In the Arctic, environmental variability is currently increasing. Variability in sea ice dynamics, such as the timing of ice-off and concentration of sea ice, these in turn affect distributions and abundance of fish and invertebrate species. Thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia), an Arctic-breeding seabird, are expected to be greatly affected by changes in sea ice dynamics, […]

In nature, a complex network of cellulose and hemicellulose interacts to provide plant cell walls with their mechanical strength, flexibility, and light weight. However, there is still little known about the relationship between the cellulose-hemicellulose interactions and how that influences the resulting mechanical properties of plants. In this work, we will use films thinner than […]

A decrease in ice cover in the Arctic ocean is allowing for increases in vessel traffic and noise in this previously undisturbed environment. The remoteness and reduction of species richness poses a challenge when trying to monitor Arctic ocean wildlife, but recent technological advances in animal tagging have supplied further opportunities for surveillance of Arctic […]

Manchuria, or Northeast China, was a migrant society in which the majority of the population came from Shandong and Hebei during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. However, Manchuria’s migration history in the period of Manchukuo, a puppet state controlled by Imperial Japan from 1932 to 1945, is a […]

This project examines the international mobility of students in sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and the importance of international student retention for innovation. Applying a gender-based analysis and focusing on the Greater London area, the project explores the particular challenges that affect both female and male students’ transition to post-graduate work and permanent residency […]

This project aims for a regional comparison concerning the current state of affairs and the strategies and policies that exist in recruiting and retaining foreign (‘global’) talent for innovation and growth in the two German regions (‘Laender’) of Berlin and Thuringia. Since the 2000s, Germany and many of its ‘Laender’ have developed various initiatives to […]

There is some evidence that people’s beliefs about how someone is ‘supposed to sound’ may affect how they perceive someone’s speech –to the extent of them hearing an accent that isn’t there. This response time study investigates in what ways “expected” and “unexpected” combinations of speaker ethnicity and accent can affect how speech is processed […]

Hyperplanes can be thought of as codimension 1 affine subspaces of a given Euclidean space. Given an arrangement A of hyperplanes in R^d, the set of intersections of hyperplanes define a partially ordered set called intersection poset. The characteristic polynomial of A can then be defined using Mobius function of the intersection poset. One can […]

With the advent of fuel cell technology, people began to believe implementation of a zero-emission energy system through the construction of a hydrogen-based energy infrastructure. The conventional system for hydrogen production is water electrolysis; however, the production cost is far too expensive for widespread adoption due to the usage of noble metals required as electrocatalysts. […]

The harmful effects of smoking on fetal development, child health, and maternal wellbeing are well described, making smoking cessation during pregnancy and the postpartum period a global health priority. Although a large proportion of expecting mothers will spontaneously quit smoking during pregnancy, the majority will restart smoking within 6 months post-pregnancy. Efforts to reduce smoking […]

As part of my doctoral studies at McGill, I will conduct archival research on the formation of bhakti (devotional) communities in North India. I will focus on the Ramanandi Sampraday, which formed around the fourteenth-century Hindu guru Ramananda and is still one of the largest ascetic sects in Hinduism today. There are many stories written […]

Collision avoidance can be described as a whole-body movement control problem in which visual information is used to elicit accurate movement adaptations. Age-related visuomotor degradation is a potential factor contributing to mobility difficulties in older adults. However, there remains a gap in understanding what age-related visuomotor changes are causing older adults to be more susceptible […]