University Research Fund (Article 25.55) February 2009 Awards

For More Research Information, Please Contact the Individual Faculty Member

Trevor Avery, Department of Biology

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish:  Making Sure Fish Get from the Ocean to Your Dinner Plate

Darcy Benoit, School of Computer

Tracking the Size of the Web

Michael Devine, Department of English & Theatre

CATT - Centre For Alternative Theatre Training

Jonathon Fowles, School of Recreation Management & Kinesiology

Chocolate Milk as a Recovery Aid from Fatiguing Exercise

Jim Grant, School of Business

An Examination of Employee Dismissal for Alleged Misconduct in the Decisions of the Canadian Courts:  Implications for Human Resource Practice and Workplace Justice

Tanja Harrison, Vaughan Memorial Library

Acadia Through the Years:  The Libraries (Phase III)

Diane Holmberg, Department of Psychology

Adult Attachment Styles as Predictors of Couple's Coping Processes

Richard Karsten, Department of Mathematics & Statistics

Environmental Impacts of Tidal Turbines in the Bay of Fundy

C. Burc Kayahan, Department of Economics

Impact of Macroeconomic Fluctations on Training in Canada

Saroj Koul, School of Business

Supplier Selection:  A Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach

Scott Landry, School of Recreation Management & Kinesiology

Comparing On-Ice Skating with Two Off-Ice Skating simulation techniques Through an Electromyographic Analysis of the Lower Limb Musculature

Tanis Mihalynuk, School of Nutrition

Lonely Pangs:  Exploring Gender Differences in Eating Motivators and Patterns

John Murimboh, Department of Chemistry

Towards an Unbiased Calibration Method for Chemical Analyses using Bayesian Statistics

Jianan Peng, School of Recreation Management & Kinesiology

On the Control of False Discovery Rates

Pritam Ranjan, School of Recreation Management & Kinesiology

Surrogate Modeling for Black-Fox Functions

Phyllis Rippeyoung, Department of Sociology

Is Breastfeeding Truly Free?  The Economic Consequences of Breastfeeding for Women

Jon Saklofske, Department of English & Theatre

Interfacelift:  Modding the Doors of Perception to the William Blake Archive

Robert Seale, Department of English & Theatre

The Bio-grammar of Performed Violence in Canadian First Nations (Phase 1)

Dave Shutler, Department of Biology

The Function of Undertaking Behaviour in Honey Bees

Todd Smith, Department of Biology

Effects of Freezing on Malaria-Like Blood Parasites of Freeze-Tolerant Wood Frogs

Cliff Stanley, Department of Earth & Environmental Science

Ground Magnetic Geophysical Survey of the Bloody Creek Meteorite Impact Structure, Bridgetown, Nova Scotia

Andrea Schwenke Wyile, Department English & Theatre

Precedents in Picturebook Publishing:   Olivier Douzou, les 400 coups and Shaun Tan

Laura Thompson, School of Education

Naming Our Wor(l)d(s):  Exploring Identity and Place Through Curriculum Inquiry

Brian VanBlarcom, Department of Economics

Assessing the Impact of a UNESCO World Heritage Designation for Grand Pre

Haiyi Zhang, School of Computer Science

Bayesian Predicate Model to Estimate Life Longevity

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) October 2008 Awards

Svetlana Barkanova, Physics Department

Radon, Radiation and Remediation

A substantial number of homes in Nova Scotia have high levels of radioactivity due to radon.  Radon is a colourless, odourless, higly mobile radioactive gas created through uranium decay, a naturally present constituent of the soil in many parts of Nova Scotia.  Prolonged radon exposure is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking.  Our research goal is not only to better investigate radon distribution in the area, but also to assess the community’s level of health literacy in relation to an individual’s knowledge of the effects of radiation on human health, to educate the community on the potential impact of long-term radon exposure and strategies for remediation and to identify factors that encourage or limit an individual’s ability to address radon remediation in their home.

Glyn Bissix, Recreation Management & Kinesiology

The Impact of Local Climate Change Information on Policy in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park

The broad research objective is to identify the key similarities and differences in local climate change information and dissemination in Wolfville, Nova Scotia and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Ecosystem in Scotland, to assess the way that locally relevant climate change information has informed key decision-makers including politicians.  The research will also assess how land-use planning policy and ground level action has been shaped, if at all, by this information.  The specific objective of this proposed research phase is to examine location specific climate change studies in the Loch Lomond region and assess how they have informed and influenced key decision-makers.  The project will also assess the extent to which such information has influenced broader public opinion within the Loch Lomond ecosystem.

Stan Fisher, School of Music

Invitation/Performance at the International Clarinet Association congress in Porto Portugal

I have been invited to perform a solo concert at the International Clarinet Association (ICA) Congress.  This year it will be held in Porto Portugal, August 8^th – 15^th .  The eventual end result of this project will be to eventually record a CD of the same music to be performed in Portugal.

John Guiney Yallop, School of Education

Exploring Identity Through Poetic Inquiry

Five to six sessions of a poetry workshop will be held with a small group (6 – 8) of Acadia graduate students.  The theme is exploring the multiple identities and identity development of graduate students through the use of poetry.  Participants will have an opportunity to perform their poetry at a public performance and to select pieces for publication in a chapbook.  Results of the research and participant feedback will inform the development of a graduate-level course in poetic inquiry and other arts-informed research methods.

Sonia Hewitt, History and Classics Department

The Domestic Baths at Volubilis, Morocco

The diversity evident in the size, form and embellishment of all baths at Volubilis (both domestic and public) reflects not only chronological and geographical factors but also socio-economic facets of life in Roman Africa, to be interpreted within the urban context and with reference to comparative developments in the broader context of the Roman empire.  It is this dynamic relationship of the domestic bath to domus and community that my current research program explores.  The material remains suggest that domestic bath usage and construction do not simply reflect elite bathing preferences and practices.  This grant will support fieldwork and the technical assistance of a student assistant in the field.

Heather Higgins, School of Education

Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Satisfaction Survey Development:  Pilot Testing of Survey, Completion of Revisions ad Preparations to Administer Survey

Compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction as experienced by mental health counsellors can be significant factors in their well-being.  A national online survey investigating these factors will be pilot tested and survey items will be revised following analyses of the initial data.  Preparations for administration of this survey to members of the Canadian Counselling Association will be completed.

N. Kirk Hillier, Biology Department

Odor Cartography:  Mapping Insect Olfactory Neurophysiology

This proposal will investigate the morphological and baselines physiological differences between the olfactory (smell) systems of various species of insects, in particular moths.  A comprehensive mapping of the insect antennal lobe will be conducted to enable comparisons between distant insect species to study how evolution has shaped the brain over time.  A research technician will engage in histological studies to label, digitally image and 3D reconstruct insect brains.  Understanding the functioning of this eural tissue will enable the development of complex models for neural networking within my lab.  This is of particular interest for understanding the coding of complex mixtures of scent and moreover represents a simple neural network for testing higher-order effects within the brain (i.e. synergy, inhibition, memory & learning).

Mark Hopkins, School of Music

Musical Lives Lived:  An Interview with Canadian Composer Derek Healey

Dr. Mark Hopkins will travel to New York to interview Canadian composer Derek Healey for an upcoming article in the Journal Canadian Winds.  Spin-off outcomes from this research include the performance of selected Healey works by the Acadia University Wind Ensemble and the Atlantic Wind Orchestra (a professional wind ensemble based in Halifax) and creation of a scholarly presentation on Healey’s life and music.

Harish Kapoor, Manning School of Business

Consumer Racism and Quality Evaluations and Customer Satisfaction

Cross-cultural marketing theories suggest that consumers’ attitude towards a product can be influenced by its brand name (e.g., Dasani bottled water), the parent corporation behind the product (Dasani from Coca Cola), as well as the country with which a product/brand is associated with (e.g., Coke with the U.S.).  This combination of factors, commonly known as the Product-Country Image (PCI) in marketing, has been examined and, is shown to be a key consideration in consumers’ evaluation of a product.  Given the rapid use of outsourcing ad globalization in general of the businesses, it is becoming harder for consumers to identify specific products and brands with a given country to assess the product quality as a given product may be associated with a number of countries.  The situation is even more complex in countries with significant immigration population.  The present study seeks to examine consumers’ perception of product quality based on sales person ethnicity for domestic and foreign brands.

 Lance La Rocque, English Department

The Small Press Culture

The project will, practically speaking, involve looking at rare books, chapbooks, and little magazines; my project documents the works of Canadian small press publishers from the 1960s to the early 1970s, a pivotal time in the development of modern Canadian poetry.  The objective of this project is to provide the basis for two or three articles which will both contribute to our knowledge of the products arising from small press experimentation and broaden our understanding of the social contexts within which small pressers flourish.  The final outcome will involve creating a sense of the range of experimental productions, analyzing their meanings, and placing them within the contexts of the Vancouver small press communities, and the surrounding aesthetic contexts (such as Black Mountain aesthetic contexts (such as Black Mountain aesthetics and early twentieth century avant garde practices).  This work will contribute to my ongoing research and teaching at Acadia in my Canadian Poetry course.

David Magri, Chemistry Department

Fluorescent ‘On-Off’ NOT Logic Gate based on a Quantum Dot Semiconductor

Logic gates are elementary units normally associated with digital electronic circuits.  Based on a quantum dot semiconductor, a NOT logic gate will be demonstrated in solution that senses for protons.  When the concentration of protons is high (pH low), the logic gate will output a light signal.  However, when the concentration of protons is low (pH high), no light signal will be observed.  Such systems at the nanometer level may have application in medical diagnostic devices for measuring bodily fluid analyte concentrations (ie. pH of blood).

Lisa Narbeshuber, English Department

Dissecting the Conflation of Forces:  Metaphors of Nature and Culture in Sylvia Plath’s Bee Poems”.  Conference Presentation for American Literature Association Symposium on American Poetry, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Conference paper to present research results at the American Literature Association Symposium on American Poetry to be held in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico from December 15 to 18, 2008.  The paper discusses poet Sylvia Plath’s sequence of bee poems in the context of recent scholarship on the poems.  The paper, “Dissecting the Conflation of Forces:  Metaphors of Nature ad Culture in Sylvia Plath’s Bee Poems,” examines the slippery relationship between nature and culture as revealed in the metaphor of Plath’s bee hive.  It is a segment of my forthcoming book, Re-Casting Sylvia Plath: Plath’s Poetry as Cultural Confession (ELS Editions, University of Victoria), scheduled for release 1 July 2009.

Erin Patterson, Vaughan Memorial Library

User-generated Metadata:  Tagging in Flickr

User-generated metadata, or “tagging,” is a new area of study that has emerged along with social networking and organization tools such as del.icio.us, LibraryThing, and Flickr.  Most research to date has focused on the nature of tags and tag sets, but has ignored the characteristics and behaviours of the taggers.  This research project will gather and analyse detailed data on taggers and their tagging practices within a specific user community, in this case Flickr, the popular online photo management and sharing application.

Robert Pitter, Recreation Management & Kinesiology

Travel to present a present a paper, “The Political Ecology of OHV Trail Development:  Breaking the Environment or Braking for it?” and preside over two sessions at the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) Conference in Denver, November 5 – 8, 2008.

Robert Pitter is presenting a paper, “The Political Ecology of OHV Trail Development:  Breaking the Environment or Braking for it?” at the 2008 Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in Denver, CO, from Nov. 4 through Nov. 8.  The paper examines the political ecology of off-highway vehicle policy in Nova Scotia.

Gillian Poulter, History and Classics Department

Professional Indexing for Monograph:  Becoming Native in a Foreign Land:  Sport, Visual Culture and Identity in Montreal, 1840-1885.

Fundig is requested to cover the cost of producing a professional-quality index for a monograph entitled Becoming Native in a Foreign Land to be published by UBC Press.  This text makes innovative use of visual sources in a historical study of the ways in which British colonists in Montreal constructed a distinctive new identity as “Canadians” by appropriating and transforming the Indigenous cultural activities of snowshoeing, lacrosse and tobogganing in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Roxanne Seaman, Recreation Management & Kinesiology

EMG Activity of the Upper Limb and Trunk Used During Sledge Hockey Propulsion

The purpose of the proposed research is to use surface electromyography (EMG) to describe and understand the muscle activation patterns and interaction of the main muscles used during sledge hockey propulsion.  The musculature that will be observed has been identified based on the previous findings of propulsion phases and their relationship to injury mechanisms as provided by Lomond and Wiseman (2003).  The variability in the muscle activity patterns will be used to identify key features or events that are common across the various participants during the sledge hockey movements.

Elhadi Shakshuki, School of Computer Science

Attending and presenting one paper at the 10^th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services and another paper at the 6^th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia

My research interest is in the area of distributed artificial intelligence.  It is a sub-filed of artificial intelligence, which deals with the main issues of interactions (between machines and/or software), such as coordination, collaboration and communication.  The main reason for this proposal is to seek funding for attending and presenting two accepted papers at ACM international conferences.  The first paper will be presented at the 10^th international conference on information integration and web-based applications and services.  The second paper will be presented at the 6^th international conference on advances in mobile computing and multimedia.  These conferences will take place during the same time in Linz, Austria, on November 24-26, 2008.

Christopher Shields, Recreation Management & Kinesiology

Becoming a runner ad all that goes with it:  How perceptions of the social environment impact running identity and self-efficacy for continued participation.

Given that the majority of Canadians are insufficiently physically active to accrue associated health benefits and that individuals who initiate physical activity often fail to adhere, improving physical activity adherence is both a research and public health goal.  Researchers have begun to explore how perceptions of self influence health behaviour as one avenue to understand the physical activity adherence problem.  The proposed research uses both identity theory and social cognitive theory to better understand the impact of interdependent relations on the self-related constructs that may impact exercise behaviour.  Specifically, does how we feel others in our group view us impact our identity, and in turn, does this identity impact our behaviour?  The current study examines this question within the context of learn to run groups with the aim of determining whether instructors should focus on identity formation through group involvement or through mastery experiences.

Sonia Thon, Languages and Literatures

Margarita Nelken.  De La Vanguardia Al Ocaso

I will be presenting a paper on Margarita Nelken, an extraordinary political and cultural figure of great influence in Spain.  Her militancy began at the end of WWI and culminated with her participation in the Spanish Civil War.  She is considered the symbol of Madrid’s resistance to Franco’s fascist advance, and a pioneer in the fight for women’s rights and the rights of peasants and miners in a country where landowners attached little or no value to the work and life of their workers.

Anthony Tong, Chemistry Department

Analysis of Organic Contaminants in Halifax Harbour and Cornwallis River

Halifax Harbour has been identified as one of the most contaminated marine harbours in the world.  Previous data also shows a very high contamination level in Cornwallis River near Acadia University.  The objective of the project is to identify and quantify organic contaminants in sediment ad water from both locations.  By strategically collecting samples, sources of contaminations will be traced and the contribution from nearby municipal outflows will be determined as well.  Various organic compounds including volatile toxics, pesticides and herbicides will be studied on and novel analytical methods will be developed to improve the extraction efficiency and save solvent.

Kevin Whetter, English Department

Rubrication in the Winchester Manuscript

In “Rubrication in the Winchester Manuscript” K.S. Whetter undertakes a comparative manuscript study in which he compares the physical layout and decoration of the Winchester manuscript (the base manuscript for modern editions of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur) with comparable Arthurian, romance, and mediaeval English prose manuscripts in an attempt to establish the uniqueness of Winchester’s rubrication of personal names.  The rubrication or red highlighting of names in Winchester not only draws attention to the person and deeds of Arthur’s knights, it also emphasizes their deeds on this earth as opposed to the heavenly afterlife, especially since the word “God” is rarely highlighted whereas the knights’ names are consistently highlighted.  Since Winchester reinforces prominent secular themes in the text of the Morte Darthur, themes which arguably are more apparent to the author who created them than to the scribes engaged in the more mechanical process of copying them, it is probably that the rebrication can be traced back to Malory himself.

Jamie Whidden, History and Classics Department

Egypt:  Colony and Imperial Capital

Perceptions of the British in Egypt have been shaped by Edward Said’s analysis in Orientalism, wherein British culture represented a body of knowledge that projected Western power through the negative portrayal of Egyptians.  In this analysis, imperial culture constructed impermeable divisions between the so-called ‘advanced’ and ‘primitive’ peoples of the globe.  While this is probably an accurate portrayal of officially sanctioned colonial literature, colonial cultures and societies were more complex.  Indeed, Said’s recollections in his memoirs, Out of Place, indicate tat intercultural relations only unravelled during the Second World War when Egyptian elites withdrew from schools and other English-language cultural institutions, leaving the British colony increasingly isolated as symbols of imperial power.  The research project, Egypt:  Colony and Imperial Capital, investigates the experiences of a diverse group of British residents in Egypt, indicating cross-cultural relationships, conflicts between ordinary Britons and officials, as well as rival ideological orientations within imperial officialdom and other political circles.

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) February 2008 Awards

Zelda Abramson, Sociology Department

Hitting the Wall? Women’s Lived experience in Academia

Although the number of women in academia has increased since 1990, there is still a marked gender imbalance and women are less likely to achieve tenure than their male colleagues.  The situation at Acadia University is even less favourable than national averages suggest.  Through a series of focus-group interviews, this project aims to determine what difficulties women face at Acadia and how they manage to negotiate the difficulties of the academic environment and maintain a work-life balance.  The results will be made available to policy-makers at the university, and will contribute to research on the national level.

Trevor Avery, Biology Department

Flying saucers of the deep: High-speed cinematography meets the digital age

About 50% of scallop species, most notably the giant scallop, Placopecten magellanicus (Gmelin, 1791), and the saucer scallop, Amusium balloti (Bernardi, 1861), are able to propel themselves through the water by ‘swimming’.  Swimming is accomplished by ‘gulping’ water and expelling it under high pressure through two small adjustable apertures flanking the scallop shell hinge.  Most of the dynamics of scallop swimming have been described, and some highly mathematical models produced, however, there exists no measurements of inner mantle pressure or how the pressure produces suitable thrust for swimming in context with all other aspects of the swimming motion.  Digitizing of high-speed cine film of swimming scallops tethered to pressure gauges will provide the necessary pieces to solve the swimming puzzle.

Darlene Brodeur, Psychology Department

International Meeting for Autism Research

Persons with autism exhibit attention differences that are apparent in their responses to symbolic information in the environment that can be either social, or non-social.  Attention difficulties observed in children with autism seem to be more pronounced when made in response to social information; a pattern that has been described as a social orienting impairment.  Funding has been requested to facilitate attendance at the International Meeting for Autism Research (London, UK; May 2008) to present a study that examines attention to social and non-social information in typical children and children with autism.

John Colton, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

Exploring Sustainable Community in Iceland: Building a Student-Based Community Engagement Project

Building a sustainable community requires understanding how communities manage their community capital.  Researchers have identified a variety of types of community capital: environmental capital, human capital, social capital, cultural capital, public structural capital, and commercial capital.  Using case study methods, the research examines how community capital is managed for sustainability in Svartarkot, Iceland. In addition, the research provides the foundation for the development of a student community engagement project in February 2009 that will explore various forms of community capital.  Understanding the give and take between different types of community capital and how they can be more efficiently managed for sustainability is critical.  With this understanding, communities can plan more strategically and cost effectively for sustainability which will encourage greater investment from government and private sectors.

Michael Corbett, School of Education

This project involves the presentation of results of my ongoing research on educational trajectories in rural Atlantic Canada as well as to develop a new SSHRC proposal to carry forward my current research program.  The broad outlines of this proposed research will be investigate the way that formal education contributes to community resilience in the face of economic restructuring and global change forces.  Some communities “weather the storm” of radical change better than others and using indicators developed by colleagues at UBC and social mapping strategies I developed in my earlier research this project will evaluate the relative resilience of select communities in Atlantic Canada. 

Richard Cunningham, English Department

Human-Computer Interaction, Interface, and the Electronic Book (HCI-Book)

In 2008 the administrative members of the interdisciplinary group that works under the name HCI-Book will meet in Victoria, BC, to assess their progress toward submission of a revised Major Collaborative Research Initiative grant application.  HCI-Book represents digital humanities researchers from across Canada, from the US, and from the UK.  HCI-Book includes research into Textual Studies, Reader Studies, Interface Design, and Information Management.  Acadia’s Dr. Richard Cunningham is one of the administrative leaders of the Textual Studies component, and one of the Executive Committee members of HCI-Book.  Dr. Cunningham’s digital humanities work includes his Electronic Arte of Navigation <http://arteofnavigation.acadiau.ca/>, a work he plans to enhance through participation in the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria in May, 2008.

Mike Dadswell, Biology Department

Fauna of Minas Basin and Potential Tidal Power Impacts.  Fish Migrations

Minas Basin is a unique, summer-warm habit within the Bay of Fundy.  It contains a resident and a summer migratory population of marine fauna that is endemic or rare in Canada, most of which have southern affiliations.  Atlantic sturgeon and striped bass are two fishes that are common in Minas Basin during summer.  Although both species have spawning populations in rivers tributary to the Basin most stocks of these fish spawn in rivers southward along the east coast of Canada and the United States.  This study is designed to establish the characteristics and the source of the fish populations found in Minas Basin during summer.  Sturgeon and bass appear in fish weirs on the northern shore of Minas Basin during May – June and are later caught in weirs, in the flounder trawl fishery and by anglers along the southern shore of the Basin from July to October.  We hypothesize that this is an annual migration of sturgeon and bass from numerous stocks along the east coast of North America.  We propose to determine the population characteristics, population sizes and the origin of these two fishes.  Sturgeon and bass will be sampled in fish weirs on the north shore of Minas Basin and from fish trawlers and anglers in the southern Bight of the Basin.  All fish will be measured, weighted, tagged and released.  Tag recaptures will be used to obtain population size estimates.  Each fish will be sampled for tissue which will be analyzed for mitochondrial DNA characteristics to determine stock origins.  These data will be used to advise government and NGO groups concerning the status of Atlantic sturgeon and striped bass in Minas Basin.  Atlantic sturgeon are now under a fishing moratorium in the United States and striped bass have been listed as threatened in Canada by COSEWIC.  These important fish populations will need to be assessed as past of any potential Tidal Power Development in the Bay of Fundy.

Kelly Dye, School of Business

Dueling Discourses at Work: Upsetting the Gender Order

Through the study of archival material from Pan American Airways (PAA), it is demonstrated the Joan Acker’s (1990) notion of the dominant discourse, defined as a sort of organizing logic, may aid in attempts to ‘upset’ the gender order of organizations.  It is suggested that changing the organization’s substructure (Acker, 1992), by changing the dominant discourse or introducing competing discourses, may help to destabilize “truths” and may interrupt the perpetuation and reification of policies, practices, and understanding that are often taken for granted, despite their ability to silence voices and privilege some groups over others.

Jonathon Fowles, School of Recreation Management & Kinesiology

I Think I Can: NS diabetes educators’ evaluation of self-efficacy following use of ‘The Physical Activity and Exercise Tool-kit’

This project is phase one if a two part project that will distribute and evaluate a ‘Physical Activity and Exercise Tool-kit.’  The ‘Tool-kit’ is an educational resource intended to aid diabetes educators in their efforts to promote and prescribe physical activity and exercise within the diabetes population.  This phase of the project will assess the effectiveness of this resource in increasing diabetes educators’ self-efficacy for physical activity and exercise instruction.  It is believed that as a result of the improved confidence and capacity of diabetes educators to deliver physical activity and exercise counselling, physical activity levels in diabetes patients will increase and diabetes outcomes in this population will improve. 

Tanja Harrison, Vaughan Memorial Library

The Courage to Connect: Mary Kinley Ingraham and the Development of Libraries in the Maritimes

Mary Kinley Ingraham was a writer, poet, playwright, and head librarian of the Emmerson Memorial Library, Acadia University from 1917 to 1944.  During her tenure at Acadia, Ms. Ingraham endeavoured to connect people to the written word.  This presentation will explore the growth of early 20^th century library service in the Maritimes and demonstrate how Ms. Ingraham played an integral role in several important library movements in Canada.  These included: beginning a bookmobile traveling library service for the people and Baptist Ministers of various Maritime communities, establishing one of the first library education programs in eastern Canada, and developing professional and lobbying partnerships through the formation of the Maritime Library Association (which later became the Atlantic Provinces Library Association.)  In this age of digital culture, libraries and archives are seeing changing roles and opportunities.  The researcher will explore the multi-media possibilities of connecting users with archival records and address the topic within the context of building a digital memory project of the history of the libraries at Acadia.

Ron Haynes, Mathematics & Statistics

Grid Selection for Two Point Boundary Value Problems

Parallel algorithms for adaptive mesh generation will be developed and implemented.

Diane Holmberg, Psychology Department

Adult Attachment Styles as Predictors of Individual vs. Dyadic Coping

When people are facing stress in their lives, do they prefer to cope with the stress by themselves, or to turn to their relationship partner for assistance in coping?  We propose that adult attachment styles are one important predictor of whether individuals favour individual or dyadic coping processes.  Avoidant individuals, uncomfortable with closeness, will prefer to cope with all stressors individually.  Anxious individuals, who crave closeness but fear rejection, will signal their stress to their relationship partner, but only indirectly.  Secure individuals, comfortable with closeness, will directly and openly seek their partner’s support when stressed.  Two studies test these hypotheses.  In one, respondents complete a card-sorting task to describe how they coped with a past stressor; in the second, couples seek and provide support for coping with a current stressor on-line, while their physiological stress reactions are monitored. 

Peter Horvath, Psychology Department

The comparison of the impact of self and other contingencies of worth beliefs on performance, affective change and depressive symptoms

The proposed research will examine the effects of beliefs regarding criteria that merit self-worth on perceptions of the control of self-worth, self-esteem, negative affect, and depressive symptoms.  This research will compare the impact of such beliefs of the individual and that of the observer, on the control of self-worth as perceived by the individual.  In addition, the relative impact of these two sets of beliefs on changes in self-esteem, affect, and depressive symptoms will be measured.  It is predicted that better personal adjustment, as measures by high self-esteem and low depressive symptoms, will be associated with perception of control of self-worth.  Approximately 120 undergraduates will complete a measure of beliefs regarding criteria to merit self-worth.  In addition, they will be asked to do a sequence completion task along with a partner.  Following the task, each participant will be given a written feedback of their interpersonal perception by the partner.  State anxiety, negative and positive affect, self-esteem and depressive symptoms will be measured before the sequence task, following the task, and following the feedback from the partner.  Finally, the participants will complete measures of perceived control of their self-evaluative process.  It is anticipate that the proposed funded research will contribute to the understanding of the sources of affective disorders, which are an increasing health problem in developed countries. 

Richard Karsten, Mathematics & Statistics

A Three Dimensional Assessment of Tidal Current Energy in Minas Passage

The project will develop a three dimensional model of the Bay of Fundy to examine the potential of tidal power in the Minas Passage.  It will build on the results from a 2D model that estimated up to 7GW of power could be generated by the currents in Minas Passage, a resource worth roughly $7 billion.  The 3D model will be used to more accurately model the tidal-current turbines, which will be placed in Minas Passage as part of the Nova Scotia Government supported trail project.  The model will be able to more accurately estimate the amount of power available and the effect the turbines have on the local flow and the tides throughout the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine.  It will also be used to determine the optimum placement of turbines to increase power generation while limiting their environmental impact.   

Ron Lehr, School of Education

Counsellors’ accounts of ethical practice: Survey construction

The purpose of this project is to construct and pilot a survey to identify and describe current ethical beliefs and practices of Canadian counsellors.  The survey will be constructed to incorporate questions that reflect section B (19 articles) of the code of ethics for Canadian counsellors (CCA, 2006).  These 19 articles represent ten ethical categories which include confidentiality, informed consent, records, dual relationships, multiple clients, multiple helpers, group work, computer use, referral and termination of services.  

Lachlan McWilliams, Psychology Department

Investigating the Relationships between Adult Attachment Dimensions and Reactions to Individuals in Pain

The behavioural model of chronic pain suggests interpersonal factors play an important role in the development of chronic pain.  It suggests that pain behaviors (e.g., grimacing, guarding, resting, verbally reporting pain) continue and become more frequent when they are positively reinforced.  Viewed within this framework, activities such as massaging a spouse who displays pain behavior or doing his or her household work are conceptualized as “solicitous responses” and have the potential to inadvertently encourage additional pain behavior and increase disability.  Despite the import role that this form or social support is thought to play in the development of chronic pain, research has not yet attempted to determine what variables influence the provision of solicitous responses to pain behaviors.  The main objective of the research will be to examine the hypothesis that adult attachment styles influence individuals’ reactions and responses to the pain of others.  The findings are expected to have implications for developing new strategies for preventing and treating chronic pain.

Franklin Mendivil, Mathematics & Statistics Department

Optimization and search problems on graphs

Optimization problems occur everywhere in the “real world”, from scheduling aircraft maintenance to planning optimal delivery routes.  These problems can be viewed as search problems, where you search a very large “solution space” for the optimal solution.  Often these search spaces have the structure of a graph (network of nodes and edges).  The project will investigate the application of graph structural problems discovered in the area of “Cops-and-Robber” problems to optimization problems.

Anna Migliarisi, Theatre Studies / English Department

Staging Ritual all’ Italiana: edipo tirrano at Vicenza (1585)

This project involved traveling to the University of Heidelberg, Germany to present “Staging Ritual all’ Italiana: edipo tirrano at Vicenza (1585)”, at the Ritual Dynamic and the Science of Ritual Conference 2008.  The paper explores the rehearsal process and staging of edipo tirrano, an Italian translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy on March 3, 1585, a subject related directly to my research focus on the art and history of the Western theatre director. 

Tomasz Muldner, School of Computer Science

Grammar-based XML compression

This project concentrates on grammar-based XML compression, tries to improve on previous results and obtain the best compression rate, and compares the use of various XML grammars to improve the compression.

Rene Murphy, School of Recreation Management & Kinesiology

Is the Wii really physical activity or is it still just more screen time for children and young adults?

More than ¼ of Nova Scotia school children are classified as either overweight or obese, and more than half of Canadian children aged 5-17 years are not meeting the national daily requirements of 60 minutes or more of physical activity.  Levels of physical activity in Nova Scotia children begin to decrease after grade 3 and these levels decline even more significantly for females than males, with <1% of females classified as active enough for health benefits in grade 11.  The purpose of this experiment is to study the effect of the popular video gaming system, the Nintendo Wii, on children between the ages of 9-13 years.  The control activity will require children to sit and watch television for 15-20 minutes, while the active component of the study will require children to walk on a treadmill at increasing speeds for 15-20 minutes.  For older participant, the Wii fit adapter, which is to be released in north America later this spring will be used as it is designed to increase activity levels.  The energy expenditure of the participants will be measured using heart rate monitors as well as accelerometers, and the data collected during the Wii gaming activities will them be compared to the control and active data to ascertain if the Nintendo Wii can really be part of the solution to the obesity epidemic. 

Jianan Peng, Mathematics & Statistics Department

Nonparametric Tests for Trends in Dose-Response Microarray Experiments

The problems of analyzing dose-response effects on gene expression are gaining attention in biomedical research.  There are some test procedures for dose-response effects based on the assumption of normality of the expression data.  However, the normality assumption is usually untenable in Microarray studies.  In this project we will purpose rank tests to infer dose-response effects. 

Susan Potter, Psychology Department

Processing of emotional faces and scenes in high and low psychopathic groups: an ERP study

The term “psychopath” refers to those individuals who are callous, manipulative, deceitful, and remorseless, while at the same time often appearing superficially charming.  Psychopaths are incapable of empathy and show a blatant disregard for the rights and feelings of others.  This has led a number of researchers to theorize that psychopaths have a neurobiological deficit in the processing of other people’s emotions.  A growing body of research showing that psychopaths are impaired at recognizing emotional facial expressions supports this theory, and this deficit in emotional processing has been interpreted as evidence of dysfunction in the amygdale, a brain structure that is known to play an important role in some types of emotional processing.  However, some studies have found no deficits among psychopaths in the recognition of emotional facial expressions, leading some researchers to propose the Left Hemisphere Activation hypothesis -- that deficits in emotional processing occur only when the left hemisphere of the brain is activated.  The proposed study will use evoked potentials to study the processing of affective faces and non-human images among individuals who score high and low on a measure of psychopathy.  The type of response required of participants will be manipulated (verbal vs nonverbal) in order to test the Left Hemisphere Activation hypothesis.  

Vernon Provencal, History and Classics Department

The Platonic Eros of Art in the Ancient Novel, ICAN 2008

The Platonic Eros of Art in Ancient Novel.  Conference paper accepted for presentation at ICAN 2008, (International Conference on the Ancient Novel, Lisbon Portugal, July 21-27 2008)

The fantasy world of the ancient novel is a profound sublimation of Platonic eros. In psyche’s erotic conversion of the world into a work of art, the Platonic principle of to kalon (the Beautiful, the Good) triumphs over Tyche (Chance, Fortune) the principle of mundane reality.  Narrator and audience fall within the Platonic paradigm of erastes/ eromenos.

Pritam Ranjan, Mathematics & Statistics Department

Developing adaptive statistical methods for the design and analysis of expensive computer experiments

The proposed project generalizes the existing sequential design strategies for estimating different pre-specified features (e.g., process optimum, near optimum, threshold values, and percentiles) of computer models often used as surrogates for complex physical processes that are either too expensive of infeasible to observe.  Due to high dimensionality of the involved integration and optimization problem, I plan to use parallel programming approach for finding designs that are efficient and useful for practitioners. 

Jennifer Richard, Vaughan Memorial Library

Atlantic Provinces Library Association Digital Archives Initiative

Recently, the Acadia University Archives acquired the Atlantic Provinces Library Association’s Archives.  Local researchers have noted that much of the literature in the area of history of libraries, library education and resources in the early part of the 20^th century in Canada gives only brief mention to the Atlantic region even though some very significant events and firsts occurred here.  The digitizing of this important collection of primary resources detailing the early years of library history in Atlantic Canada will provide a wealth of knowledge to researchers around the world and allow recognition of the value of the work done by those early library pioneers of our region.

Patricia Rigg, English Department

British Aestheticism and the Maternal Muse

This essay on the relationship between British Aestheticism and poetic representations of maternity and motherhood will be part of a larger study of turn-of-the-century British literature and culture.  Poems about pregnancy and childbirth in particular give us insight into an important ideological shift in feminist thinking in the nineteenth century.  This shift has to do with attitudes toward the maternal – specifically with the physical and emotional demands of maternity and the implicitly empowering capacity to product life.  It also has to do with a redefinition of the aesthetic beauty of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, thereby coinciding with the changing ideology of the status of women in late Victorian society.

Brenda Robertson, School of Recreation Management & Kinesiology 

Development of a framework for collecting data from at-risk and vulnerable youth

The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for gathering data from the at-risk youth population concerning the psychological impacts of their involvement with a circus circle program.  There are various issues to be addressed associated with using conventional methods of data collection with this particular population in recreation programs where participation is voluntary.  It is anticipated that the development of a more general framework will have widespread application assessing the impacts of programs such as sport initiatives in third world settings, adventure programs for adjudicated youth, and photo projects in urban slums to name just a few of a myriad of possibilities. 

Jon Saklofske, English Department

Beyond the Digital Archive: Re-visualizing William Blake

Emulating William Blake’s 200-year-old creative resistance to book technology and the printed pages, this project will develop a three-dimensional multi-media network of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience to encourage participatory evolutions in critical interaction and analysis.  By promoting new methods of visualizing, navigating, and critically responding to digitally realized networks of print-based material, this study will contribute to the next generation of digital humanities research and methods.  

Anna Saroli, Languages & Literatures Department

Approaches to interculturality in bilingual education programs for the Quechua-speaking indigenous people of the Cusco region of Peru

The intent of this project is to carry out an examination and evaluation of how a focus on interculturality affects programs of bilingual education (EIB) for Quechua-speaking indigenous children in the Cusco region of Peru.  In order to do this, I will spend three month in Cusco, during which time I plan to evaluate students enrolled in an innovative new program which makes the cultural element central to a community-based approach to learning which is rooted in the local culture.  At the same time, I will interview parents and community members in order to assess community attitudes towards the success of this program.  I will be working specifically with CEPROSI, an NGO affiliated with the local Ministry or Education, which has developed this novel approach to intercultural bilingual education.  I have been asked by CEPROSI to provide them with a report of my findings.   

Andrea Schwenke Wyile, English Department

The Comix-Picturebooks Connection

The Comix-Picturebooks Connection partially funds a presentation at the interdisciplinary conference The New Narrative? Comics in Art, Film, and Literature in Toronto (May 9-11) and further research at the National Library in Ottawa exploring the links between picturebooks and graphic novels, both of which share similar stigmas yet lead the way in realizing varied textual possibilities of literature that combines pictures and words.  

Daniel Silver, School of Computer Science

Inductive Transfer Grand Challenge Cup Website

Inductive transfer (IT) learning refers to the problem of retaining and applying the knowledge learned in one of more tasks to efficiently develop an effective hypothesis for a new task. While all learning involves generalization across problem instances, transfer learning emphasizes the transfer of knowledge across domains, tasks, and distributions that are similar but not the same [2,3].  One of the primary recommendations from the Neural Information Processing Society 2005 workshop on IT was to create a grand challenge cup competition to foster research in the area. Although there are a number of challenge datasets for machine learning and data mining researchers on the web [11-14], none exists for IT.  This project will select two challenging task domains and design and develop a website from which to host the competition.  The challenge website will provide a set of data from which to develop a model and an independent set of data for testing the model.  The test set will have the true classifications for each example removed.  The challenge for each team will be to create a model (using inductive transfer) for the primary task that has the highest classification accuracy on the test set.  A challenge team must submit their predicted classes for the test set to a website for evaluation.  The website will record the submitting team’s contact information and predictions, generate the evaluations and return the results.  The website will also display the top x teams’ evaluation results.  A server in the Intelligent Information Technology Research Lab (IITRL) or elsewhere in JSOCS will be used to host the website.  The challenge will be announced and opened in August of 2008 with an intended competition test period of November 1-30, 2008.  The results will be reported at the AAAI conference in the Spring of 2009.

Jessica Slights, English Department

Domestic Shakespeare

Ian Spooner, Geology Department

Hydrology of the Wolfville-Greenwich Aquifer

The Town of Wolfville, Acadia University (Builder Services, Earth and Environmental Science) and the Nova Scotia Department of Environment and Labour have partnered to conduct a detail assessment of the physical properties of the Wolfville Aquifer.  Research will focus on a geological and hydrogeological assessment of the aquifer.  This research will help in the management of local water resources and will be used to better constrain the quantity of water available for present and future use. 

Don Stewart, Biology Department

Field Assistant for Bat Research

The objective of this project is to collect tissue samples of a rare species of bat in Nova Scotia called the western pipistrelle.  (Fewer than 6000 likely exist in the province).  It has been suggested that this local disjunct population may in fact be a distinct species.  We plan to examine various mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA markers to assess the taxonomic status of this population.  Specifically, we are requesting funds to hire an undergraduate student to assist my Masters student, Howie Huynh, with his field work in and around Kejimkujik Park this summer.  The results of this study will be provided to wildlife managers and conservation biologists with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and the Terrestrial Mammals subcommittee of COSEWIC to help them evaluate and assign a conservation status to this population/ species. 

Brian VanBlarcom, Economics Department

Assessing Incremental Economic Impacts of an Indoor Athletic Training Facility on a Local Economy

The paper assesses the economic impact on a county economy emanating from an indoor athletic training facility.  The study estimates the economic impacts of the construction and operation phases, along with sports tourism effect of visitors attending events at the facility.  An input-output model is used to capture indirect and induced effects associated with the facility.  The study deviates from traditional analyses in two ways.  Firstly, only non-local (non-county) sources of funds are considered when assessing economic impacts of the facility.  Secondly, in addition to assessing the sports tourism effects, the retention of sport related resident spending attributable to the facility is also estimated. 

Kerry Vincent, English Department

Representations of Swaziland in English Language Literature: Beginnings to Present

I will be delivering a paper on colonial and contemporary travel writing in Swaziland at the International Conference of the Humanities, University of South Africa, Pretoria.  I will also be conducting research at the National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa with the purpose of substantially adding to a working bibliography of English language literature of Swaziland.  The outcome should be a book that examines representations of Swaziland from its colonial beginnings to the present, and an up-to-date bibliography that, it is hoped, will encourage further critical studies. 

Kevin Whetter, English Department

Death and Love in Arthurian Romance

Modern readers justifiably expect love relationship in mediaeval romance to end happily, but many romance authors connect love with death.  This practice seems to have been well-established in mediaeval narrative, for Dante’s Paolo and Francesca encounter love and death through reading romance.  The fate of Dante’s lovers by implication damns the lovers about whom they were reading: Lancelot and Guinevere.  Although Lancelot and Guinevere are free of fatal love-sickness in both Dante and his distant source, the Prose Lancelot, Lancelot’s friend Galehaut’s dies pining for Lancelot.  Disturbingly, many other Arthurian lovers share Galehaut’s fate.  Focussing on a variety of Old French and Middle English texts – the Prose Lancelot, Chretien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la charrete, Ywayne and Gawayne, the Awntyrs off Arthure and Morte Darthur – I shall suggest that Arthurian romance’s fascination with death in love reflects the role love plays in securing the destruction of the Arthurian ideal.  For some authors, including Chretien, love-sickness is remedied and we are presented with the veneer of a happy ending, while for others, such as the authors of the Prose Lancelot or the Awntyrs, love and love-sickness are used as a condemnation of courtly love and secular chivalry.  Significantly, and despite his fondness for his French sources, Malory does not use love-sickness and connections between love and death in Arturian Literature for the same moralistic purpose. 

Geoffrey Whitehall, Political Science Department

The Aesthetics Practices of International Politics

This research project The Aesthetics Practices of International Politics explores the importance of aesthetic practices in international relations by focusing on how international tensions play out in traditionally aesthetic realms.  This fieldwork will allow for a comparative analysis of geopolitical aesthetics.  Specifically, whereas the Yasukuni Jinja (a controversial shrine that houses the spirits of those who died in service of Japan including 6800 Class A and B war criminals from WWII) and its museum (the Yushukan) amplifies and aggravates international tension, the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and the National Museum of Ethnology calm and temper them.  In addition to demonstrating that aesthetics matter in international relations, this research demonstrates how aesthetics practices are used to solidify specific geopolitical arguments.  This research project, therefore, examines Japan’s foreign policy narrative by comparing how four different museums use aesthetics to amplify and/or calm international tensions. 

Brian Wilson, Biology Department

Expression of relaxin genes through development in the zebrafish, Danio rerio

Recently, our lab has used bioinformatics, RT-PCR, northern blot and immunohistochemical techniques to demonstrate the presence of 5 relaxin genes and proteins in zebrafish (Danio rerio) and killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) tissues.  There is high expression of 3 relaxins and a relaxin receptor in the brain and ovary of these two species.  This work represents the first experimental evidence of a relaxin system in teleosts.  We intend to continue using the techniques listed above to study the temporal and spatial expression of genes for relaxins and relaxin receptors through development.  We also intend to study the role of these peptides in the semi-lunar ovarian cycle of killifish.  It is anticipated that data from these studies will be beneficial for fish husbandry practices and will add to our general understanding of fish reproductive endocrinology. 

Romira Worvill, Languages & Literatures Department

The aesthetics of the tableau in Fenelon’s Dialogues on Eloquence and Telemaque

The ‘tableau’ in the drama theory of the eighteenth century, particularly as articulated by Diderot (1757), is emblematic of a new kind of dramatic writing in which the writer positions himself as a beholder, and composes as if watching events unfold before his gaze, not as a rhetorician specking through characters to the audience.  The goal was to achieve an effect similar to that associated with the illusion offered by figurative painting, in which the artistic signs, the paint stokes on canvas, seem to disappear into the image and only impose themselves on aesthetic consciousness when the viewer makes a deliberate effort to perceive them, rather than the image they produce.  The present paper will examine a much earlier manifestation of this approach to writing in the work of Fenelon.  Although intended for the pulpit and the bar, his Dialogues sur l’eloquence (published in 1718 but written much earlier, probably in 1679) set out principles that can also be applied to creative writing and emphasize a styles that relies on visualization and imagination rather than on the application of conventional rhetorical principles.  His immensely popular prose epic, Telemaque (1699), embodies a much more visual and descriptive manner of writing.  Both Fenelon’s theory and practice will be examined in order to reveal the extent to which he succeeds in adapting aspects of the contemporary discourse on painting to literary theory and literary form and to determine the connection between Fenelon’s innovative approach to writing and the later eighteenth-century interest in the literary ‘tableau’.    

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) October 2007 Awards

Glyn Bissix, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

An Island Community at Risk: The Impact on Sustainability from 9/11, Climate Change and Natural Resource Depletion

This study will examine the sustainability of Campobello Island, New Brunswick by focusing on the human dimensions of three intersecting socio, political-economic and environmental issues.  The first issue relates to the Island’s substantial reliance on the ground fishery; the second looks at the impact of post 9/11 homeland security measures on its seasonal tourism industry, and the third focuses on likely changes from climate change.  This study represents the second phase of a three part study exploring the issues concerning heightened cross border regulation on an international park and its surrounding communities. 

Rachel Brickner, Political Science Department

Exploitation vs. Privilege: Explaining the Curious Fact of Maquila Workers’ Success in Mexican Labour Organizing

Although women working in Mexico’s export, or “maquila,” sector are widely considered to be an exploited workforce with little opportunity to engage in collective action in order to protest the violations of their rights as women workers, these maquila workers have actually engaged in more successful collection action than women who belong to unions.  This research project will examine why the more “exploited” sector of women workers is having more organizational success in the struggle to advance the rights of women workers than the “privileged” sector of women workers by investigating the impact of women’s opportunities to organize outside of traditional union structures on organizational success and failure.      

James Brittain, Sociology Department

Alternative Development and Social Justice in Rural Colombia: FENSUAGRO’s La Esmeralda

Located in the small hamlet of Puerto Brasil within the municipality of Viotá in the department of Cundinamarca, Colombia lies La Esmeralda, a community/ education centre and experimental farm created by the Federación Nacional Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria, FENSUAGRO (The National Federation of Agricutlral Farming Unions). La Esmeralda has the potential to become a symbol of what can be achieved when people come together and work in solidarity.  Not only providing credit, education, and sustainable agricultural practices, the centre has assisted thousands of Colombian peasants through, and by, peasant methodological processes and guidance.  Alongside teaching in organic-based farming, the protection and communal sharing of indigenous seeds, environmental resource sustainability, courses in animal husbandry, diversification of presently existing and future alternative crops, the recovery of food production sovereignty, and the strengthening of the campesino economy, La Esmeralda demonstrates how peasants within Colombia are conducting important work independent of, and within, the reality of Colombia’s half-century of civil war.  The research project therefore examines how peasant movements contribute to general areas of non-violent social change through an examination of how peaceful methods of development can be successfully created and sustained within violent contexts.  Such a study hopes to influence policy-makers, state officials, various NGOs, and academics interested in social development by highlighting what struggles Colombian peasants face and how they are beneficially responding to such dilemmas.

Nancy Clarke, Mathematics & Statistics Department

Searching Networks: The Mathematics of Security

Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly problematic as faster and more destructive intruders, such as viruses and worms, are developed.  Many of our current defenses, including antivirus software and firewalls, focus on local protection.  Security can be greatly enhanced through the use of algorithms designed to first locate and then to quarantine the propagation of the intruder.  They theory underlying such algorithms comes from an area of mathematics known as “searching networks”.  I have been invited to attend a small workshop (with just 30 invited participants) in Praia Redonda, Brazil this coming February that will be devoted entirely to the study of such problems.  Since many of the world’s expert’s in the area will be in attendance, significant advances in the field are likely.  

James Diamond, School of Computer Science

Audio Data Compression Test-bed

Data compression is the act of funding an alternative representation for a given set of data which uses less space than the standard representation.  For example, most computer users are familiar with JPEG images, various types of movie files, and MP3 files, all of which are (normally) compressed.  In order for the data to be viewed of listened to, a decompression program reconstitutes the original data (or a “sufficiently good” approximation thereof). This project will develop a test-bed to allow the investigation and testing of new audio data compression algorithms. 

Sonia Hewitt, History and Classics Department

The socio-economic significance of domestic baths at Volubilis, a Roman town in North Africa

The goal of this project is to update and refine the architectural plans of the 6 domestic baths published in 1960 by r. Etienne from the Roman site of Volubilis, in modern Morocco.  The presence of absence of room types and the pattern of access to the rooms are critical factors for determining the use of the baths.  With accurate dimensions of individual rooms and of the (poorly) preserved water and heating facilities, it is possible to infer the maximum number of bathers and the approximate costs of operating the baths.  This study examines the possibility of a strong economic role for Roman domestic baths, as income-generating establishments within the urban setting of a Roman provincial town. 

Kirk Hillier, Biology Department

Ratiometric effects of pheromones on odour-medicated behaviour and physiology of the Gypsy Moth

The Gypsy moth is classified as one of the most destructive forest pests in the world.  In recent years, this pest species has invaded and established itself throughout Nova Scotia.  Through a combination of electrophysiological and behavioural techniques, the basis by which these insects detect and process odours will be investigated.  Principally, this will involve construction of a wind tunnel to observe flying moths, and delicate recording of neurons within hairs on the moth’s antenna.  In this way, pesticide-free strategies for controlling this pest species may be enhanced through a basic understanding of its olfactory neuroscience.

Amitabh Jha, Chemistry Department

Biological Evaluation of Novel Synthetic Antibacterial Agents

It is well established that a number of bacterial strains have acquired resistance to available drugs.  Thus, there is always a need for new antibacterial agents to make the drug resistance manageable.  Drug resistance can be taken by the introduction of a new class of antibacterial agent.  The research group of the PI is actively engaged in synthesis of novel and rationally designed antibacterial agents.  Some of these compounds have shown promising activity against mycobacterium tuberculosis in the laboratory of collaborators.  Efforts will be made to decipher the mode of action of these compounds by performing enzyme inhibition and DNA binding studies.  Any success in this pursuit will have positive impact in the society.  

Cevat Burc Kayahan, Economics Department

Estimating Private Returns to Training in Canada

This project estimates the returns to training in Canada using a matched workplace-employee survey for the 1999-2003 period.  The incidence and the intensity of the training provided by Canadian firms have been declining over the last decade and this is surprising since this pattern is not observed in other similar developed countries.  The major focus of this projected is directed on estimating the rate of returns to training in Canada in order to explain this decreasing trend of training provided in the workplace.  The preliminary results indicate that there are positive but declining returns associated with training over the sample period.  

Sarjo Koul, School of Business

Evaluating Corporate Communications Effectiveness

The objective of corporate communication (CC) is to positively influence the image, products, services, creditworthiness, investment possibilities, talent attraction/ retention and goodwill towards the organization.  CC practitioners are increasingly being held accountable for the messages they design and the value of the CC department to the organizations’ bottom line is frequently scrutinized.  Consequently it is important to evaluate and find ways to optimize this function.  This study will be carried out on a cross-section of medium sized enterprises to quantify the CC components and determine the nature of relationships that organizations maintain with their key stakeholders and suggest activities to improve this relationship.    

Stephen Maitzen, Philosophy Department

Skeptical Theism and Moral Obligations

So-called “skeptical theism,” the most prominent philosophical answer to the problem of evil to emerge in recent decades, claims that the probability of a perfect God’s existence isn’t all reduced by our failure to see how such a God could allow the horrendous suffering that occurs in our world.  Given our finite grasp of the realm of value, skeptical theists argue, it shouldn’t surprise us that we fail to see the reasons that justify God in allowing such suffering, the thus our failure to see those reasons is no evidence against God’s existence or perfection.  Critics object that skeptical theism implies a degree of moral skepticism that even skeptical theists will find objectionable and that it undermines moral obligations that even skeptical theists will want to preserve.  I discuss a version of the first objection and defend a version of the second.    

Sherri McFarland, Chemistry Department

Investigation of the DNA Photocleaving Properties of Ruthenium Complexes Derived from Dimeric Biquinoline Ligands

DNA photocleaving agents are compounds capable of directly of indirectly introducing single- or double-strand breaks in the DNA backbone upon photoactivation with an appropriate wavelength of light.  These molecules are of wide interest as tools in molecular biology, as conformational and structural probes for noncanonical DNA topologies, as probes for studying DNA-protein and DNA-drug interactions in photofootprinting, and as anticancer agents in photodynamic therapy (PDT).  With regard to PDT, current agents have serious drawbacks which include prolonged photosensitivity, requirement for O2, lack of double-strand cleavage, and activation by wavelengths of light that are slightly shorter than optimal.  This project seeks to address current limitations by introducing multi-metallic systems as new DNA Photocleavage agents that rely on strong metal-metal interactions known to clave DNA under hypoxic conditions.  These systems will be characterized by activation in the phototherapeutic window (700-900 nm) and equipped with two or more independent scission mechanisms to impact dual cleaving capacity.

Randy Newman, Psychology Department

Does the brain know that golph is not a game? The time course of phonological processing in skilled readers

Reading is not only a form of enjoyment; it is a prerequisite skill for achieving educational and employment success.  Learning to read requires forming associations between the sounds (i.e., phonology), spelling (i.e., orthography), and meaning (i.e., semantics) of words.  While there is a general consensus that phonology influences reading, theories differ in the important they assign to phonological information, particularly in skilled readers.  The focus of the proposed research is to define the brain mechanisms underlying skilled reading.  This goal will be achieved by combining traditional measures of phonological processing (e.g., homophone error paradigm [Is a rows a flower?]) with measures of brain activity (i.e., event-related brain potentials – ERPs).  An appreciation of how the brain accomplished reading is integral to the knowledge base necessary for understanding reading disabilities, and for developing effective educational strategies for teaching literacy.  

Nelson O’Driscoll, Earth and Environmental Science Department

The effect of solar radiation on mercury speciation in Nova Scotia freshwaters

This research will help to explain why some lakes in Canada have elevated levels of contaminants in biota while others do not.  For example, Kejimkujik National Park has the highest concentrations of mercury in loons in North America, yet it has no direct industrial inputs of mercury.  Why is it that contaminants accumulate at higher ‘trophic levels’ through some aquatic food webs, but not other comparable ones?  While it is know that chemical speciation plays an important role in the fate of contaminants, many of the factors controlling speciation are not well understood.  Solar radiation and dissolved organic matter (DOM- released from decaying plant material) are key factors governing photochemical reactions which determine the speciation of many contaminants in freshwater.  DOM is a primary mediator of photochemical reactions through the binding of contaminants and the capturing of solar radiation.  DOM can be very different between freshwater sites; however, the effects of these differences on mercury- sunlight reactions are poorly understood.  The proposed experiments will examine the relationships among solar radiation, DOM, and mercury speciation in freshwaters.  

Robert Pitter, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

Travel to present a paper, “Contested Spaces: Sport, recreation, health and lifestyles polities” at the North American Society for the Sociology of the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) Conference in Pittsburgh, October 31 – November 3, 2007-12-14

Robert Pitter is presenting a paper, “Contested Spaces: Sport, recreation, health and lifestyles politics” at the 2007 Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in Pittsburgh, PA, from Oct. 31 through Nov. 3.  The paper reports on a case study analysis of an apparent contradiction of policy and practices concerning Nova Scotia’s shared use trail development policy.  The policies and practices advocated by sport and recreation civil servants promote the sports of snowmobiling and all terrain vehicle (ATV) usage as healthy active lifestyles.  But these policies seem to be at odds with medical officers of health charged with health protection, policies and practices which are in part intended to reduce obesity.  The case study analysis presented explores social, political, and economic factors that have pitted seemingly similar interest groups against each other in battle over space. 

Nyitor Alexander Shenge, Psychology Department

Knowing how they came here to decide who will come here: Analysis of university choice making dynamics of Acadia students prior to arrival

The study employed self-designed questionnaire, personal and telephone interview methods to investigate university choice making dynamics of undergraduate students of Acadia University prior to their arrival at Acadia.  300 purposely sampled students (both Canadian and international) of Acadia University participated in the study.  Sample cut across the genders as well as various academic departments of university.  Participants from all undergraduate levels participated in the study which identified psychological, dispositional, socio-economic and cultural factors influencing prospective students’ choice of Acadia University.  Findings were discussed in relation to Acadia University’s future plans for increased student enrolment, improved relationship among university stakeholders, better service delivery and ultimate satisfaction by all Acadia university stakeholders.  

Chris Shields, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

A preliminary investigation of relational-efficacies and self-regulation in cardiac rehabilitation

Proxy-agency is particular important in exercise rehabilitation (e.g., cardiac rehabilitation programs: CRPs) where an instructor helps patients to modify their exercise behaviour to prevent further complications.  While self-efficacy has been consistently identified as a key construct in understanding exercise behaviours (e.g., McAuley & Blissmer, 2000), research from the social-psychological literature suggests that understanding patients perceptions both about their own confidence and their appraisal of how the proxy (e.g., instructor) views the competence of the patients may be important in understanding exercise thoughts and behaviours.  The current study entitles “A preliminary investigation of relational-efficacies and self-regulation in cardiac rehabilitation” prospectively examined relationships between relational efficacies, self-regulatory efficacy and reliance within exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation.  The findings suggest that CRPs should be attentive to the interpersonal relationship between instructor and patient as well as between spouse and patient as these relationships impact exercise-related social cognitions relevant to self-regulation.  These results represent the initial examination of RISE beliefs in an exercise rehabilitation context and provide support for RISE as a determinant of self-efficacy.  The work is to be presented at the annual meeting of the British Psychological Society (BPS) held in Dublin, Ireland, April 2 – 5, 2008 as part of a symposium entitled “Self-regulation and volitional engagement in physical activity.”

Christian Thomas, Languages & Literatures Department

Blended Learning Experience: The Potentials and Limits of New E-Learning Software for Teaching German as a Foreign Language

Paper: “Blended Learning Experiences: The Potentials and Limits of New E-Learning Software for Teaching German as a Foreign Language” (4^th International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society, Boston, Mass., Jan. 19, 2008)

The paper for the first time presents the German Course Template courseware developed at Acadia to an international forum of experts, discussing its significance in relation to modern language didactics methodologies and other existing courseware for foreign language teaching.

Anthony Tong, Chemistry Department

Analysis of Organic Contaminants in Terminals of Halifax Port Authority

Halifax Harbour has been identified as one of the most contaminated marine harbours in the world.  The objective is the project is to identify and quantify organic contaminants in the sediments and waters of Halifax Port Authority properties (South End and Fairview Cove shipping terminals).  By strategically collecting samples from difference locations, sources of contaminations will be traced and the contribution from nearby municipal outflows will be determined as well.  Various organic compounds including volatiles, semi-volatiles and non-volatiles will be targeted on and novel analytical methods will be developed to improve the phase-extraction efficiency. 

Alan Warner, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

Impact of Community-Based Participatory Research in Indigenous communities in Guyana

Popular western media images and their associated values flood to all corners of the world and become attractive to people from marginalized regions and economically depressed areas.  In the process, culturally-rich, indigenous traditions are frequently viewed as having less value, even by those for whom it is their cultural heritage.  In fact, indigenous cultural traditions have immense importance for community development and as a source of pride and respect for their own people, particularly young people who may be struggling with a wide range of economic and social problems in remote areas.  This qualitative research project will examine the impact of a community-based participatory documentation process facilitated by Acadia Recreation Management students working with young people in remote communities in Northwestern Guyana.  The Acadia students will work with the indigenous young people to teach them to use digital cameras and assist them in documenting their traditions with pictures and words.  The research will include interviews with participating young people, community leaders and elders to understand impact of involvement in the community-based cultural documentation process with reference to their perceptions and appreciation of their own culture.  A case study methodology will be used to explore the link between cultural pride and community.  

Jun Yang, School of Business

A Regression Analysis of Canadian Shareholder Proposals

Shareholder activism has been a popular yet controversial corporate governance measure for shareholders to cause changes in corporations.  While studies on shareholder activism are abundant with U.S. companies, empirical research in Canadian corporate world has been very rare.  In recent years Canadian shareholders have become more active in submitting proposals that cover a variety of subjects.  Filer identity and proposal subject are important influences on voting outcome.  Proposals submitted by institutions or coordinated shareholder groups gain more support than those submitted by individuals.  Overall, the financial market does not respond to news about shareholder proposals. 

Ying Zhang, Mathematics & Statistics Department

Computer Algebra Derivation of the Variance of Nonparametric Statistics

Methods of nonparametric trend analysis such as based on Kendall’s correlation coefficient are widely used to test for the presence of monotone trends in environmental time series.  Those tests are easy-to-compute and distribution free.  However, they are valid only for a sequence of independent observations.  Since the variance of the test statistic is strongly affected by the assumption of statistical dependence, the significance levels of these kinds of tests are biased when data is serially correlated.  My research objective is to develop a symbolic method for variance derivation of the nonparametric statistic, such as Kendall’s tau, when data are with a stationary error structure. 

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) February 2007 Awards

Wanda Campbell, English Department

“Longing and Lament: Early Canadian Women Poets Look Back at Europe” Conference Presentation for “Europe and Its Others” International Conference, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews Scotland

Conference paper to present research results at the International Conference, “Europe and Its Others: Interperceptions, Past, Present, Future” to be held at the University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews Scotland, July 6-8 of 207.  Example from the work of Susanna Moodie, Isabella Valancy Crawford, Agnes Maule Machar and Susan Frances Harrison are used to consider the impact of geography, gender, history and heritage upon shifting perceptions of Europe in Canadian poetry by women in the decades before and after Canada became a country. 

Wendy Carroll, School of Business

Organizational culture, HRM and firm performance: Examining linkage with the competing values framework in call centres

In an increasingly competitive labour market, attracting and retaining employees has become a key focus for many organizations.  While some organizations struggle to reduce turnover in call centre operations, others face the challenge of lower turnover but with higher absenteeism.  Various approaches to human resource management have been undertaken in an effort to improve firm performance.  Research shows that human resource management has an affect on firm performance such as on financial, productivity, and employee level outcomes.  However, these HRM practices can not be assumed to work the same in every organization or have the same results if implemented.  Thus, to better understand the other factors at play, this study examines more closely the relationship of various types of organizational business strategy and culture to help us further explain how HRM relates to firm performance.

Richard Cunningham, English Department

Understanding Research Teams in Humanities Computing Environements

Given the recent incorporation of collaborative software tools and teams in research projects, there has been little opportunity to develop a body of work describing or addressing the issue of teamwork within the Humanities generally, and the Humanities Computing community specifically.  This research will be an initial step in understanding the types of support and research preparation that individuals in this field require to succeed within multi-disciplinary teams located at multiple sites, and to use digital technology tools more effectively. 

Michael Dadswell, Biology Department

Fauna of Minas Basin: Atlantic Sturgeon Migration

The Minas Basin is a unique, summer-warm habitat within the Bay of Fundy.  It contains a resident and summer migratory population of marine fauna that is endemic or rare in Canada, most of which have southern affiliations.  Among anticipated projects on this fauna we wish to establish the characteristics of the Atlantic sturgeon population that occurs in Minas Basin during summer.  Sturgeons appear in fish weirs and the flounder trawl fishery along the southern shore of the Basin.  We wish to establish whether this is a migration and what are the origin and population characteristics of this group of Atlantic sturgeon.  A tagging experiment will be conducted during June in weirs along the northern shore of the Basin.  Recaptures from this tagging will establish the nature of the sturgeon movement.  Characteristics of the sturgeon will be determined to help establish the population parameters and origins of this group of fish.  These data combined with a recent assessment of the status of Atlantic sturgeon in Canada will be used to advise government and NGO groups on the overall status of Atlantic sturgeon on the east coast of North America.  The information is important in the continuing assessment of the status of Atlantic sturgeon with regard to Species at Risk and the possibility of future Tidal Power development.  

Kelly Dye, School of Business

Outside In.  Inside Out: The intersections between organizational and popular culture in the making of gendered imagery

Although the gendered nature of the airline industry has been explored through various studies of industry recruitment and training processes (Hochschild, 1983; Kane, 1974; Newby, 1986), and the development of airline cultures (Mills, 2006), little as yet has been done to explore the relationship between internal practices and the generation of popular culture imagery.  In this research, drawing on Acker’s work on gendered sub-structures (Acker, 1990, 1992), the principal investigators (Kelly Dye and Albert Mills) explore the changing imagery of men and women employed by Pam American Airways over the period of 1950 to 1980.  Critical discourse analysis (Phillips & Hardy, 2002; van Dijk, 1993) of internal newsletters and other archival materials is used as the primary method of investigation.  

John Eustace, English Department

Aboriginal Collaboration: Final Stages of “Old Battle, New Age”

I will be traveling to Perth, Australia, to collaborate with Mr. Robert Eggington, Aboriginal Activist and Director of the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation, on the final draft of my monograph, “Old Battle, New Age: The Case of Mutant Message Down Under,” before submitting it to a scholarly press for publication.  The collaboration is required by the protocols I established with Dumbartung in 2002 to recognize and compensate for the asymmetrical power relations involved when non-Aboriginal academics conduct research on Aboriginal peoples by granting Eggington the right of response to the book.  During this 6 months period in Perth, Eggington and I will incorporate his responses to my representations and analyses in the final graft of the monograph.  I will also begin a related research project, which involves producing a scholarly edition of the Aboriginal Message Stick Dumbartung produced as part of their protest against Morgan’s Mutant Message Down Under.

Stan Fisher, School of Music

Invitation/ Performance at The International Clarinet Association Congress in Vancouver

Invitation To Perform Concert At The International Clarinet Association Congress Vancouver.  A one hour programme: “Rare Jems For Clarinet with Strings” Fisher will perform with The Emily Carr Quartet.  As well as including pieces by composers Rawsthorne (English), Zelesny (Czech), and Kokai (Hungarian), the featured piece will be the premiere of a new piece to be written by Derek Charke, professor at Acadia’s School of Music.  This new composition, call “Silenced” is of an elegiac nature and is based on the event of the missing women from the Hastings Street area of Vancouver. (Robert William Pickton is on trial for their murders).  The concert will be preformed at The Chan Centre, UBC campus July 4^th – 8^th. The concert will be recorded for CBC Radio at The Indian River Festival with concerts planned in Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta.

Jonathon Fowles, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

Methods to assess low-frequency fatigue in athletes

The purpose of this study is to develop methods to assess and monitor fatigue in hard training athletes.  New field tests have been developed and are being compared to classic laboratory measures of fatigue.  In verification testing, participants will complete a standardized exercise protocol that mimics training that an elite athlete would normally complete during training for their sport, which induces fatigue.  The newly developed tests of fatigue will be assessed for their validity, reliability, and practicality, and sensitivity in determining fatigue in the days following the exercise session.  The outcome of this research will be to develop practical tests that the coach and applied sport scientist can use to monitor fatigue during training and performance in a season, so the training and performance is optimized.

Tanja Harrison, Vaughan Memorial Library

Acadia Through the Years: The Libraries (Phase II)

What will an organization be without its institutional memory?  The proposed research project aims to enhance the online information portal created during the first phase of Acadia Through the Years: The Libraries and research deeper into archival resources to further connect the history of the libraries at Acadia.  Efforts during the second phase of the project will be focused on enhancing, organizing, digitizing, storing, describing, and making material that is rarely seen outside the Acadia Archives and Special Collections accessible by using a searchable digital media archiving system.  This allows users to search and view rare documents in a digital environment regardless of library hours or user location. 

Wilson Lu, Mathematics and Statistics Department

Developing adaptive statistical methods for the analysis of large and complex datasets

My research interests for the next few years will be primarily focused on developing adaptive statistical methods and investigation their theoretical properties for the analysis of large and complex datasets.

Anna Migliarisi, Theatre Studies. English Department

“The Method Director: a conversation with Gene Lasko”

This project extends my dedicated interest in all scholarly (and creative) aspects of directorial history, theory and practice.  It involves traveling to New School University in New York City to complete an interview with a Master Director that will form a chapter in a book-length manuscript I am readying for publication for the University of Toronto Press called, Stanislavsky and Directing: Theory, Practice and Influence.  

Erin Patterson, Vaughan Memorial Library

The Poetry of George Santayana: A Newly Discovered Manuscript

This project builds on the Vaughan Memorial Library’s unexpected discovery of a manuscript by poet and philosopher George Santayana.  The research will establish the manuscript as Santayana’s, document its path from Santayana’s hand in 1894 to the Library’s cataloguing department in 2004, and trace the work’s development from scribbled manuscript to published poem.

Gillian Poulter. History and Classics Department

“Memories are made of this”: scrapbooks, albums & women’s history

In researching the history of women and other marginalized groups who have not been included in traditional historical narratives, historians have had to seek alternative primary source.  Scrapbooks compiled of ephemeral materials such as newspaper cuttings, pamphlets, calling cards, souvenirs and so on pose particular methodological problems.  To determine whether any general rules can be discerned which would help historians utilize scrapbooks as primary sources, a series of approximately 50 video interviews will be conducted with Nova Scotia residents who currently compile scrapbooks, or have done so in the past.  From these interviews a research protocol will be devised.  IT is anticipated that this will include a standard set of qualitative questions about the complier and their recollections of compiling the scrapbook and its contents, plus a set of quantitative designed to categorize the contents and material qualities of the scrapbooks.  With the permission of interview subjects, the interviews will be archived and a database compiled. 

Robert Proulx, Languages and Literatures Department

Attendance at the special joint meeting of IASPM Canada and IASPM-US (The International Association for the Study of Popular Music) in Boston to deliver a paper entitled “Corneille, Lhasa, Jamil, Bia and others: the emergence of immigrant songwriters on contemporary Quebec popular scene”.

Popular music has always maintained a dialogue with political and social developments, raising awareness, spurring debate, and even directing events throughout history.  To many minds, it is this active and engaged role that make popular music vital and worthy of serious study.  The 2007 special joint meeting of IASPM Canada and IASPM-US hinges on ideas of boundaries, blockades and bridges.  My paper focuses on the bridges that are being built between newly arrived singer-songwriter and Quebec musicians and public.  How do these collaborations happen and what do they bring to the existing Quebec musical scene? 

Anna Redden, Biology Department

Saltmarsh restoration: improving management decisions through use of high-resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology

Saltmarshes are now recognized as significant feeding grounds and refuges for wildlife, and for their importance in flood mitigation, carbon sequestration, and as biological filters for nutrients and sediments.  With growing interest in, and efforts towards, dyke removal and saltmarsh restoration, there is a need for science-based management decisions to ensure appropriate site-specific restoration activities.  The project proposed will couple new remote sensing technology (LiDAR), flood models which simulate tidal inundation, air photo information, and field collected data, to better estimate the effects of a range of restoration options on elevation of the restored lands and on revegetation patterns.  This approach also provides an improved means of predicting the ‘success’ of various saltmarsh restoration activities, before groundwork commences.  

Don Stewart, Biology Department

Field Assistant

The objective of this project is to collect specimens of freshwater mussels from various locations in Nova Scotia where samples have been variously identified as either the Eastern Floater or the Newfoundland Floater.  There is currently debate about the taxonomic status of these freshwater mussels and we seek to use molecular tools to determine whether we are dealing with one species or two.  We also seek to identify the fish host(s) of these species.  Freshwater mussels have a parasitic larval stage during which they fasten onto the gills of fish as a source of nourishment.  In terms of long term conservation objectives, it is clearly essential to determine whether we have one species or two in Nova Scotia, and to determine (and ensure conservation of) their fish hosts.  The results of this study will be provided to wildlife managers and conservation biologists with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and the Mollusk subcommittee of COSEWIC to help them evaluate and assign a conservation status to these species.   

Doug Symons, Psychology Department

Adults talking about thoughts and feeling when reading to a child surrogate doll

Joint reading of children’s story books by parents and children is a common family activity.  When parents read to children, they often ask questions about things not in the text of the book.  Some of our research has shown that when parents talk about thoughts and feelings during joint reading, their children have advanced social understanding.  The current research examines the impact of children’s own language on parental reading elaboration by employing a voice-activated doll to control what children say and how adults respond to a doll which used different kinds of language.  In addition, we are interested in the degree to which adults that tend to talk about thoughts and feelings when reading with their children also do so when talking about their own social relationships.  The research therefore examines the importance of talk about thoughts and feeling in different aspects of human social behaviour. 

Kerry Vincent, English Department

Allister Miller’s Short Fiction

Archival research will be conducted in Durban, RSA, and Swaziland with the purpose of uncovering further material by the early Scottish settler to Swaziland, Allister Miller.  The aim is to edit a book of his short fiction and write an introduction that contextualizes the stories as versions of the imperial romance.  

Kevin Whetter, English Department

Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance

Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance is a refereed book forthcoming with Ashgate (2008).  It has three main sections: a chapter on genre study, a lengthy chapter on romance, and a lengthier chapter on Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, a text usually considered a romance butwhcih I argue is a generic hybrid combining romance with tragedy.  I am requesting 25.55 funding to secure reproduction costs and publication permissions for seven black-and-white illustrations to accompany the romance chapter, and one further image from a 1917 edition of Marlory.  The images come predominantly from medical manuscripts owned by the major libraries in the United Kingdom: from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x; from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in the National Library of Wales’ Hengwrt manuscript; and from unique features of the romance Guy of Warwick from the famous Auchinleck manuscript in the National Library of Scotland. 

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) October 2006 Awards

Trevor Avery, Biology Department

Through the looking glass: morphology exposed by clearing and staining

Morphology, or how an animal looks, has been used for centuries as a tool to understand evolutionary relationships, assess drug and pollution effects, and expand our knowledge of skeletal and integument systems of animals.  A sporadically used technique of clearing (removing pigment) from an organism and then staining bones, cartilage and nerves, greatly enhances our ability to see the underlying structures (bones, articulation points, bone to bone connections, etc.).  We propose to assess the two most commonly used techniques for clearing and staining and to determine the applicability of these techniques in practical research use.  The looking glass is indeed in need of a cleaning, and clearing and staining provides an easy and suitable pedagogical tool to examine morphology. 

Rachel Brickner, Political Science Department

Building a Movement: Expanding Activism in Support of Women’s Labour Rights in Mexico

Although women are increasing likely to participate in the paid workforce in Mexico, they face unique forms of discrimination as workers and are among the most vulnerable groups of workers in the country.  Unionized women, with their political resources and capacity for organization, are in a good position to support the rights of women workers, within their unions and vis-à-vis the government.  To date, however, they have been unsuccessful in lobbying the government in support of laws that protect women workers.  This research project explores efforts being made by civil society actors in Mexico City – unionists, non-governmental organizations, intergovernmental organizations, and academics – to create a dialogue about the rights of women workers and build a broader social movement in support of them.

Nancy Clarke – Mathematics & Statistics Department

Searching Networks

The game of Cops and Robber is a pursuit game played on a graph, and is used to model and study the dynamics of successful pursuit (not only of intruders but, more generally, threats to the security of a variety of networks, including computer networks).  We develop strategies that can be used by the cops to overcome constraints, such as limited knowledge of the whereabouts and movements of the bad guy, and to maximize the potential benefits of technology. 

Eva Curry – Mathematics & Statistics Department

Experimental Methods in Visualizing and Investigating Radix Representations for Vectors

The grantee will present an invited talk, titles “Experimental Mathematics and Radix Representations for Vectors”, in the Experimental Mathematics in Action special session at the 2007 Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans.  The talk will discuss experimental methods for visualizing and investigating radix representations for vectors, an important new tool with applications to wavelet theory and iterated function systems, among other areas of mathematics.  While at the conference, the grantee will also attend a minicourse on “A Beginner’s Guide to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Mathematics” to learn more about current research into mathematics education (including how students learn and effective teaching methodologies).

Deborah Day – School of Education

Negotiated Definitions of Resilience

The purpose of this project is to further an understanding of resilience in undergraduate students at Acadia to support programming and research.  In additions, the project will evaluate a methodology for involving research participants in developing definitions of resilience. 

Bernard Delpeche – Languages & Literatures Department

Workshops for preparing a French version of the novel George & Rue by George Elliott Clarke    

This project aims to extend of literary works within by African Nova Scotian authors and to promote bilingualism (English-French) among African Nova Scotian communities.  One of the main components of this project is to translate from English to French the remarkable novel George & Rue by Dr George Elliott Clarke.

Lisa Houghton – School of Nutrition & Dietetics

An estimation of folic acid intakes in Nova Scotia children following the introduction of the national folic acid fortification program: Is there too much folic acid in our food?

In 1998, Health Canada mandated that all flour, rice and pasta be fortified with folic acid to decrease the risk of pregnancies affected by neural tube defects.  One of the criticisms of the folic acid fortification program is that specific subgroups such as children may be exposed to folic acid intakes via the fortification program that significantly exceed their defined recommendations.  To date, no one has evaluated the impact of this fortification program on the folic acid intakes of Canadian children.  Thus, the aim of this study will be to assess the prevalence of excessive folic intakes in a large sample of Nova Scotia children aged 10 to 11 years. 

Harish Kapoor – School of Business

Brand extensions are used as an important growth strategy by businesses to counter the financial and failure risks associated with developing new products.  It is estimated that more than 30,000 new consumer products are introduced each year in the US and Canadian markets out of which 95% are brand extensions and approximately 80% of them fail within the first two years of their introduction.  According to one estimate it takes somewhere between $50-$150 million to develop and launch a new grocery product in the N. American market and significantly higher amounts for other products.  Given the high stakes, it is managerially significant to examine the role competition plays on consumers’ evaluation of brand extension.

Michael Leiter – Psychology Department

Assessing entrepreneurial qualities in University Students

Over the past two decades research has attempted to identify personal qualities associated with entrepreneurship.  This research has considered university students and practicing entrepreneurs.  With student populations, the research has focused on identifying demographics characteristics, personality traits, attitudes, and inclinations that are associate with an expressed intention to pursue an entrepreneurial career.  With working people, the research has focused on actual career choices as well as success in pursing entrepreneurship.  A persistent challenge in this research field is the lack of effective assessment tools.  The questionnaires used in most entrepreneurship studies are too long and have dubious psychometric qualities.  Their measurements fail to differentiate among core qualities.  They are a weak basis for distinguishing among people or for tracking developing over time.  This project evaluates a new questionnaire among undergraduate students to identify qualities associated with an inclination towards entrepreneurship.  

Stephen Maitzen – Philosophy Department

Skepticism, Theism, and Ordinary Morality

Conference papers to be presented at the American Philosophical Association on the following topics: (1) One of the best-known arguments for skepticism starts from the premise that everything we experience could be merely a dream.  Many philosophers have regarded the argument as impossible to refute, even if they resist its sceptical conclusion; my paper attempts to refute it. (2) Many people claim that morality depends on the existence of God; other people reject that claim but insist that morality is at least compatible with God’s existence.  My paper argues that God and morality are no t even compatible. 

Sherri McFarland – Chemistry Department

Design and Evaluation of New Agents for DNA Photocleavage

DNA photocleaving agents are compounds capable of directly of indirectly introducing single- or double-strand breaks in the DNA backbone upon photoactivation with an appropriate wavelength of light.  These molecules are of wide interest as tools in molecular biology, as conformational and structural probes for noncanonical DNA topologies, as probes for studying DNA-protein and DNA-drug interactions in photofootprinting, and as anticancer agents in photodynamic therapy (PDT).  With regard to PDT, current agents have serious drawbacks which include prolonged photosensitivity, requirement for O2, lack of double-strand cleavage, and activation by wavelengths of light that are slightly shorter than optimal.  This project seeks to address current limitations by introducing multi-metallic systems as new DNA Photocleavage agents that rely on strong metal-metal interactions known to clave DNA under hypoxic conditions.  These systems will be characterized by activation in the phototherapeutic window (700-900 nm) and equipped with two or more independent scission mechanisms to impact dual cleaving capacity. 

Jianan Peng – Mathematics & Statistics Department

Evaluation of Level Probabilities for Normal Random Variables Under Order Restrictions

Statistical inference under order restrictions is an active area with many important applications.  Although literature shows that the likelihood ratio test for homogeneity of several normal means with order restricted alternatives is more powerful than the classical one-way ANOVA F- test, its null distribution which involves the level probabilities has been difficult to calculate.  The purpose of this project is to use Hayter’s (Hayter, A. J. (2006) Recursive Integration Methodologies with Statistical Applications.  Journal of Statistical Planning and Inferences, Vol 136, 2284-2296.) recursive method to compute the level probabilities under order restriction and implement in R.

Robert Pitter – School of Recreation Management & Kinesiology

Travel to present a paper, “Rural Images of Sport, Physical Activity and Community Identity” and preside over two sessions at the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) Conference in Vancouver, BC, November 1 – November 5, 2006.

Robert Pitter is presenting a paper, “Rural Images and Observations of Health, Wellness, Sport, and Recreation” at the 2006 Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in Vancouver, BC from Nov. 1 through Nov. 4.  The paper reports on a study of community identity and wellness that used photo elicitation to collect information from thirty residents of a small town, Windsor, located in Atlantic Canada.  Three segments of the population were included in the study: adults over 50, adults under 50, and high-school-aged youth.  Each group of respondents identified a number of sport- and physical-activity-related spaces, including both competitive/recreational sport sites and cultural venues such as a sport museum and sport landmarks.  The meanings attached to these spaces and their significance to each group of residents are discussed and illustrate that many people believe sport and places for physical activity contribute to community identity and wellness through the opportunities they provide for social interaction, economic development through tourism and commercial sport and recreation, and community pride as will as physical health. 

Lisa Price – Psychology Department

Validation of the Nova Scotia Depression Screening Instrument

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is the single most burdensome illness worldwide among ages 15-44 (in Disability Adjusted Life Years; Murray & Lopez, 1996) yet, (in the USA) only 33-50% of those with MDD obtain treatment within a year and no more than 30% of those obtain even minimally acceptable treatment (Kessler, 2002). Prevention is clearly required (Munoz, Le, Clarke & Jaycox, 2002), especially in light of MDD’s chronic, recurrent and disabling nature (Kessler, 2002).  Identifying known risk factors for MDD is important to best identify those who would most benefit from prevention programs, and suggest targets for such interventions.  Research aimed at understanding MDD often involves the use of symptom-based screening measures however, their power to predict is mediocre at best.  In this study, we will validate our non-mood related screening measure, the Nova Scotia Depression Screening Instrument (NSDSI) and assess its power to predict MDD.

Patricia Rigg – English Department

Aestheticism and the Culture of Individualism

This project aims to explore the development of late nineteenth-century British Aestheticism in the conservative, well-respected journal, the Athenaeum.  Mary F. Robinson, Edmund Gosse, Augusta Webster, and Theodore Watts engaged in the discourse of Aestheticism with other prominent Athenaeum writers in their literary reviews.  These writers were also involved in the same “salon” society as Webster and articulated in poetry and prose a system of poetics that is more properly defined as Modern than Victorian.  These poets have not been the subjects of this kind of critical scrutiny and the three conference papers I have given have all been well received.

Ian Spooner – Geology Department

A Prehistoric Record of Hurricanes in Southwestern Nova Scotia

Lake sediment cores from the Peggy’s Cove region will be used to reconstruct a chronology of pre-historic hurricane activity in Southweatern Nova Scotia.  These records will be used to better understand past changes in North Atlantic sea surface temperature, an understanding of which is important if we are to understand how future climate change may affect the Atlantic Region. 

Sonia Thon – Languages & Literatures Department

Mujeres que contribuyeron a la colección “La Novela Corta” (1916-1925)

This project studies the genre of the short novel, popular in Madrid in the first quarter of the XX Century.  It specifically analyzes the contribution of women writers to the collection “La Novela Corta” published in Madrid (1916-1925).

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) February 2006 Awards

Stephen Ahern, Department of English

Professional indexing of book typescript

This project will provide support for professional indexing of Stephen Ahern’s forthcoming publication, Affected Sensibilities: Romantic Excess and the Genealogy of the Novel, 1680-1810 (New York: AMS Press, forthcoming).

Darcy Benoit, School of Computer Science

Paper presentation to Workshop on Trusted and Autonomic Computing Systems, IEEE 20^th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications.

Computer Science is a fast-moving field, where much of the current research is first published in conferences. Darcy Benoit will present his paper, “Automatic Performance Diagnosis for Changing Workloads in Database Management Systems,” at a workshop of the IEEE 20^th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications in Vienna, Austria in April 2006. 

Giselle Corbeille, Department of Languages and Literatures

What kind of explicit tasks can influence the acquisition of implicit knowledge?

In the French unit of Acadia’s Department of Languages and Literatures, teachers are increasingly concerned about the lack of accuracy found in essays of 4^th year students, and various means to improve students’ accuracy in their writing are being considered; The purpose of this study is to determine whether the writing of dictations has an influence on accuracy of forms in essay writing.

Michael Devine, Department of English/Theatre Studies

The Kosova Project

The Kosova Project is an intercultural project which extends over three stages of development and culminates in a professional stage production in Kosova, mounted by CCTD, an internationally-recognized theatre for youth. The project will utilize the BOXWHATBOX acting methods developed by Michael Devine, through which he has created original productions in Serbian and Finnish, with the goals of empowering actors with these tools of expression, and of furthering the depth and scope of the work itself.

Matthew Durant, School of Nutrition and Dietetics
Validity of an Online Food Frequency Questionnaire and 24 hour Food Recall for Nutritional Assessment in Third Year University Students
The food frequency questionnaire and 24 hour food recall are nutritional assessment tools commonplace throughout health-related studies. This project will involve a sample of approximately 80 third year Acadia students. The students will twice be asked to complete an online 24 hour food recall and a modified version of the Harvard Food Frequency Questionnaire. The data collected from the students will be used to determine the validity these tools in the nutritional assessment of young adults.

John Eustace, Department of English

Japanese support group interviews for “Old Battle, New Age: The Case of the Mutant Message Down Under”

Several interviews will be conducted in Kobe and Tokyo, Japan, with members of the Japanese Support Group that aided the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation in its protest campaign against Marlo Morgan’s New Age novel, Mutant Message Down Under. The interviews will elicit the details of the Japanese leg of this three-part protest campaign, contributing to the narrative that Dr. Eustace has been developing through interviews with Aboriginal people in Australia.

Jonathon Fowles, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

Methods to assess low-frequency fatigue in athletes

The purpose of this study is to develop methods to assess and monitor fatigue in hard-training athletes. The outcome of this research will be to develop practical tests that the coach and applied sport scientist can use to monitor fatigue during training and performance in a season, so that training and performance is optimized.

Sajid Hussain, School of Computer Science

Energy-efficient data acquisition techniques to monitor environmental conditions of a building

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are used for various applications such as military, environment, building automation, and agriculture. WSN consists of a large number of small, inexpensive nodes that can detect conditions such as temperature, light, humidity and motion. However, frequent samplings and transmissions by these nodes can deplete battery power in a few weeks, hence intelligent techniques that preclude unnecessary data acquisitions are needed. The aim of this research is to develop energy-efficient data acquisition techniques for stationary indoor sensors deployed on several buildings on campus.

Emilie W. Gould, School of Business Administration

Intercultural study of web credibility

People in different parts of the world have adopted e-commerce at different rates. Part of this digital divide is due to differences in infrastructure between developing and developed nations; however, part may be due to differences in culture. Emily W. Gould will conduct a series of focus groups with students from China, the Bahamas, and Canada to identify how people from different countries and cultures evaluate web credibility. She plans to use her findings to help web designers build more culturally-relevant websites.

David N. Kristie, Department of Biology

Diurnal rhythms of stem elongation in zinnia

Excessive stem elongation in flower crops such as chrysanthemum, easter lily and zinnia can be prevented by growing plants under inverse temperature regimes, where plants are exposed to higher temperatures at night, and lower temperatures during the day. We are using rotary motion sensors to continuously monitor stem elongation rates in zinnia, to determine how inverse temperature regimes and plant hormones influence the diurnal rhythm of stem elongation.

Darren Kruisselbrink and Janna Wentzell, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

The effects of mental imagery on rehabilitation following total knee replacement

Mental imagery has been used in many therapeutic settings to reduce and control pain in patients, however its effects on quality of life during rehabilitation from total knee replacement has yet to be examined. Following knee replacement surgery, approximately 50 patients will be randomly assigned to two groups, one which will perform mental imagery during their rehabilitation and one which will not. A standard health survey will be used to measure health-related quality of life along several subscales, and survey scores will be compared across the mental imagery and control groups.

Matthew Lukeman, Department of Chemistry

Synthesis and Evaluation of Dihydroxyfluorenone Photocages

Photoremovable protecting groups or “photocages” are a class of compounds that release a protected or “caged” compound after they absorb light, and have found use in organic synthesis, and as a method of rapidly releasing a variety of compounds to biological tissues using a brief flash of light. Unfortunately, currently available photocages possess serious drawbacks, including the formation of reactive photoproducts, slow release rate, and poor aqueous solubility. This project seeks to remedy these drawbacks by introducing new photocages based on the known photochemistry of hydroxyfluorenes, which are anticipated to not possess the negative attributes of available photocages.

Lachlan McWilliams, Department of Psychology

An epidemiological investment of the association between a pain condition and the full-range of psychiatric disorders

Numerous studies have demonstrated painful medical conditions are associated with psychopathology. However, research regarding pain conditions and psychopathology has focused almost exclusively on depression. This project will use data from the National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Drugs (NESARC) to investigate associations between one painful medical condition (arthritis) and the full range of psychiatric disorders. The first objective will be to replicate a few earlier findings indicating that pain conditions have strong positive associations with anxiety disorders (e.g. panic disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder). The main objective of the study will be to conduct the first epidemiological investigation of the associations between a pain condition and personality disorders.

Anna Migliarisi, Department of English/Theatre Studies

Book-length manuscript: Stanislavsky and Directing: Theory, Practice and Influence

This project will set in motion the publication phase of a volume called Stanislavksky and Directing: Theory, Practice and Influence, inspired by an international theatre conference of the same name, convened January 20-22, 2006, which Dr. Migliarisi organized in collaboration with the University of Toronto Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama. This funding will support travel to the New School, New York, and Trent University, Peterborough ON, to meet with theatre artists and to conduct interviews that will form sections of this publication.

John Murimboh, Department of Chemistry

Development of novel in situ devices for monitoring trace metal speciation in natural waters

This research program is directed at the development of sophisticated models and in situ sample devices for the long-term monitoring and interpretation of trace metal speciation and bioavailability in the aquatic environment. The sampling devices will mimic the diffusive layer at the biological membranes of aquatic biota to provide an in situ, time averaged estimate of bioavailable metal concentrations. The focus on an in situ approach will also overcome problems that plague current laboratory-based techniques, such as contamination, analyte loss and sample transformation during sample collection, handling and storage.

Jon Saklofske, Department of English

Conscripting Imagination: The National Duty of William Blake’s Art

During the late 18^th Century, a time of divided sympathies in England between revolutionary republicanism and counterrevolutionary nationalism, William Blake engaged with contemporary politics from an aesthetic vantage point. Indeed, his writings repeatedly equate artistic production with national strength, asserting a close interplay between individual creativity and social vitality. Dr. Jon Saklofske’s research attempts to fill in the existing gaps in our understanding of Blake in his time, contributing to the growing body of research that explores the interactions and influences between creative expression and historical conditions.

Anna Saroli, Department of Languages and Literatures

Paper presentation at the Fifth International Workshop on Foreign Language Teaching, Communication and Culture, University of Holguin, Cuba

Anna Saroli will travel to the University of Holguid, Cuba, to present a paper titled “Espanol en vivo: A new approach to audio material for students of Spanish.” The paper describes an innovative approach to listening comprehension materials which can be used in the classroom or for independent study. The paper further examines the effectiveness of these materials in motivating students and improving their listening comprehension when used as a regular component of a Spanish-language program.

Chris Shields, School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

Proxy-led exercise as a means of promoting independent exercise among older adults: an initial examination of Relationally Inferred Self-Efficacy beliefs

Although many older adults recognize the importance of being active, they often question their capabilities to exercise. Exercise instructors can be a valuable resource to facilitate exercise in a structured environment, but continued reliance on an instructor may lead to dependence, undermining confidence in exercising independently. It is crucial for instructors, then, to provide participants with an important source of efficacy information (e.g., how confident is my proxy in my abilities), perceptions called Relationally Inferred Self-Efficacy (RISE) beliefs. This research seeks to increase understanding of RISE beliefs as a source of efficacy enhancing information for older adults, by conducting an initial examination of these beliefs among older adults. This information may help to inform future interventions involving proxy-agents as a means for behaviour change.

Dave Shutler, Department of Biology

Does flower symmetry matter to nectarivorous insects?

Most organisms exhibit some form of symmetry. How they make themselves this way is one question. Another question is whether being symmetrical is advantageous. In some situations, there are clear advantages: humans with symmetrical faces are preferred as partners. Even symmetrical flowers may be preferred places for insects, like bees, to visit. Whether this is because asymmetrical flowers have bad genes, or whether it is because they are older and beginning to die is unknown. To test whether symmetry by itself if an important cue to insect visits, we will use artificial flowers that don’t produce any chemical cues. We will watch whether insects make more visits to symmetrical than asymmetrical flowers.

Jessica Slights, Department of English

Editing Shakespeare’s Othello

Jessica Slights’ editorial work on Othello has four objectives: To produce and affordable, high-quality scholarly print edition of Othello, to be published by Broadview Press, for use in undergraduate and graduate classes throughout Canada and abroad; To develop a high-quality electronic edition of Othello for publication by Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE) that provides free access for scholars, students and the general public to both a lightly-annotated text and a wide array of contextual material that will broaden our understanding of the play and its period; To share her work on Othello throughout the editorial process in a series of conference presentations and scholarly articles; To use her editorial work on Othello as an opportunity to help train the next generation of scholars in both the traditional skills of scholarly editing and the new challenges facing editors in a modern electronic environment.

Don Stewart, Department of Biology

Support for Conservation Biology Field Assistant

The objective of this project is to identify habitat preferences and collect specimens of two elusive species of small mammals in Nova Scotia: the rock shrew and the Gaspé shrew. Both are currently listed as species of special concern by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, but very little is known about their distributions and precise habitat preferences in this province. The results of this study will be provided to wildlife managers and conservation biologists with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and the Terrestrial Mammals Special Group of COSEWIC to help them evaluate and assign a conservation status to these species.

Fiona Valverde, Department of Art

The Canadian War Artists’ Programme

Fiona Valverde intends to revise her M.Litt thesis on the Canadian War Artists’ Programme 1942-46 (Cambridge University 1998) into a format suitable for book publication with UBC press. This topic has great cultural and historical interest and is one that UBC Press believes Canadians will find compelling. Of particular interest to this research is the new Canadian War Museum, which opened in Spring 2005 and houses Canada’s outstanding war art collection.

Brian VanBlarcom, Department of Economics (with John Janmaat)

Trail demand estimation: Kentville to Grand Pré along the Rail Trail

The objective of this study is to measure the demand for a proposed multi-use pathway along the Windsor and Hantsport rail corridor between Kentville and Grand Pré. The results of this study will be used to establish the economic consequences of the proposed trail, with particular emphasis on quantifying potential user demand. The study will also examine the monetary benefits related to changes in physical activity by users, reductions in traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions in the trail corridor, and the potential for the trail to stimulate tourism in the local area.

Leigh Whaley, Department of History and Classics

Clandestine Operations: exemplary agents of the Special Operations Executive- Andrée Borrel and Odette Sansom

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that women played a pivotal role in the French resistance during World War II, and without their contributions neither the Special Operations Executive nor the Resistance could have functioned as it did. Leigh Whaley will attempt to address this gap in historical knowledge by examining the roles and experiences of two French women, Andrée Borrel and Odette Sansom, both of whom played important roles in the SOE and managed to defy the gender stereotype for their generation.

Brian Wilson, Department of Biology

Development of a brain slice culture system to study relaxin-induced neuroprotection

Strokes affect approximately 50,000 Canadians every year resulting in 16,000 deaths. Strokes cost the Canadian economy about $2.7 billion per year in health care and associated costs. Relaxin is a hormone with well-studied actions in human pregnancy, and recent evidence from our lab suggests that it is also neuroprotective in that it reduces the death of nervous tissue under ischemic conditions. Our research is focusing on the mechanisms through which relaxin is preventing stroke damage.

Herb Wyile, Department of English

Speaking in the Past Tense: English-Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical Fiction

Funds will cover the cost of illustrations and provide support to for the publication of Speaking in the Past Tense: English-Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical Fiction, a series of interviews with eleven English-Canadian writers who have written novels on historical subjects. This project makes an important contribution to Canadian literary and historical scholarship by going beyond the novels to look at the history behind them, at the difficulties of writing about history, at the writers’ thoughts on Canadian history, and at their attitudes towards the historical novel as a literary genre. The interviews address particular political, aesthetic, and historical issues raised by the respective writers’ novels.

Jun Yang, School of Business Administration

Institutional shareholder activism and its impact on target companies: Canadian evidence

Shareholder activism has been a popular yet controversial corporate governance measure for shareholders to cause changes in U.S. corporations for nearly two decades. Studies on shareholder activism with U.S. companies are abundant, but there is little research into the relationships between shareholder activism and performance or operations of Canadian companies. This project fills in the void of knowledge on shareholder activism with respect to Canadian companies by investigating the relationship between shareholder activism and a firm’s share returns.

Haiyi Zhang, School of Computer Science

Multitask Learning in Bayes Net

This research will investigate possible ways of selective task knowledge transfer in the context of Bayes net. The research has three objectives: The first objective is to find an alternative measure of relationship between tasks than those presented previously; The second objective is to develop a theoretical model of selective knowledge transfer based on the new measure of relationship between tasks; The third objective is to build a prototype system based on this theory and test the system against synthetic and real task domains.

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) October 2005 Awards

Soren Bondrup-Nielsen – Biology Department

The 747 project: A joint project of Acadia University, Town of Wolfville and the Nova Scotia Nature Trust to map and describe the 747 acre former town watershed on Gaspereau Mountain

The Town of Wolfville, in partnership with the Nova Scotia Nature Trust, is involved in an initiative to preserve 747 acres of forest, situated on the north side of the south mountain overlooking the Gaspereau Valley.  This site served as the water supply for the Town of Wolfville for many years.  The Town is looking to putting an easement on this property with the Nova Scotia Nature Trust to protect it from future development.  The property contains old-growth forest, which is now a rare forest type in Nova Scotia.  The objective of this study is to conduct extensive background research, based on existing information that will describe the physical, biological and hydrological components of this property, necessary in the legal process of placing an easement on the property.

Michael Domaratzki - School of Computer Science

Intra-molecular Template-guided DNA Recombination

This research will focus on the theoretical analysis of the behaviour of the DNA of certain single-celled ciliates during reproduction.  We will analyze the implications of one theoretical model as an operation on different portions of a single strand of DNA.  The model, called template guided recombination, has previously only been considered as an operation on two distinct strands of DNA.

Antionio Franceschet – Political Science Department

The Ethics of Legalism: the Impact of Cosmopolitan Courts in Global Politics

This project examines the relationship between cosmopolitan political morality and international law.  The output of this project is a conference paper and then refereed journal article that will evaluate the impact, if any, of international human rights and war crimes courts on global politics, particularly the degree of global inequalities and power asymmetries among states and societies.

Gregory MacKinnon – School of Education

Technology and Cooperative Learning: The IIT Model for Teaching  Authentic Chemistry Curriculum

Attend and present results at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) theme symposium as the author of a chapter that was accepted and published in the monograph ”Exemplary Science in Grades 9-12: Standards-Based Success Stories.”

Peter McLeod – Psychology Department

The relative effectiveness of aerobic exercise and yoga in reducing depressive symptoms among a female clinical sample

The proposed study will examine the effectiveness of both aerobic exercise and yoga in reducing depressive symptoms among a female clinical sample.  Traditional psychotherapy and pharmacological treatments for depression are costly, not always effective, and may have negative side effects.  Research has consistently demonstrated that aerobic exercise both improves an individual’s physical health, and can reduce symptoms of depression.  However, there is little research comparing the anti-depressant effects of different forms of physical activity.  The purpose of the present study is twofold.  First, a comparison between aerobic exercise and yoga will be examined to determine if yoga is as effective in decreasing depressive symptoms in clinically depressed women as aerobic exercise.  Secondly, an examination of self-efficacy coping (beliefs in coping abilities) as a possible psychological explanation for the anti-depressant effects of physical activity will be investigated.

Robert Pitter – School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

Travel to present a paper, "Rural Images and Observations of Health, Wellness, Sport and Recreation," and co-preside over a session, "Race and Sex Segregation in Sport," at eh North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) Conference in Winston-Salem, NC, Oct 26-29, 2005.

Presenting a paper, “Rural Images and Observations of Health, Wellness, Sport, and Recreation” at the 2004 Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in Winston-Salem, NC.  The paper reports on a study of personal and community wellness and health that used photo elicitation to collect information from thirty residents of a small town, Windsor, located in Atlantic Canada.  Three segments of the population were included in the study: adults over 50, adults under 50, and high-school-aged youth.  Respondents identified a number of sport- and physical-activity-related spaces, including both competitive/recreational sport sites and cultural venues such as a sport museum and sport landmarks.  The meanings attached to these spaces and their significance to residents of different age groups are discussed to illustrate that for many people sport and places for physical activity contribute to personal and community wellness through the opportunities they provide for physical health as well as social interaction, economic development, and community pride.

Susan Potter – Psychology Department

Juror Bias in Credibility Ratings for Recovered Memory Testimony

Jury members are being increasingly presented with testimony from alleged victims claiming to have recovered previously forgotten memories of childhood sexual abuse.  Thus, research on factors that influence jurors’ opinions in sexual abuse trials involving recovered memory testimony is needed.  This study will focus on how juror biases impact opinions regarding recovered memory testimony.  More specifically, thus study will examine whether beliefs about recovered memories, along with person experience with recovered memories and/or previous victimization experiences, influence juror ratings of the credibility of recovered memory testimony, and subsequent guilt of the alleged perpetrator.  This research has practical implications as we improve our understanding of how jury member biases affect the perceived credibility of victim testimony.

Robert Proulx – Department of Languages and Literature

Expansion of the database of Theme Songs in Quebec Cinema

Expansion of the already existing and functional database resource to further research into the role and nature of theme songs in Quebec cinema.  Theme songs have been used in Quebec movies from the 1960’s until today and songs play diverse roles from one movie to another. The aim of this project is to explore these roles which theme songs play in relation not only to the film of which they form a part but also, where relevant, to the original literary work on which the film is based.  The project also attempts to categorize theme songs according to their nature and role such as “chanson-exposition, chanson-catalyseur, chanson-leitmotiv, chanson-synthese”.  This will show us more about the role of songs in the film medium.

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) February 2005 Winners

Jonathon Fowles – School of Recreation Management and Kinesiology

Super-specific training to improve skating performance

The purpose of this study is to test the effectiveness of Acadia’s “Skating Simulator” on developing on-ice skating speed in hockey players.  It is anticipated that the specific training adaptations developed by the “Skating Simulator” will enhance on-ice skating performance more than a standard off-season hockey conditioning program.

Shanthi Johnson – School of Nutrition and Dietetics

Policy Forum on Healthy Aging in India

Kerala is an ideal setting to study the determinants of healthy aging, given the dramatic population aging phenomenon, as well as the feminization of aging. The goals of the project are to assess the determinants of healthy aging among older adults, using the determinants of the active aging framework proposed by WHO and to develop and implement educational strategies on healthy aging for health care providers. Also to develop a monograph on healthy aging and to host a policy forum to discuss policy recommendations related to promoting healthy aging among older adults in India.

Elizabeth Johnston – School of Nutrition and Dietetics

The effect of caffeine ingestion on hydration status & intermittent exercise performance

With the removal of caffeine from the IOC list of banned substances in sport, it is of special interest to understand the effects of this compound on hydration status. It has traditionally been thought that caffeine is a diuretic, however, a number of recently published well controlled trials do not support this. Cola beverages are often consumed by athletes during exercise as opposed to water or sport drinks. It is important to understand if caffeine is ergogenic at lower doses (1-2 mg/kg) and if caffeine is a diuretic when consumed in a dose as low as that in soft drinks.

Linda Lusby – Environmental Science

Mapping Hunger – Preliminary Study

A preliminary study designed to investigate the use of geographic information systems in an analysis of the intersection of areas of environmental degradation, hunger and restrictive trade policies. The findings will be used to complete a proposal for international funding to support a team of researchers from all major world regions.

Tomasz Muldner – School of Computer Science

XML Data Compression

Development of libraries and frameworks for various algorithms for compressing XML documents; including two algorithms developed by the applicant (in cooperation with G. Leighton and J. Diamond: AXECHOP (provides a very good compression rate, but can not query compressed documents) and TREECHOP (can query compressed documents).

John Murimboh – Chemistry Department

Development of Diffusion Gradients in Thin Films for the Kinetic Speciation of Trace Metals in Natural Waters

A new, multidisciplinary research program is proposed o improve our understanding of the beneficial or adverse impacts of trace metals in our fresh, estuarine and marine waters. The objective of the proposed research is to develop and apply a novel technique for the in situ chemical speciation trace metals in the aquatic environment.

Joanne Pelletier – School of Education

Student Perceptions of Teachers’ Behaviors in High School Physical Education Classes

Funds for traveling to the CAHPERD Conference to support the presentation of results for the project.

Jianan Peng – Math and Stats Department

A New Method to Identify the Minimum Effective Dose

Identifying the minimum effective dose in dose response studies is important since high doses often turn out to have undesirable side effects. S new method to identify the minimum effective dose is proposed.

Jennifer Richard – Library

E.C. Smith Digital Herbarium: Local Photography Collection

Photographs of flora of the Acadian Forest Region created by local researchers and community members are the focus of this phase of the E.C. Smith Digital Herbarium Project. Along with the scanned photographs, metadata to describe the photos will be created following standard protocol. The creation of this unique online resource, the only one of its kind in Canada, showcases historical and current botanical research done at Acadia and hence fosters and facilitates future research, particularly in the collection and identification of flora in the Acadian Forest Region.

Patricia Rigg – English Department

Augusta Webster: A Woman’s Work

This will be the first full length study of Webster, a woman well-known and respected in her day, not only as a writer and poetry reviewer for the Athenaeum, but also as a member of the Suffrage movement and one of the first female members of the London School Board.

Marlene Snyder – Biology Department

Why do human females have hidden estrous? A comparative gene expression approach

The work intended to carry out will help to set the stage for a gene expression based comparison of primates, both our closest evolutionary relatives and those primates whose cycling seems to be most similar to our own, in an attempt to determine just where, in the cascade of hormonal information, we may have –over evolutionary time – altered our expression in a manner that permitted the switch from advertising fertility to ‘advertising’ infertility.

Ian Spooner – Geology Department

Physical Evolution of Blanding’s Turtle Habitat in Southwestern Nova Scotia

Research is being conducted that focuses on the Late Holocene (5000 BP - Present) climate change in Nova Scotia and its affect on the environmental evolution of Blandings Turtle habitat in SWNS. Blandings Turtle are an endangered species in NS and their distribution and preferred habitat is not well known. A paleoclimate reconstruction to model how climate change impacts wetland systems will be used. If we can understand how wetlands have adapted to natural climate change we’ll be better able to predict the effects of future climate change scenarios. This information is required if we are to assess changing population dynamics in the context of climate and global change.

Conor Vibert – School of Business

To present findings from, “Understanding Technology Enabled Environmental Scanning by Canadian and Japanese Small and Medium-Sized Exporters (SME’s)”

Frontiers of e-Business Research Conference 2005 to present a paper that reports on the findings of an exploratory study of the use of Internet technologies and online information sources by managers of fourteen Nova Scotian and fifteen Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) to make sense of foreign market opportunities. It explores common environmental scanning strategies, practices and technologies and suggests differences when target markets are domestic as opposed to foreign.

Kevin Whetter – English Department

The Genre of the Stanzaic Morte Arthur

The mediaeval English poem known as the Stanzaic Morte Arthur is usually considered to be a typical mediaeval romance. However, instead of the usual marriage and happy ending of many romances, the stanzaic Morte is notable for its decidedly secular and tragic outlook. It is my contention in “The Genre of the Stanzaic Morte Arthur” that the poem should be considered a generic hybrid best termed tragic romance, one that considerably influenced the treatment and theme of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur [sic]. Recognition of these facts helps to explain a great many so-called mysteries of both texts.

Peter Williams – Physics Department

Electrical Conductivity of DNA Ligands

Measurements of the electrical properties of single molecules are of fundamental and applied significance. Further insight into the properties of molecules will be obtained by learning about the dynamic behaviour of charge in molecular bonds. From an applied point of view, there is hope that molecules may form the basis from the next generation of electronic devices. These devises will be much more compact and use less power than existing technology.

University Research Fund (Article 25.55) October 2004 Winners

John Janmaat

Investing in Arms to Secure Water

It has been suggested that when water becomes scarce, powerful nations will use their might to take it from those that are weaker. We show that although those with power will use it to increase their resource access, they are less likely to use force than nations that are more equal. Where Homer Dixon (1991,1994) argues that war over water is more likely with asymmetrical power (e.g. in the Nile Basin), our results suggest that war may be more likely where it is unclear who is superior (e.g. between Pakistan and India over the Indus). These results will be presented at the XIVth Annual General Conference on Contemporary Issues in Development Economics, Organized by Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.

Brian Wilson

Neuroprotective role of Relaxin in Male Rats

Strokes affect approximately 50,000 Canadians every year resulting in 16,000 deaths. Strokes cost the Canadian economy about $2.7Billion per year in health care and associated costs. Relaxin is a hormone with well-studied actions in human pregnancy and recent evidence from our lab suggests that it is also neuroprotective in that it reduces the death of nervous tissue under ischemic conditions. Our research is focusing on the mechanisms through which relaxin is preventing stroke damage.

Ernest Johnson

Evaluation of Privacy and Security Policies posted on Major Canadian e-Businesses

E-business literature suggests that if the websites post their privacy and security policies explicitly, the consumers were less likely to be concerned. However, based on 2001 website information, Liu & Arnett (2002) showed that only 52% of the Fortune 500 companies, which are considered leaders in technology and business practices, posted privacy/security policies and only 11% of these websites had both policies and a seal of compliance in the US. In Canada, disclosing privacy/security policy in the website has been made mandatory since 2002. However, there has not been any systematic examination of the extent of compliance to the Canadian regulations. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze the extent to which Canadian private companies provide privacy policies on their home pages. Several types of private companies in Canada listed under “Top 300 Private Companies: will be reviewed. First, the companies will be stratified based on their focus (e.g. banks). Subsequently, an evaluation template including all the components of privacy and security outlined in the Canadian regulation and the privacy/security policies posted in the websites will be reviewed against this template. The findings will help formulate strategies to encourage compliance of the new privacy/security regulations.

Paul Arnold

Demonstration Project – Worm-composting Wheelock Food Wastes

This project assesses the scientific and economical feasibility of using vermi- (worm) composting as a means of stabilizing the minced organic food wastes from Wheelock Dining Hall. The project also assesses the use of the finished product on the campus grounds, contributing to a more sustainable campus.

Kelly Dye & Terrance Weatherbee

Removing Insult from Injury: Organizational Responsiveness as a Moderator

A preliminary study tested the moderating role of procedural justice as an aspect of organizational responsiveness to aggression and violence in the workplace. It was anticipated, based on organizational justice research, that a procedurally fair intervention by an organization in matters of aggression and violence at work would be an important determinant of how individuals react to such incidents. Based on the responses of college and university instructors reporting on student-initiated aggression at school, we found that procedural justice demonstrated by the institution moderates the impact of aggression on absenteeism and health complaints. Moderated multiple regression showed that instructors who felt that their organizations showed low procedural justice in how they responded to aggression at school were likely to report taking more absences and had greater health complaints. The proposed research will extend the preliminary findings by including several other academic institutions and will increase the generalizability of the findings by increasing the scope of the study. Specifically, data will be collected from the retail sector.

Svetlana Barkanova

Electro-weak Radiative Corrections and Strangeness Content of the Nucleon

The strange quark contribution to nucleon electroweak form factors is crucial for developing our overall understanding of low energy nucleon structure. Electroweak properties of the nucleon can be studied by parity-violating electron scattering at low to medium energies. However, the situation is strongly complicated by the fact that the electrons emit real photons not observed in experiments. Our project can remedy that deficiency by radiatively correcting a theoretical calculation so that it can be directly compared to experimental data. This is a methodological work, there electron-proton scattering is considered as an example. The same technique of numerical modeling can be expanded to many other processes of subatomic physics.

Richard Karsten

Examining the ACC using Ocean General Circulation Models

The ocean waters around Antarctica and the associated Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) play an important role in the dynamics of the ocean and the variability of climate. Recent observations from autonomous floats in the region have begun to unlock the secrets of how the deep ocean communicates with the surface. However, to completely understand these observations it is necessary to put them into context using detailed numerical simulations of the ocean. In this project, we will adapt an Ocean General Circulation Model to examine the region in which the floats are deployed. We will run the model on the Acadia’s new computer cluster so that it can be run at the high-resolution necessary to capture the turbulent dynamics of the ACC.

Ronald Haynes

Practical Aspects of Adaptive Mesh Computations

The purpose of this project is to continue building numerical methods and associated software for the numerical solution of complex systems of partial differential equations. Specifically this project continues work to successfully blend adaptive spatial methods with aspects of domain decomposition algorithms. The result will be the first moving mesh methods particularly suited for implementation on parallel computing resources.

Giselle Corbeil

What kind of explicit tasks can influence the acquisition of implicit knowledge?

Explicit knowledge (also called declarative knowledge), in the context of the present study, refers to the knowledge of grammatical rules of French. This knowledge is generally developed through formal instruction followed by a number of controlled exercises such as dictations aimed at the use of the target structure. Implicit knowledge (also called procedural knowledge) is referred to as the knowledge of how to communicate –oral and written—in a target language. Explicit knowledge is believed by some researchers (Krashen, 1981) to have no interface with the acquisition of a second language –implicit knowledge. However, other researchers believe that formal instruction has a positive effect on language acquisition (implicit knowledge). Attention to form, for instance, has been suggested to perform an interfacing function between the two kinds of knowledge. In light of these conflicting statements, this study represents an attempt at examining whether form-focused exercises such as dictations have an impact on free form-focused exercises such as essay writings.

Richard Cunningham

An electronic Scholarly Edition of The Arte of Navigation

I am currently working on an electronic scholarly edition of the 1584 edition of Richard Eden’s navigational textbook, The Arte of Navigation. This edition is well underway, having been typed into a digital format over the summer by an Acadia student employed jointly by me and the AITT. This edition will conform with the General Principles for Electronic Scholarly Editions adopted by the Modern Language Association, and is available for examination at http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/engl/rcunningham/digitaltext/index.html 

Susan Franceschet

Gender and Legislator Behaviour in Argentina

This project explores whether, how, and under what conditions female legislators “act for” women. While there is a large literature on gender and legislator behaviour in the Anglo-American and European democracies, there are very few studies of women legislators in Latin America. However, recent developments in Latin America make an investigation of this nature quite timely. In particular, numerous countries in the region have adopted national legislation requiring political parties to increase the number of female candidates. As a result of candidate gender quotas, women’s numerical representation is increasing dramatically throughout the region. In Argentina, the focus of this project, women currently hold 34 percent of seats in the lower house. The purpose of the research is to determine the extent to which having more women in politics makes a difference, and, if so, what kind of difference.

Heather Higgins

Experiences of Acadia Pre-Service Teachers in Using Career Portfolios in the Employment Process

The use of portfolios has become popular in the job interview process. Since 2001 a course in Career Education has been offered to B.Ed. students at Acadia University in which participants develop career portfolios. The purpose of this project is to survey the students who have taken this course to get some feedback on their experiences in using their portfolios when applying for teaching positions. There will be a dual focus. The first component is to improve the practice of guiding students regarding portfolio development and usage by identifying their concerns as well as their experiences. The second phase is the preparation of a survey targeting administrators in order to acquire up-to-date information about administrators’ preferences regarding the content and presentation of career portfolios.

Robert Pitter

Travel to participate in the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) Conference in Tucson, Arizona, November 3-November 7, 2004.

Robert Pitter is presenting a paper co-authored with Acadia graduate Lindsay Fenton at the 2004 Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in Tucson, AZ, from Nov. 3 to Nov. 7. The paper “The Body’s Role in the Socialization of Pain in Men’s Rugby,” reports on a comparative analysis of high school and university rugby players. It notes that social factors can influence both the response to pain and the pain behaviours exhibited by individuals. In particular, it discusses how the athletes’ bodies and their understanding of them play a key role in the social dynamics surrounding pain and decisions to play with pain. The findings suggest that the concept of a boundary of pain is both a physical and psychological boundary that athletes define based on social, psychological and physical factors.

Ann Marie Powers

Come Home Year Celebrations in Newfoundland: Women, Food, Ritual and Cultural Identity – Paper accepted for presentation at the annual American Anthropological Assoc. meetings in San Francisco, November 2004.

Paper Abstract:

Leaving home and then returning frequently to visit has been part of the Newfoundland experience for over a century. Recently, the provincial government introduced a tourist campaign entitled ‘Come Home Year’, in an effort to attract native and non-native Newfoundlanders to the province. As is the case in so many countries where people are forced to leave their homeland, the separation from loved ones and from the way of life they knew is often difficult. Newfoundlanders did not need an advertising campaign to get them to ‘come home’. Consequently, in many communities these celebrations have been appropriated to fit their own meanings. For many, returning home is a pilgrimage; the destination sacred. The rituals they once knew become an important aspect of the visit. This paper looks at food rituals, such as ‘boil ups’ and ‘jigs dinner’, as indicators of cultural identity. Within this context women play a critical role because, for most Newfoundland women, food is a metaphor for happiness and well being. A woman who is able to prepare and provide food for family and loved ones is a woman who is giving life, both literally and metaphorically. How food combines with other aspects of Come Home Year celebrations is woven into a discussion of these visits as pilgrimages (Turner 1974) and the time spent as liminal in nature, enabling the visit to become the site of contestation and transformation.

Robert Proulx

Data Base of Theme Songs in Quebec Cinema

Creation of a data base resource to further research into the role and nature of theme songs in Quebec cinema. Theme songs have been used in Quebec movies from the 1960’s until today and songs play diverse roles from one movie to another. The aim of this project is to explore these roles which theme songs play in relation not only to the film of which they form a part but also, where relevant, to the original literary work on which the film is based. The project also attempts to categorize theme songs according to their nature and role such as “chanson-exposition, chanson-catalyseur, chanson-leitmotiv, chanson-synthèse”. This will show us more about the role of songs in the film medium.

Elhadi Shakshuki

Presenting one paper at the 19^th annual IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA05), and two papers at the first IEEE International Workshop on Web and Mobile Information Systems (WAMIS’05)

Ian Stewart

Jim Walding, St. Vital, and Canada

On January 12, 1986, Jim Walding was nominated in the St. Vital constituency of Winnipeg to stand as the NDP candidate in the March, 1986 Manitoba provincial election. Walding secured his nomination by a single vote, and then played a decisive role in bringing down the NDP government two years later. Thus, Walding’s narrow nomination victory had significant consequences for the body politic and may, in fact, have been decisive in the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord. This project will analyze Walding’s nomination meeting in depth and thus, throw light on the potential for human agency in political affairs.

Beert Verstraete

Points of Contact Between Contemporary Classical Studies and Symbolic-Interactionist Sociology

In a paper entitled, “Points of Contact between Contemporary Classical Studies and Symbolic-Interactionist Sociology,” at a conference of sociologists in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in April 2005, Dr. Beert Verstraete of the Department of History and Classics will explore the links in theory and methodology between certain trends in contemporary classical studies and the symbolic-interactionist school of sociology, which was established at the University of Chicago between the two world wars. This influential school in the social sciences can be characterized as heavily qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) in its research goals and objectives, and employs a distinctly ethnographic methodology. Over the past century, classical studies has moved away from its formerly almost exclusively philological focus and has become a discipline that investigates all significant aspects of the societies and cultures of the ancient Greco-Roman world, and, in doing so, has drawn with great profit from the methodologies and the theoretical perspectives developed by social scientists since the late 19^th century. Dr. Verstraete’s project will add to this body of fruitful cross-disciplinary scholarship.

Romira Worvill

Le rôle de l’eau dans François le Champi, une nouvelle de George Sand

Library and archival research in Paris and the Département de l’Indre (France) to explore the historical, geographical and cultural background for one of George Sand’s novels of rural life, François le Champi. This study will examine the role and function of water in this story, in particular the ways in which the chosen setting, a water-mill, relates to contemporary historical and cultural developments, as well as to the appearance of the same motif in the visual art of the period.

Ying Zhang

Symbolic Computation for Time Series Analysis

The symbolic manipulation approach is becoming a major tool for researchers working in probability and mathematical statistics. We develop the general procedure to the asymptotic expansion of the expectation of the stationary or non-stationary time series statistics. Applications focus on systematically solving a wide variety of problems involving time series estimators. Also the feasibility evaluations of commonly used computer algebra software systems for this research lead to design a compute algebra system based general approach to implementing mathematical statistics.

Lisa Price

The Development of Software for Longitudinal Research

The purpose of this project is to develop software that will allow social science researchers to collect longitudinal data from children anonymously. The main issue with anonymous longitudinal research studies is the ability to allow the participants to remain anonymous while providing the researchers the ability to link individual surveys completed over a period of years. The main solution to this problem is to provide the subjects with a unique key that they can use over a period of years. Unfortunately, this solution is not practical for children as the unique key may be easily lost or forgotten. It is imperative that a simple method of uniquely identifying participants while retaining their anonymity be developed.  This research project proposes a child-based research study to determine the practicality and usefulness of different methods of identification and their ease of use by child participants.

SSHRC Institutional Grants (SIG) Funded Projects

Spring 2006 Competition

Applicant                                                            Title of Project

SSHRC Institutional Grants (SIG) Funded Projects

Spring 2005 Competition

Applicant                                                            Title of Project

John Colton                                                  The role of Aboriginal Tourism in Community Development

Shanthi Johnson                                         Locus of Control, Quality of Life and Depression as They Relate to Dietary
& Peter McLeod                                            Changes and/or Preferences in Dementia Residents of Long-Term Care Facilities

Steve Maitzen                                               Three Investigations of Philosophical Skepticism

Robert Pitter                                                  Mapping Social Assets for Personal and Community Wellness

& Glyn Bissix

Lisa Price                                                      Exploring healthy relationships

& Diane Holmberg

Sonya Symons                                            Academic and Social Adjustment of Foreign Students for
                                                                        Whom English is a second language

Herb Wyile                                                    Writers of Atlantic Canada

SSHRC Institutional Grants (SIG) Funded Projects

Spring 2004 Competition

Applicant                                                            Title of Project

Janice Best                                       Rebuilding Paris after 1870: Public Spaces, History, and Forgetting – Phase II, the Three Statues of the Republic

Antonio Franceschet                  The Ethics of Global Governance

Ernest Johnson                         Health Promotion and Access to Online Health Information Among Older Adults

Shanthi Johnson                       Falls Among Older Adults in India: Need for Population-Based Surveillance and Information Systems

Heather Kitchin                         Needing Treatment: Addiction Programming and Related Services within Ontario Provincial Corrections: An Assessment and Program Evaluation

Anna Migliarisi                          Sources of Directing: From Classical Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century

Joanne Pelletier                        Concordance/Discordances Expressed by Secondary Students in High School Physical Education Classes

Robert Proulx                            Data Base of Theme Songs in Quebec Cinema

Anne Quema                            Contemporary English Family Discourses

SSHRC Institutional Grants (SIG) Funded Projects

Spring 2003 Competition

Applicant                                                            Title of Project

Kurt Bowen                               Anglicans and their Churches in the Twenty First Century: The Jamaican Experience

John Eustace                                      Old Battle, New Age: The Case of Mutant Message Down Under

Shanthi Johnson                       Does Research Participation Empower Home Support Workers Providing Care for the Frail Elderly?

Heather Kitchin                         Needing Treatment: Addiction Programming and Related Services Within Ontario Provincial Corrections: An Assessment and Program Evaluation

Robert Proulx                            Data Base of Theme Songs in Quebec Cinema

Anne Quema                            Family Discourses and Symbolic Violence in Contemporary British Culture

Ian Stewart                                Prince Edward Island Liberal Leadership Convention

Conor Vibert                              A Comparative Study of Internet Technology Usage for Environmental Scanning by Managers in Canadian and Japanese Small and Medium-Sized Exporters (SME’s)

Glenn Wooden                          Commentary on the Book of Daniel

SSHRC Aid to Small Universities (ASU) Funded Projects

Spring 2004 Competition

Applicant                                                                             Title of Project

Project Coordinator:                                    

Cynthia Alexander                                     

INSPIRED vi@ Acadia: The Institute for Northern Studies: Policy Innovation, Research and Educational Development            

Co-applicants:

L. Aylward, J. Colton                      

E. Callaghan, J. Colton, & A. Biro             Perceptions of Environmental Risk in Nova Scotia Farmers & Agricultural Policy Makers: Is there a Meeting of Mind between Farmers and Agriculture Policy Makers?

Project Coordinator:

Gary Hepburn                                              

Open Source Software in Education: Inviting the Connections

Co-applicants:

J. Buley

Project Coordinator:

Diane Holmberg

                                                                        Narrative Matters Conference Website Preparation

Co-applicants:

J. Best, P. O’Neill, etal.

John Janmaat                                              Flushing Costs: The Economics of Septic Source Pollution in the Annapolis River Watershed

Project Coordinator:

David MacKinnon

                                                                        Short conference on Rural Education and Sustainability

Co-applicant:

M. Corbett

Project Coordinator:

Joanne Pelletier                                           Creating a Coherent Voice for Canadian Social Science

Co-applicants:                                              Researchers in the Fields of Physical and Health Education,

S. Markham-Starr, J. MacLeod,                 Fitness, Sport, Recreation, Leisure, Dance and Active Living

J. Colton, W. Bedingfield, R. Pitter,

S. Hennigar, A. Dodge, & B. Robertson

Collaborators:

A. Vibert, D. MacKinnon, etal.

Project Coordinator:

Brenda Robertson

                                                                        Building Capacity for Research Relating to Health and Wellness of the Offender Population

Co-applicants:

A. Dodge, H. Kitchin, M. Coleman

Glynis Ross                                                  Drawing on our Strengths: Reading, Culture and First Nations Education

Project Coordinator:

Sonya Symons                                            Introducing the Acadia Digital Culture Observatory and Inter-Disciplinary Research on Information and Communications Technologies

Co-applicants:

C. Alexander, D. Brodeur, H. Hemming,

M. Leiter, D. Looker, J. Marontate, D. Silver

Herb Wyile                                                    Surf’s Up! The Rising Tide of Atlantic-Canadian Literature

SSHRC Aid to Small Universities (ASU) Funded Projects

Spring 2003 Competition

Applicant                                                                             Title of Project

Janice Best                                                   Rebuilding Paris after 1870: Public Spaces, History and

                                                                        Forgetting

John Janmaat                                              Transgenics and the Tragedy of the Commons

NSERC Special General Grant February 2005

Craig Bennett – Physics Department

Synthesis and Microstructural Characterization of Ferromagnetic Shape Memory Alloys

Ferromagnetic shape memory alloys are a newly discovered active material which allow the shape of metal to be controlled by the application of a modest magnetic field. Unlike conventional shape memory alloys which are activated by temperature, a high frequency response (up to 5 kHz) may be achieved. As a result, these unprecedented active materials have generated considerable interest as high performance transducers and sensors, noise and vibration damping and as elements of active flow control systems. Our work involves the synthesis and characterization of these new alloys in order to optimize the mechanical and magnetic properties.

Rodger Evans – Biology Department

Paper entitled, “Molecular evolution of gene families in Rosaceae” 

The paper will present results from research that uses a variety of plant DNA sequences to study this large family (Rosaceae) of flowering plants that includes roses, strawberries, cherries, pears, and apples. This research has not only led to a better understanding of how members of the family are related to each other systematically, but more importantly has revealed answers to a number of questions regarding the evolution of specific groups within the family. For example, research carried out by Dr. Evans and various international collaborators suggests that the group including apples and pears evolved in North America, and not Southeast Asia as previously believed.

Jeff Hooper – Math and Stats Department

Algebraic Methods in Colourings of Graphs

Graph colouring deals with the fundamental problem of partitioning a collection of objects into classes according to certain rules, and has a variety of applications in time-tabling, sequencing and scheduling problems. The purpose of this project is to study the very deep connections between abstract algebraic constructions which can be associated to graphs, and properties of the colourings of these graphs.

Franklin Mendivil – Math and Stats Department

Parallel Monte Carlo Methods

Monte Carlo Methods are one common technique used in attempting to find an optimal solution to complicated problems with very little smooth structure. This project will implement parallel versions of Monte Carlo optimization algorithms on the new computer cluster in ACMMaC. Once implemented on the parallel cluster, we can use the resulting computer code to explore theoretical issues involving what problem types are well suited to parallel implementation.

SSHRC Special General Grant - February 2005

Michael Devine – English Department

BOXWHATBOX – Serbia Casebook

This is a theatre research project involving the development of original performance material, in Serbian, in conjunction with Serbian theatre artists and utilizing the performance techniques of the BWB workshop methodology. Designed to enfranchise performers through the refinement of their ability to communicate beyond conventional modes of expression, the performance will combine the work of theatre cultures from three continents while illuminating aspects of the local culture in which the performance takes place.

David Duke – History Department

What’s up with the Weather? – Constructing an Historical Weather Timeline for the Annapolis Valley, 1800-2000

This is an attempt to create a timeline of weather history in the Annapolis Valley covering approx. the last 200 years. Particular interest in developing an understanding of extreme weather events, especially storms and harsh winters, to determine whether the frequency of such events is in fact increasing (perhaps as a result of the effects of climate change in the region) and to understand the past social and economic impact of extreme weather on communities in the Valley. Also investigating the strategies adopted by communities to minimize the impact of severe weather, and to determine if any of those strategies could be employed by communities today or in the future.

John Eustace – English Department

Interview Transcriptions

A graduate student will be employed to transcribe roughly 32 hours of interviews that were conducted with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal interviewees in Perth, Australia, between September 2003 and August 2004. The interviews deal with several topics: literary appropriations of Aboriginal identity in Australia, the particular act of appropriation committed by Marlo Morgan in her novel Mutant Message Down Under, and the protest campaign against that new age novel conducted by the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation.

Tanja Harrison – Library

Acadia Through the Years: The Libraries

Preserving Acadia’s institutional memory is imperative. Although the libraries at Acadia have been a social nucleus on campus since before the First World War, little has been written about them and much historical material is yet to be uncovered and documented. The proposed research project aims to write a comprehensive history of the Libraries at Acadia in an important first step in better connecting and preserving the institutional memory of the University. Efforts during this first phase of the project will be focused on researching and compiling info. Selected correspondence, photographs, artifacts, and other material rarely seen outside the Acadia Archives and Special Collections will be captured in a digital archive and highlighted through a web interface.

Anna Migliarisi – English Department

Student Assistant, Theatre Conference

Student assistant, ‘Stanislavski and Directing: Theory, Practice, Influence’ Conference to be held January 20-21, 2006 in collaboration with the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto. The student’s primary responsibility will be to design and maintain the conference website beginning May 2, 2005 through the end of January 2006.