed in the spleens of mice infected with Bordetella pertussis and mice infected with Listeria. There was no significant change for the Listeria infected mice, as CD71+ cells play no immunological role in fighting Listeria, an intracellular bacteria. However, there was a significant increase in CD71+ cells in Bordetella Pertussis infected mice since this infection was extracellular. These results show that CD71+ cells react differently to different infections and play a different immunological role in the presence of different pathogens. Furthermore, the results shows a direct correlation between age and the amount of CD71+ cells present in the spleen. The changes in the amount of CD71+ cells was most likely due to different pathological conditions and requirements at different ages.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126133746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Nature of Decision-Making: Human Behavior vs. Machine Learning","authors":"Keeya Beausoleil, Craig S. Chapman, Taher Jafferjee, Nathan J. Wispinski, Scott A. Stone","doi":"10.29173/aar49","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar49","url":null,"abstract":"Artificial agents have often been compared to humans in their ability to categorize images or play strategic games. However, comparisons between human and artificial agents are frequently based on the overall performance on a particular task, and not necessarily on the specifics of how each agent behaves. In this study, we directly compared human behaviour with a reinforcement learning (RL) model. Human participants and an RL agent navigated through different grid world environments with high- and low- value targets. The artificial agent consisted of a deep neural network trained to map pixel input of a 27x27 grid world into cardinal directions using RL. An epsilon greedy policy was used to maximize reward. Behaviour of both agents was evaluated on four different conditions. Results showed both humans and RL agents consistently chose the higher reward over a lower reward, demonstrating an understanding of the task. Though both humans and RL agents consider movement cost for reward, the machine agent considers the movement costs more, trading off the effort with reward differently than humans. We found humans and RL agents both consider long-term rewards as they navigate through the world, yet unlike humans, the RL model completely disregards limitations in movements (e.g. how many total moves received). Finally, we rotated pseudorandom grid arrangements to study how decisions change with visual differences. We unexpectedly found that the RL agent changed its behaviour due to visual rotations, yet remained less variable than humans. Overall, the similarities between humans and the RL agent shows the potential RL agents have of being an adequate model of human behaviour. Additionally, the differences between human and RL agents suggest improvements to RL methods that may improve their performance. This research compares the human mind with artificial intelligence, creating the opportunity for future innovation.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122313370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Gunshot Activity in Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area","authors":"Keelin Henderson-Pekarik, R. Hedley, Justin Johnson, J. Kennedy, E. Bayne","doi":"10.29173/aar44","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar44","url":null,"abstract":"In the past, monitoring hunting behavior has been limited to self-reported numbers. However, the ability of autonomous recording units to monitor soundscapes may make them suitable for assessing spatio-temporal shooting patterns. Our goal for this project was to find out if it is possible to use acoustic monitoring to track human activity, and if there were differences in seasonal or daily shooting intensities. We hypothesized that shooting intensity would decrease from September to November and from the afternoon till morning due to people being less likely to go shooting in cooler temperatures. A grid of 91 ARU’s were deployed between September 2nd and November 30th, 2018 in Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area. They were set to record continuously between sunrise and sunset with some recording during the night as well. We selected a random subset of 30 minute recordings, visualized them using spectrograms; visual representations of sound with time on the x-axis and frequency on the y-axis, and counted the gunshots in each. We compared differences in gunshot detections between months and different times of day using analysis of variance (ANOVA). There were no statistical differences found in seasonal or daily shooting intensities. One reason for this may be that sample sizes were low, due to the time needed to manually process recordings. We demonstrated that ARU’s can be used to provide us with an accurate way of assessing shooting patterns and therefore, be useful for monitoring other human behaviors such as detecting poachers, or assessing compliance with hunting laws.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"250 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124759528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The World of Environmental Management","authors":"Tanika Desai, D. Patriquin, B. Jones","doi":"10.29173/aar39","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar39","url":null,"abstract":"As the City of Red Deer continues to grow, it is necessary that the urban development do not disturb Hazlett Lake and the plant and animal species in the area. For the prevention of wildlife/habitat disturbance, water pollution and weed evasion, a monitoring program was implemented. In any environmental management project, there are three stages of steps that must be completed. Firstly, before any of the field work begins, safety protocols, geographic information system (GIS), and environmental policies must be considered. The GIS is a very helpful tool in this project because it is a monitoring program and the changes to the wetland can be seen over time. Next, the field work begins. With Hazlett Lake, water sampling, sediment sampling, vegetation and wildlife assessments and noting the water level are all crucial tests that have to be completed each year the program is in place to maintain the wetland’s overall health and track any observed changes. Once the results from the lab arrive, they are compared to government guidelines to determine if the wetland’s health is being maintained and if any preventive measures need to be taken. The results are also compared to previous years to determine if any changes occurred. It was found that fluorene in the sediments and pH in the water were higher than guidelines. These areas will be especially monitored with care to ensure the wetland is conserved.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129814483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perception of Unfamiliar English Phonemes by Native Mandarin Speakers","authors":"Brandi S. Goddard, Gabriela Holko, Matthew C. Kelley, S. J. Perry, Benjamin V. Tucker","doi":"10.29173/aar46","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar46","url":null,"abstract":"In second language acquisition, speech sounds, or phonemes, not present in a learner’s native language often pose an extra challenge for speech production. When hearing one of these unfamiliar phonemes, the learner either maps it to a similar native phoneme, perceives it as a completely foreign sound, or does not perceive it as speech at all. In the first case, the learner is unable to perceive a difference between the unfamiliar phoneme and the native phoneme to which it is mapped. This mapping difficulty potentially creates problems for the learner during word recognition. The present research investigated the extent to which English phonemes absent from the Mandarin phonological inventory impact processing of native Mandarin speakers in an auditory lexical decision task. Results of this research will expand the understanding of second language perception, especially within the context of auditory lexical decision tasks. A list of ten phonemes—/ɪ/, /æ/, /ʊ/, /ɛ/, /v/, /z/, /ʒ/, /ɵ/, /ð/, /ʤ/—present in the English phonological inventory but absent from that of Mandarin were identified as unfamiliar to native Mandarin speakers. Data from the Massive Auditory Lexical Decision (MALD) database, in which participants decided whether recorded utterances were English words or made-up words, were utilized. The effects of the proportion of unfamiliar phonemes, proportion of unfamiliar vowels, and proportion of unfamiliar consonants on reaction time, representative of processing difficulty, were then calculated using statistical techniques. It was found that the proportion of all unfamiliar phonemes in an utterance had no significant effect on the reaction time of the native Mandarin speakers. However, when the list of unfamiliar phonemes was divided into vowels and consonants, a greater proportion of unfamiliar vowels was noticed to increase reaction time, while a greater proportion of unfamiliar consonants was found to decrease reaction time. Further research in this area is required to determine a concrete explanation for these results. Interestingly, when the same analysis was performed on the data of native English speakers, similar results were observed. This may reflect a common language processing mechanism in second language learners and native speakers.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128645963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Preliminary Study on the Engineering Properties of Clay Soil","authors":"M. Hoque, A. Palat, M. Hendry","doi":"10.29173/aar47","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar47","url":null,"abstract":"Karl Von Terzaghi, the father of soil mechanics, says, “There is no other soil which is as problematic as clay soil”. In many places across the badlands of Alberta, clay soil is known to be troublesome and cause issues with buildings and infrastructure. Climate conditions, erosion and weathering can cause the unstable clay soil to create landslides, which consequently damage many of these structures. For this reason, engineers are sent to these sites to monitor and collect data over a period of time to compare and contrast their results. The purpose of this study is to learn and understand the properties of clay soils through different classification and index tests. Two clay soils, kaolinite and bentonite, were tested for their properties and their results were compared. Some of the tests performed include the hydrometer analysis, pycnometer analysis, and atterberg limits. The hydrometer analysis is the process in determining the size of silts and clays (when sieves cannot be used). The pycnometer analysis is used to determine the specific gravity of a substance. Atterberg limits are used to determine the water content at which a soil starts to shift from liquid, plastic or semi-solid. These tests were done in two different solutions - one containing distilled water and one with saline water - to understand the effect of the solution on the liquid and plastic limits. The goal of this study was achieved and the results can be used to understand more about the engineering properties of clay soils and apply these studies to future field work. By understanding these properties, further research can be done to discover long term solutions to landslides caused by the problematic soil.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123799960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Manual versus automatic identification of black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) vocalizations","authors":"Brandi S. Goddard, Vala Ingolfsson, C. Montenegro, C. Sturdy","doi":"10.29173/aar48","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar48","url":null,"abstract":"One time-consuming aspect of bioacoustic research is identifying vocalizations from long audio recordings. SongScope (version 4.1.5. Wildlife Acoustics, Inc.) is a computer program capable of developing acoustic recognizers that can identify wildlife vocalizations. The goal of the current study was to compare the effectiveness of manual identification of black-capped chickadee vocalizations to identification by SongScope recognizers. A recognizer was developed for each main chickadee vocalization by providing previously annotated audio of chickadees. Six chickadees (three male, three female) were recorded in one-hour intervals with and without anthropogenic (i.e., man-made) noise to provide a variety of samples to test the recognizer. These recordings were analyzed via the recognizer and two human coders, with an additional third coder reviewing a random subset of recordings for reliability. Strong agreement was found between the human coders, κ = 0.76, p < 0.00. Agreement between human coders and the recognizer was moderate for fee songs, κ = 0.46, p < 0.00, and strong for fee-bee songs, κ = 0.77, p < 0.00, as well as for chick-a-dee calls, κ = 0.82, p < 0.00. Results showed that male chickadees produced more tseet calls in silence and females produced more gargle calls during noise. No differences were found in vocalizations based on time of day. Our observations also suggest that the chick-a-dee recognizer was capable of identifying gargle and tseet calls along with the intended chick-a-dee calls. Overall, SongScope was effective at identifying fee-bee songs and chick-a-dee calls, but not as effective for identifying fee songs. These recognizers can allow for faster acoustic analyses (by approximately four times) and be continuously improved for greater accuracy.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127310261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Optimal Zwitterionic Surfactant Slug for an Improved Oil Recovery in Oil Wet Carbonate Rocks","authors":"M. Barth, B. Nwani, Yosamin Esanullah","doi":"10.29173/aar45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar45","url":null,"abstract":"Of recent, there has been research and development in the technologies/techniques required to meet the ever-growing energy demand in the world. Oil is a major source of energy which is contained in over 50% of carbonate reservoirs. The oil/mixed wettability of carbonate rocks makes it technically challenging to recover the needed oil. The process of crude oil recovery has three different stages primary, secondary and tertiary recovery. Tertiary recovery is also known as enhanced oil recovery or EOR. EOR includes the use of surfactants to reduce the interfacial tension between a hydrocarbon and brine, thus suspending them both in a microemulsion. Surfactant performance can be affected by multiple variables, including brine salinity, surfactant concentration, and type of hydrocarbon. A petroleum engineer must take all variables into consideration when selecting a surfactant to make sure that its efficiency is as high as possible, especially because the use of surfactants is costly. \u0000 In this work, a chembetaine zwitter ionic surfactant of two different concentrations are evaluated at various synthetic formation brine salinities for their favourable wettability alteration and interfacial tension reduction in oil-wet carbonate- Silurian Dolomite. For the evaluation, fluid-fluid and rock-fluid analysis are carried out to select the optimal surfactant concentration and brine salinity with the greatest improved oil recovery potential. \u0000 Results are indicative that the surfactant at the two concentrations studied is compatible at the ranges of salinities evaluated. However, from the fluid-fluid analysis, there was no ultra-low interfacial tension that is needed for oil mobilization. More so, the rock-fluid analysis shows that the surfactant is not able to alter the wettability of oil-wet rocks favourably. The optimal surfactant slug for the greatest oil recovery, in this case, would be expected at 0.5% surfactant concentration in 10,000 ppm synthetic formation brine salinity. This study, therefore, serves as a guide for the design of optimal surfactant slug in oil-wet carbonate cores requires to reduce non-productive time, prevent reservoir damage and therefore improve recovery.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114471389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mine Waste: Consolidation Behaviour of Precious Metal Tailings","authors":"Brandi S. Goddard, M. Figueroa, Ahlam Abdulnabi, N. Beier","doi":"10.29173/aar41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar41","url":null,"abstract":"All mine processing plants generate waste. These byproducts include waste rock and a fine-grained slurry referred to as ‘tailings’ (Beier, 2015). The primary objective of treating tailings is to remove water, to enhance strength and stiffness (Sobkowicz and Morgenstern, 2009). Studying the geotechnical properties of tailings is essential to understand consolidation behaviour and facilitate land reclamation. Moreover, the geochemical characteristics of tailings should be examined to examine the potential onset of acid rock drainage (ARD). Acid rock drainage occurs when pH falls below 4, which can cause metal heavy leaching as they become present in solution. This study investigates both the geotechnical and geochemical behaviour of precious metal tailings in atmospheric conditions. The geochemical parameters of interest are pH, redox potential (Eh) and electric conductivity (Ec). The Large Strain Consolidation test (LSC) was implemented to characterize the compressibility behaviour of the sample. Accordingly, the amount of deformation that the tailings underwent was measured as they were loaded to different effective stresses. In addition, the hydraulic conductivity or the velocity of water flow was measured at the end of each consolidation step. Furthermore, the chemical parameters were evaluated using standardized probes. The tailings exhibit high compressibility during self-weight consolidation due to a combination of high initial void ratio and a high initial saturated hydraulic conductivity. In addition, hydraulic conductivity decreases nonlinearly as the samples are loaded because loading reduces the pore volume. The permeability decreased two orders of magnitude during loading, from 2.14E-05 m/s to 1.60E-7 m/s. From the geochemical point of view, there is no significant change in pH as the tailings consolidate. In this scenario, the presence of calcium carbonate has an acid-neutralizing capacity. Moreover, there is a slight increase in both redox potential and electric conductivity due to exposure to the atmosphere. The increasing trend of redox potential had a slope of 10 mV per day. While the slope of electric conductivity was 9 mS/cm per day.","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130094100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Reading Tutor for Low-Literacy Adults","authors":"Sarah Amaneddine, Tyler Heise, Jill Zheng, W. Wong, Shuonan Pei, Carrie Demmans Epp","doi":"10.29173/aar38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.29173/aar38","url":null,"abstract":"According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the mean proficiency in literacy among adults in the US and Canada is at Level 2. Adults at this level cannot process dense texts, eliminate irrelevant information, perform multi-step operations, or evaluate the reliability of a source. The Reading Tutor is a website that was created to help low-literacy adults improve their English. It will be free to use the website that is personalized to the literacy level of every user. Creating a website allows people to increase their literacy levels without facing the stigma that comes with attending a class in person. Adults are inclined to improve their English because it often affects their career potential, socio-economic status, and health. The Reading Tutor has two major components: the passages and the scenarios. Passages are stories that the user can read and answer questions about. Scenarios are plots with questions that the user must answer to move on. In recent work, the information for each scenario was organized into spreadsheets to simplify the process of entering data into the code. \u0000 The system architecture consists of HTML, CSS, Javascript, MySQL, Python, and Django. The newest development in this project was the improvement of the user intake experience. Before starting the passages and scenarios, the website collects information from each adult. The user \"interests\" pages are the latest additions to the site and these pages ask about the user’s hobbies. That data will then be used to incorporate their interests into later questions. It was important to add this feature to the website because relevance is a motivator for the user demographic. The next steps for the website are to log the user’s interests into the database. Future enhancements also include the creation of more scenarios to accommodate to the different user interests. \u0000 ","PeriodicalId":239812,"journal":{"name":"Alberta Academic Review","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122374638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}