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Recent Submissions

Access status: Open Access ,
Plant-Pollinator Interactions in Lowbush Blueberry Agroecosystems
(2026-03-02) Rutherford, Katherine; Not Applicable; Doctor of Philosophy; Department of Biology; Not Applicable; Dr. Valerie Fournier; Not Applicable; Dr. Robert Beiko; Dr Scott White; Dr. David McCorquodale; Dr. Paul Bentzen; Dr. Nancy McLean
Lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium Aiton, Ericales: Ericaceae) is a shrub native to northeastern North America. Wild bees have co-evolved with lowbush blueberry and are effective pollinators. The objective of this thesis was to describe plant-pollinator interactions in lowbush blueberry ecosystems in Maritime Canada. The specific objectives were 1) to evaluate correlations between plant richness, abundance, and diversity and bee visits to lowbush blueberry 2) determine which wild bees collected pollen from lowbush blueberry and 3) which non-crop flowers wild bees collected pollen from over the season. Interactions were characterized at 28 site-years. Observations of bee visits to flowers were recorded during transect walks and a subset of wild bees were captured for DNA metabarcoding of bee-associated pollen. Significant correlations between plant metrics and bee visits to blueberry were rare. During bloom, andrenid bee visits to blueberry were positively correlated to plant richness and diversity in the field. Bumble bee visits to lowbush blueberry were positively correlated to the mean bloom abundance (excluding blueberry) in the field. Other wild bee visits to blueberry were positively correlated to bloom abundance in the fall. Bees were observed on 55 of the 113 plant taxa recorded. The most abundant wild bees observed on blueberry flowers were the long-lived, social Bombus spp. and Lassioglossum spp. as well as the short-lived, solitary Andrena spp. At some sites, wild bees were observed on blueberry more frequently than honey bees. All wild bee taxa captured carried Vaccinium spp. pollen. In fact, 96% of captured bees carried Vaccinium spp. pollen, and 52% of captured bees had only Vaccinium spp. in their pollen loads. During bloom 86% of wild bee pollen loads had three or fewer plant genera. There were very few significant differences among bee taxa for the number of plant genera present in pollen loads. DNA metabarcoding of bee-associated pollen revealed more plant- pollinator interactions than observations during transect walks. The most common non- blueberry plant families in pollen loads during bloom were Rosaceae, Sapindaceae, and Asteraceae. Asteraceae was the most common plant family in summer and fall pollen loads. This study identified the wild bees present in lowbush blueberry fields. Observations and bee-associated pollen revealed the plant taxa wild bees visited throughout their lifecycle. These data identified plants that support wild bees in lowbush blueberry agroecosystems.
Access status: Open Access ,
“I do not desire healing”: Grief as Identity in Medieval(ist) Literatures
(2026-02-27) Foster, Gavin; Not Applicable; Doctor of Philosophy; Department of English; Not Applicable; Em Kightley; Not Applicable; Matthew Roby; Erin Wunker; David Evans; Kathy Cawsey
This dissertation examines the processes by which grief becomes identity in medieval and medievalist texts. Where scholars have traditionally read medieval grief through frameworks of consolation, I argue that an alternate tradition exists— one in which grief fundamentally transforms who characters are. Across the Old English elegies, The Wife's Lament and Wulf and Eadwacer, Beowulf, Le Morte Darthur, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, as well as contemporary translations by Maria Dahvana Headley and Miller Oberman, I trace how grief operates as an enduring force that remakes identity at three progressive levels: grammatical identity, bodily identity, and inner selfhood. My project begins with grammar. In the Old English elegies, dual pronouns represent the movement of characters beyond normative cycles of grief and mourning into melancholia, as grief is woven into the speakers’ grammatical selves. I establish this framework by close reading the elegies through a Freudian lens, focusing on Freud’s definitions of “melancholia” and the “work of mourning,” and then apply and extend these insights to Sir Thomas Malory and J.R.R. Tolkien, arguing that shifts between “ye” and “thou” and modernized dual constructions are similarly used to signify characters’ turns to melancholia. The project then moves to the body, reading dysphoria— the painful disconnection between internal experience and external presentation— as grief made physical. Again, I develop this framework through one text before extending it. In The Lord of the Rings, Éowyn's transformation into Dernhelm reveals how dysphoric grief reshapes bodily identity, and this lens proves equally revealing when applied to translations from Old English, where characters suffer altered and/or imperfect genders through both Othering and translation processes, and when applied to Malory, where Lancelot grieves his imperfect masculinity and “monstrous” women are Othered. Finally, the project turns to inner selfhood, characterized through instances of performative death. Drawing on theories of performativity (Derrida, Butler, Phelan, Ahmed) and photography (Barthes's Camera Lucida), I examine how characters stage their deaths as the ultimate articulations of grief-as-identity. Gawain and Elaine in Malory performatively write and stage their deaths, and this framework extends to speakers in the Old English elegies and to Tolkien's Elves, revealing grief as a practice of self-making through which texts imagine what it means to remain changed.
Access status: Open Access ,
Sexual well-being among individuals undergoing fertility treatment: A review of recent literature
(2024) Péloquin, K.; Beauvilliers, L.; Benoît, Z.; Brassard, A.; Rosen, N. O.
Access status: Open Access ,
EXPLORING REAL-TIME MALICIOUS BEHAVIOUR DETECTION IN VANETS
(2026-02-20) BAHARLOUEI, HAMIDEH; Not Applicable; Doctor of Philosophy; Faculty of Computer Science; Not Applicable; Dr. Sudhakar Gant; Not Applicable; Dr. Riyad Alshammari; Dr. Srinivas Sampalli; Dr. Yujie Tang; Dr. Nur Zincir-Heywood; Dr. Tokunbo Makanju
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) net- works are increasingly used in intelligent transportation systems and autonomous aerial missions. Due to their decentralized and wireless communication nature, these networks are vulnerable to cyberattacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), spoofing, and message tampering. This thesis presents ADVENT (Attack/Anomaly Detection in VANETs), a distributed malicious behaviour detection framework de- signed to detect attack onset and identify malicious nodes in real time in both VANET and UAV environments, while preserving data privacy through federated learning. ADVENT integrates statistical analysis with supervised machine learning in a feder- ated learning architecture to support decentralized detection of malicious behaviours. The framework is evaluated under multiple attack scenarios and mobility models. A key methodological contribution is the design and integration of Adaptive Time Slicing (ATS) and Detection Threshold (DT) mechanisms within the malicious node detection (MND) component. These parameters can be tuned to accommodate dif- ferent network characteristics, including topology, node density, and communication dynamics. The ATS mechanism improves temporal detection resolution and mitigates the impact of transient misbehaviours by analyzing fine-grained behavioural snap- shots and aggregating evidence over time. This enhances the robustness of malicious node identification while reducing false positives and missed detections. ADVENT is evaluated using public and simulated datasets, including a custom VANET simu- lation (FourCities), the VeReMi-Extension dataset, a simulated UAV dataset, and a public cyber-physical UAV dataset. Its generalization capability is further examined using unseen attack types not included during training. Results show that ADVENT consistently achieves high F1 scores, low false positive rates, and timely attack onset detection across different network environments. By validating the framework in both ground-based and aerial vehicular networks, this thesis demonstrates the potential of federated learning–based approaches to provide scalable and privacy-aware security mechanisms for future intelligent transportation infrastructures.
Access status: Open Access ,
The impact of nasogastric tube gastric decompression on postoperative nausea and vomiting in orthognathic surgery
(2026-02-25) Curry, Katherine; Not Applicable; Master of Science; Faculty of Dentistry; Received; na; Not Applicable; Dr. Curtis Gregoire; Dr. Stephen Middleton; Dr. James Brady
The emetogenic effect of ingested blood is believed to be a major precipitating factor in the development of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) following orthognathic surgery. This study aimed to determine whether perioperative nasogastric decompression with a nasogastric tube reduces the incidence of PONV. A randomized control trial of 133 patients was conducted, and participants were assigned to receive perioperative nasogastric decompression (n=64) or no decompression (n=69). Nausea and vomiting were assessed in the twenty-four-hour postoperative period and secondary outcomes evaluated patient and perioperative clinical factors associated with PONV. Nasogastric decompression did not significantly reduce PONV, although a lower incidence of symptoms was observed in the nasogastric decompression group. Opioid use was the only variable independently associated with increased PONV. These findings suggest that nasogastric decompression alone does not significantly reduce PONV following orthognathic surgery, but may be a useful intervention as part of a multimodal prevention strategy.
Access status: Open Access ,
Sex-specific need fulfillment in relationships and sexual and relationship wellbeing
(2024) McClung, E., Rosen, N. O., Muise, A., Kannathas, S., & Corsini-Munt, S.