HARVEST
University of Saskatchewan's Repository for Research, Scholarship, and Artistic Work
Welcome to HARVEST, the repository for research, scholarship, and artistic work created by the University of Saskatchewan community. Browse our collections below or find out more and submit your work.
Communities in HARVEST
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recent Submissions
Social Media Influencers and Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges
(2024-07-24) Do, Thi Hai Ha; Murphy, William H.; Zhang, David; Teucher, Ulrich
This study examines social media influencers’ (SMIs) perceptions of the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in advancing their relationships with followers, their views of the opportunities/dangers of AI in assuring their authenticity, and their perspectives towards virtual SMIs in terms of affecting the future of SMIs. Adopting a qualitative phenomenological approach, the study explores how SMIs’ (a) perceive AI as a tool to help SMI activities, (b) perceive AI as a positive/negative effect on relationships with followers, (c) perceive virtual SMIs (non-human) as having an effect on the future of SMIs. Data was collected through 17 semi-structured interviews with Canadian SMIs in various fields.
This study shows that AI is perceived to offer significant opportunities for SMIs including improved data analytics, enhanced connectedness, and strengthening SMIs’ relationships with their followers. However, SMIs are concerned about dangers of AI, including loss of expressing ones’ true self and loss of honesty with their followers. Collectively, participants indicated concerns about their authenticity when AI is used. Furthermore, virtual SMIs are perceived as a threat to SMIs, making it difficult for SMIs to compete on brand deals but also to possibly replace SMIs in the future. Additionally, this study reveals practical implications for SMIs by providing insights into opportunities and challenges being faced in the context of AI.
A Comprehensive Study on Quality Aspects and Industry Perspective in Backporting
(2024-07-24) TASNIM, JARIN; Roy, Dr. Chanchal K.; Schneider, Dr. Kevin A.; Roy, Dr. Chanchal K.; Schneider, Dr. Kevin A.; Roy, Dr. Banani; Rochan, Dr. Mrigank
Code quality assurance has emerged as a well-established pillar to ensure effective software development
and maintenance. Large and intricate software systems (e.g., Linux, Adobe Reader, Collabora, etc.) often
require developers to version source code and manage multiple stable releases simultaneously. In general,
prior stable releases are maintained by Backporting, which refers to applying changes taken from a newer
release to an old release. In such cases, software quality assurance can be challenging for old stable releases
for a variety of reasons. First, older releases often differ from newer (upstream) releases in terms of code
dependency, infrastructure, architecture, and maintenance strategy. Second, backport maintenance is often
not reviewed consistently to prioritize upstream development. Lastly, as software releases evolve with con-
tinuous maintenance, developers often fail to maintain code in accordance with essential quality standards.
As a result, poor-quality code and design choices can emerge in stable releases, affecting their reliability and
stability. Although researchers have extensively scrutinized the quality assurance practice and paradigm in
upstream versions, how code evolves and quality issues arise in the backporting procedure is yet to be ex-
plored. Thus, to fill this gap in existing research work, we analyzed how software quality deviates in terms of
size, complexity, and coupling throughout backporting. We found that as software releases evolve, backports
are responsible for 11.5% and 12.3% of quality degradation and improvement, respectively. Furthermore,
backporting can significantly affect the complexity and size of old releases. In our second study, we strive
to observe when and why technical debt (fine-grained quality issues) arises as stable releases evolve through
backporting. Our exploration reveals that the early-phase of Apache releases and the mid-phase of Eclipse
and Python releases are more prone to technical debts in the release life cycle. Moreover, we found develop-
ers’ high workload and low exposure can lead to new technical debts in stable releases. Lastly, in our third
study, we explored expert opinions to get a non-biased, reliable view of developers’ needs and challenges to
ensure code quality in the backporting process. We asked 38 experts and analyzed their challenges to ensure
code quality for the backporting process. This study reveals the several subjective factors behind the failed
quality assessment in backporting practice, including code comprehension, lack of efficient decision-making
standards, lack of testing guidelines, scarcity of organization and tool support, etc.
FUNCTION-VALUED TRAITS FOR CHARACTERIZING AND COMPARING THE SPATIAL CONFIGURATION OF PLANT ROOT SYSTEMS
(2024-07-24) Pei, Yujie; Schneider, David J; Schneider, David J; Ireson, Andrew; Hallin, Emil; Rayan, Steven
Plants are essential and powerful ecosystem engineers. Compared with the above-ground parts of plants, root systems have been studied less frequently as accessing them is arduous and time-consuming. Root traits act as drivers of plant and ecosystem functioning, and root phenotyping is a fundamental procedure in a plant breeding program that helps to identify crop varieties with better root traits. The improved crop plants are tolerant to abiotic stresses, e.g., heat, drought, and nutrient deficiency, playing a vital role in sustainably combating climate change and feeding a rapidly growing global population.
The widely used numeric-valued trait (NVT) approach computes and collects numerical values, such as maximum depth, maximum width, and tip count, from 2D and 3D root system models from various types of images. However, capturing the full complexity of the spatial distribution of the plant’s entire root system by NVTs is always challenging. Additionally, root systems are highly variable in spatial configurations, even among replicates of the same genotype grown in controlled laboratory settings, causing difficulties in making statistical inferences among biological replicates by the NVT approach.
This thesis describes an alternative based on function-valued traits (FVT) to address the abovementioned problems. In particular, the FVTs are related to probability distributions estimated from the image background (i.e., the area not occupied by roots) rather than the foreground (i.e., the pixels corresponding to the plant root tissue per se). Each of these three FVTs is associated with a marked point process and encodes information about the spatial configuration of roots at all length scales. In turn, these probability distributions can be analyzed and compared by using methods of functional data analysis (FDA) to assess systematic differences between plant root systems due to developmental, genetic, and environmental effects.
The practical utility of the FVT approach is demonstrated using collections of images of phosphorus-efficient and phosphorus-inefficient genotypes of sorghum grown in pouches in the presence of sufficient and growth-limiting concentration of phosphorus at 7, 10 and 14 days after transplantation. This is a challenging dataset because the images from distinct sets of biological replicates are easily distinguished “by eye,” but these visually apparent are only poorly reflected in the conventional statistical tests using NVTs. In contrast, the FDA-based statistical tests show that the three FVTs described here can readily distinguish among replicates with visually distinct spatial configurations. FVT pipelines have promising applications in characterizing other 2D and 3D branching structures, including but not limited to leaf veins, above-ground portions of plants such as trees, river systems, and blood vessels.
Integrating Cognitive Rehabilitation and Technology for Individuals with Memory Concerns
(2024-07-24) Grewal, Karl Singh; O'Connell, Megan; Cammer, Allison; McWilliams, Lachlan; Spiteri, Raymond; Ruggiano, Nicole; Williamson, Linzi; Kosteniuk, Julie
This dissertation contributes to a growing body of research required to make cognitive rehabilitation for individuals with dementia more accessible to people living with dementia and their families. Our population is aging, and with age comes both normal and abnormal cognitive aging. As a result, increasing numbers of people will require support to manage age-related changes in areas such as cognition and functional ability. One avenue to accessibly increase support is through off-the-shelf technology. Through two studies, this dissertation developed a more detailed understanding of how technology could support individuals and families by surveying attitudes, beliefs, and existing technology use of care partners (Study 1); and by attempting to merge technology with cognitive rehabilitation through a series of case studies (Study 2).
Study 1 reported that care partners were relatively comfortable with technology, using it for functional tasks and some caregiving. Experiences with technology ranged being positive, neutral, or negative. Barriers to technology use were identified, including cost, lack of knowledge, security/privacy concerns, and undesirable features. Facilitators included access to support, and presence of desirable features. Some care partners were merging technology with caregiving and seeing benefit. Others were concerned that technology would not be feasibly adopted for caregiving. COVID-19 also seemed to increased technology usage and may have changed perceived usefulness of technology.
Study 2 suggested the integration of technology and cognitive rehabilitation was feasible and acceptable, with a variety of technologies and features being used successfully to accomplish a range of goals. A research journal provided insights into successful integration of technology with cognitive rehabilitation: the importance of a visual component, intervention flexibility, and a strong therapeutic alliance. The research journal also suggested that integrating cognitive rehabilitation and technology helped create environments that increased quality of life.
Thesis
(2024-07-24) Li, Lin; Lindenschmidt, Karl-Erich; Gutwin, Carl; Brinkmann, Markus; Jardine, Tim; Davison, Bruce
The abstract of this item is unavailable due to an embargo.
Diversity and structure of Late Cretaceous–Paleogene crocodyliform communities in southern Saskatchewan, Canada
(2024-07-24) Lindblad, Kaitlin; Mangano, Gabriela; Bamforth, Emily; Buatois, Luis; Eglington, Bruce; Hastings, Alex
Crocodyliform fossils of extinct relatives and members of modern families are common finds in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, spanning a largely continuous interval of the Upper Cretaceous and Paleogene. Although this location represents the northernmost known extent of many well-known taxa, only a few individuals are documented in the literature, demonstrating the importance of Saskatchewan to the study of early crown-group crocodylians from the area. This study approaches these fossil crocodyliforms from multiple angles; describing previously unpublished specimens, examining the stratigraphy and taphonomy of the most notable quarries, and identifying patterns of the microvertebrate sites of the latest Maastrichtian Frenchman Formation in a case study to learn about the composition, ecology, and taphonomic overprints of this crocodyliform community. Almost all crocodyliforms known from Alberta and the northern United States over the span of the Campanian to late Eocene are confirmed to be (or are likely) present in Saskatchewan, including multiple species of Borealosuchus, and various alligatoroid genera. Borealosuchus is the most common and longest-lived crocodyliform represented, persisting in Saskatchewan from about 66.3 to 59 million years ago. This genus is preserved in a variety of freshwater habitats over this time interval, demonstrating resilience and flexibility in the face of ecosystem changes that occurred across the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary and well into the Paleocene. Most Frenchman Formation microsites show an elevated number of osteoderms and teeth compared to fragments of skeletal material. This likely represents a preservation bias due to each individual animal having hundreds of osteoderms and teeth. Additionally, the smaller teeth are the most common, likely representing an abundance of small and/or young individuals shedding teeth at a greater rate. This resembles the population structure in other extinct and modern crocodyliform communities, suggesting similar life histories.
On a class of extended toroidal Lie algebras coming from untwisted affine Yangians
(2024-07-24) Ha, Dat Minh; Wendlandt, Curtis; Weekes, Alexander; Rayan, Steven; Szmigielski, Jacek
The purpose of this thesis is to construct so-called \say{$\gamma$-extended toroidal Lie algebras}. Originally, these $\gamma$-extended toroidal Lie algebras were created to aid with endowing \say{toroidal Lie algebras}, i.e. universal central extensions:
$$\toroidal$$
of the Lie algebras of the form:
$$\g[v^{\pm 1}, t^{\pm 1}] := \g \tensor_{\bbC} \bbC[v^{\pm 1}, t^{\pm 1}]$$
(so-called \say{double-loop algebras}), where $\g$ is a finite-dimensional simple Lie algebra over $\bbC$, with Lie bialgebra structures, and the point of doing this is so that toroidal Lie bialgebras can be recognised as classical limits of certain quantum groups known as affine Yangians. Per the general theory of quantisations, such a Lie bialgebra structure on $\toroidal$ can by constructed by means of Manin triples of the form:
$$(\toroidal, \toroidal^{\positive}, \toroidal^{\negative})$$
In doing so, we must endow $\toroidal$ with an invariant bilinear form satisfying some conditions, but an issue that we will encounter in attempting this is that, any invariant bilinear form on a universal central extension is necessarily \textit{degenerate}. As such, we are motivated to enlarge toroidal Lie algebras into $\gamma$-extended Lie algebras:
$$\extendedtoroidal$$
and this is done in such a way that the resulting larger Lie algebras can then be endowed with \textit{invariant} symmetric bilinear forms that are also \textit{non-degenerate}. Importantly, the construction of these bilinear forms depends entirely on a certain linear map:
$$\gamma: \bbC[v^{\pm 1}, t^{\pm 1}] \to \bbC$$
(and hence the name of our Lie algebras).
We shall see that the Lie algebras $\extendedtoroidal$ all arise as \say{twists} of the semi-direct product $\toroidal \rtimes \der_{\gamma}(\bbC[v^{\pm 1}, t^{\pm 1}])$ by Lie $2$-cocycles $\sigma \in Z^2_{\Lie}(\der_{\gamma}(\bbC[v^{\pm 1}, t^{\pm 1}]), \z(\toroidal))$, with $\der_{\gamma}(\bbC[v^{\pm 1}, t^{\pm 1}])$ being a certain ($\Z^2$-graded) Lie subalgebra of the Lie algebra $\der(\bbC[v^{\pm 1}, t^{\pm 1}])$ of all derivations on $\bbC[v^{\pm 1}, t^{\pm 1}]$. Moreover, we will see that there is a readily available example of such a $2$-cocycle giving rise to a $\gamma$-extended toroidal Lie algebra that is \textit{not} isomorphic to the aforementioned semi-direct product.
Bridging the Gap Between Lidar, Thermal, and Multispectral Remote Sensing for Irrigation Scheduling Applications
(2024-07-24) Cline, Emily G; Helgason, Warren D; Bueckert, Rosalind A; Noble, Scott D; Derdall, Evan; Smith, Laura
Irrigation reduces the soil moisture deficit in crop production; however, the Canadian Prairies is a semi-arid landscape with limited water resource availability, requiring careful application of water management practices. This thesis studies methods to reduce irrigation water consumption in agricultural fields with complex soil texture dynamics using the water deficit index (WDI) to indirectly detect crop water stress and measure root zone soil moisture. This index is an extension of the crop water stress index (CWSI) that uses remotely sensed surface temperature (Ts) in addition to the fraction of vegetation (fc) to estimate the crop evaporative fraction through manipulation of the available energy balance equation.
Seasonal and spatial relationships between WDI and volumetric water content (VWC) over a wheat and pea crop were observed at a study site with heterogeneous soil textures over two growing seasons; wheat was planted in the first growing season, and pea was planted in the second. Ten ground-based stations were used to observe average daily fluctuations in WDI by measuring Ts and deriving fc using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Results indicated that deep layers of sandier soils are more likely to cause high variations of WDI during dry-down events. Remotely sensed WDI agrees with measured eddy covariant energy fluxes at the beginning to middle of the growing season; however, NDVI is impacted by leaf senescence after seed fill for both crops, reducing the accuracy of WDI later in the growing season because of errors in fc. Light detection and ranging (lidar) is introduced as a more sophisticated approach to obtain fc and is used as a method to validate WDI obtained using NDVI canopy fraction using unpiloted aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery during the pea growing season. Canopy fraction obtained using NDVI UAV imagery produced WDI values that agreed with canopy fraction derived using lidar demonstrating that NDVI provides accurate fc for the calculation of WDI.
A technical analysis was performed to assess the accuracy of crop height models obtained using Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry techniques compared to lidar. Photogrammetry crop height models were obtained using high-quality red-green-blue (RGB) imagery with accurate real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning, or RGB, multispectral and thermal imagery georeferenced using 3D ground control points (3D-GCPs); thermal and RGB SfM crop height models georeferenced using 3D-GCPs were inaccurate when compared to lidar crop heights. Further analysis was performed on identifying the empirical relationship that existed between lidar-derived fc and crop height for wheat and pea crops. The ability to track seasonal and spatial relationships between WDI and VWC, and the ability to obtain crop height models using multispectral imagery provides exciting progress at bridging the gap between thermal, multispectral and lidar remote sensing for irrigation scheduling applications.
Challenging Eurocentrism
(Association of Research Libraries IDEAL Conference, 2024-07-17) Cecilia Tellis; Maha Kumaran; Victoria Ho
In this IDEAL session, preliminary findings from a Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) funded project on applying critical theory and anti-oppression frameworks to EDI-related work in libraries (committees, hiring practices, internship opportunities, etc.) were shared. During and post COVID-19, and catapulted by the racial violences in North America, a racial awakening in libraries occurred and many libraries began to prioritize anti-oppression and anti-racism efforts. Solidarity statements were shared, resource lists were created, read, and discussed, and new EDI related programs and positions created to lead EDI work on campuses. However, existing EDI epistemologies, values and practices are still rooted in and prefer to launch from Eurocentric paradigms. In this session, researchers shared details of their work (methodology, data collection and analysis, and preliminary findings). Researchers used appreciative inquiry in their data analysis and provided some examples of data in the presentation. Early findings show that libraries must resist the urge to establish EDI efforts through Eurocentric paradigms.
Seed Germination to Improve Air Classification Efficiency and Diversify Functional and Nutritional Attributes of Protein and Starch Streams of Pulses
(2024-07-24) Abid, Areha; Ai, Yongfeng; Nickerson, Michael Todd; Acharya, Bishnu; Wang, Ning; Vargas, Ana
The abstract of this item is unavailable due to an embargo.