oURspace
University of Regina Institutional Repository
The mission of the oURspace digital repository is to share and preserve the scholarly, creative, and cultural work produced at the University of Regina.
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- Increased access to your scholarly publications.
- Content is indexed and discoverable in Google Scholar.
- Compliance with open access funding requirements.
- Long term preservation of your work.
Please contact ourspace@uregina.ca if you have questions or want more information about oURspace.
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Recent Submissions
Metal culvert renewal prioritization framework development: A study for Saskatchewan Highways
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2023-08) Marzbani, Pooneh; Kabir, Golam; Khan, Sharfuddin Ahmed; Khondoker, Mohammad
Saskatchewan comprises over 250,000 km (160,000 mi) of roads, the highest length of road surface compared to any other Canadian province. Along these roads, over 26,500 culverts have been installed for passaging water flow. Some of which have been installed over a century ago with no recorded installation dates. The failure of culverts, caused by a wide range of factors such as environmental, structural, or material failures, can result in sudden and catastrophic consequences, leading to injuries or loss of life. Additionally, damaged culverts can negatively impact water quality by causing erosion and scour, as well as impeding the passage of aquatic species between their habitats upstream and downstream. Thus, timely replacement of culverts can play a crucial role in minimizing such damages.
This study evaluates three methods, namely, ordinal logistic regression, artificial neural network, and Fuzzy Inference System, for the prioritization of culverts for renewal. Specifically, the approach presented in this research is developed for metal pipe materials, which are extensively used in culvert installations. Using the condition of 1,000 metal culverts located along Saskatchewan highways, the three methods were employed to rank their condition and determine their renewal time. The evaluation of model performance was conducted using a range of established metrics including the area under the ROC (Receiver Operating characteristic) curve, percentage of correct predictions (PCP), confusion matrix, accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score. The results of the study indicate that the artificial neural network optimized by genetic algorithm outperforms the other two methods, providing the most effective approach for culvert renewal prioritization.
Keywords: Culvert renewal; Ordinal Logistic Regression; Artificial Neural Network; Fuzzy Inference System.
NHL draft gem mining: Use of the impact score to find Successful NHL players
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2023-03) Watson, Alexander Clarence Russell; Hoeber, Larena; Reimer, Harold; Pitariu, Adrian
Less than 48% of NHL Draftees play in a single NHL game (Wilson, 2016). This percentage further decreases when looking at the players selected after the first round of the draft (Tingling et al., 2011). The objective of this study was to determine if the impact score can accurately predict NHL success for forwards and defensemen selected after the first round, when it comes to games played and points scored. The impact score is a percentage analytic that I created, that measures the player’s points per game total relative to the points scored by their teammates. Data was collected using HockeyDB and EliteProspects (hockey statistic databases) for players selected in the 2005-2015 NHL Entry Drafts. Data was then analyzed to see if having a higher impact score results in more NHL career games played, more minutes played per game, and more points per minute played. A regression was used to answer these questions for players drafted in round 1 and rounds 2-7, controlling for yearly age, league group, area of development, and position. It was found that the addition of the impact score offered significant changes in variation for career games played, time on ice per game, and points per time on ice, but this was more prominent for individuals selected in round 1. It was also found that there was no significant interaction between the impact score and position in both round 1 and rounds 2-7.
Frequency domain analysis of U-Net segmented ultrasound images
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2023-08) Steenbock, Henrik Reimer; Zilles, Sandra; Yang, Xue-Dong; Teymurazyan, Aram
During prostate cancer brachytherapy, catheters are inserted into a patient's
prostate for a highly localized radiation treatment. Accurately placed catheters are
critical for successful treatment and ultrasound images are taken throughout the procedure
to verify their exact positions. However, manually locating catheters on ultrasound
images is extremely di cult, time consuming, and happens while the catheters
are still in the patient. A fully automatic solution could signi cantly reduce procedure
time and potentially even improve the precision. This thesis introduces a novel
approach that segments 2D ultrasound images using the successful U-Net architecture
to determine catheter candidates. These candidates are then extracted and Fourier
Transformed into the frequency domain. De-convolution is performed directly in the
frequency domain to reconstruct a number of frequency coe cients and remove noise.
Additional features are calculated from the frequency coe cients to supplement the
determined U-Net con dence and candidate location. Altogether, the features from
each catheter candidate are classi ed by AdaBoost.
Establishing wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in Southern Saskatchewan
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2023-06) Reuter, Sonja Tamara; Hansmeier, Nicole; Chao, Tzu-Chiao; Yost, Chistopher; Van Hamme, Jonathan
Wastewater surveillance has become a crucial part in the monitoring of the COVID-19
pandemic. Infected people shed SARS-CoV-2 in their feces, therefore, virus levels in
wastewater reflect the trends in infection numbers in the population that contributes to the
wastewater. Wastewater surveillance offers information about the spread of SARS-CoV-2
independent of testing strategies and individual choices and therefore better reflects population
health than individual testing. In this study we compared five RNA extraction kits and reagents
and different enrichment methods for wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 RNA and
determined that the solids fraction of wastewater was most suitable for RNA extraction using
the AllPrep PowerViral DNA/RNA Kit by Qiagen. We also examined the impact of storage on
wastewater samples and determined that while short-term storage does not affect the samples
significantly, longer storage changes the measured viral levels. We then used our protocol to
establish a wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 viral levels in Regina and nine other
locations in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada. We observed that the three waves of COVID-19
during the study time were caused by the variants Alpha, Delta and Omicron and that the SARSCoV-
2 RNA levels in wastewater were a good reflection of the reported active COVID-19 case
numbers.
Depositional environment and hydrothermal-diagenetic history of pre-salt carbonate in an Early Cretaceous rifted basin, offshore Brazil
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2023-04) Wang, Lu; Qing, Hairuo; Coulson, Ian; Raharimahefa, Tsilavo; Zeng, Fanhua
This study aimed to reveal the depositional and hydrothermal-diagenetic history for the sampled carbonates of the Macabu Formation, in Campos Basin, offshore Brazil. It also investigated the possible alteration conditions affecting these rocks, including: temperature, water pH, pCO2, and fluid origins.
The carbonates of the Macabu Formation and their equivalent formations are commonly reported with lithologies composed of stevensite, spherulitic calcite, shrub-like calcite, dolomite matrix, and different forms of silica formed from hydrothermal alteration. However, no spherulite and shrub-like calcite have been observed in the samples investigated herein from well S2. The lithologies of the Upper and Lower units are primarily composed of: (a) depositional minerals: dolomite matrix, and minor detrital materials (quartz, mica, and feldspar); (b) diagenetic minerals: chert, chalcedony, euhedral mega-quartz, and blocky calcite; and (c) minor diagenetic minerals: siderite, illite + kaolinite, dolomite II, solid hydrocarbon materials, pyrite, fluorapatite, and phosphate. Dolomite is the matrix phase to the rock, and the crystal sizes and habits differ between the Upper and the Lower unit cores. The Upper unit core consists of fine grained, laminated dolomite, that is subhedral, whereas the Lower unit core comprises euhedral dolomite, lacking significant sedimentary structures but with distinct crystal zonation; three distinct zones are recognized. Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) analysis was designed to measure the δ18O and δ13C of the three zones, providing insight into the lake water chemistry and temperature changes from the surface to bottom during the deposition of dolomite and the early burial. Diagenetic calcite only occurs in the Upper unit. A limited number of samples were chosen to analyze the blocky calcite and the fine laminated dolomite within for their δ18O and δ13C signatures. The isotopic data for the Upper unit dolomite were compared with those of the Lower unit dolomite to investigate the reasons for an observed change in the alkalinity of lake water.
Both the Upper and the Lower unit cores had been hydrothermally altered, principally by silicification. Silicification in the Lower unit was more intensive than for the Upper unit. There are recognized three phases of silicification in core samples of both the Upper and Lower units, and these phases favor the formation of chert, chalcedony, and euhedral mega-quartz, respectively. Chert acted as a replacement mineral, after the original dolomite. Chalcedony occurs as replacement and cementing mineral, and is associated with dissolution of earlier-formed chert and its re-precipitation. The chalcedony developed within one cavernous void has been observed with a maximum number of seven bands, which may represent repeated pulses of hydrothermal recharge, that were responsible for chalcedony precipitate. Euhedral mega-quartz from the Upper unit core were observed in a close association with diagenetic blocky calcite. The SIMS analysis was designed to examine the three phases of silicification, and a set of δ18O and δ30Si data for each phase were obtained. These data have provided evidence of the precipitating fluid temperatures, and of the geochemical character of fluids thought responsible to help understand their possible origins.