QSpace: Queen's Scholarship & Digital Collections
QSpace is an open access repository for scholarship and research produced at Queen's University. QSpace offers faculty, students, staff, and researchers a free and secure home to preserve and present their scholarship.
Recent Submissions
Item Reawakening the ‘Dish with One Spoon’: The Haudenosaunee and Michi Saagiig Economies of Southern Ontario Past, Present and FutureIn this thesis, we explore the significance of the Dish with One Spoon, a Wampum Belt treaty that embodies a profound First Nations connection rooted in both cultural ties and economic interests. This treaty plays a pivotal role in shaping the development of an enduring economic reality between the Haudenosaunee and the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Peoples. Furthermore, this research focuses on the nation-to-nation resource-sharing agreement for the common lands of Southern Ontario among First Nations treaty holders, offering an examination of various facets and capabilities of the Dish with One Spoon from an economic standpoint. Despite the impacts of colonization, its resilience and sovereignty have endured, encompassing a significant portion of Southern Ontario which is protected by Wampum Belt diplomacy. The Dish with One Spoon treaty constitutes a multinational Indigenous economic accord, integrating perspectives from the land and waters. Beyond establishing rights and privileges, the Dish with One Spoon recognizes First Nations Peoples, plant life, and animals as active participants and decision-makers in the economic self-determination of their shared treaty territory. Framed as theory and informed by the Two-Row method, this research demonstrates how the Dish with One Spoon presents a distinctive model of Indigenous regional economics. This model places a premium on the economic autonomy of First Nations and their interdependent relationship with the local ecology. Moreover, it underscores the importance of acknowledging the agency and autonomy of the land in making treaty-based economic decisions, recognizing its crucial role in resource conservation and its intrinsic link to economic development.Item Reprocessing of the Cantung Mine TailingsTailings, a waste product generated from the processing of ore, constitute a large, long-lasting portion of a mine’s environmental footprint. The Cantung Mine, located in Northwest Territories, Canada, is a defunct mine with over 4 million tonnes of tailings. The tailings contain sulphide minerals, which can oxidize and produce acid rock drainage if left in their current state. Due to the mine’s proximity to the Flat River, any acid rock drainage produced by the tailings has the potential to impact the surrounding environment. This thesis investigates methods to reprocess and separate the Cantung tailings into two distinct fractions: a high-mass fraction of tailings that are not acid generating and an acid-generating low-mass concentrate containing sulphide minerals that can be handled and stored separately. By separating the mine’s tailings, benign waste might be filtered and stored in dry-stacks, reducing the environmental and structural risks posed by sub-aqueous tailings storage units. Mineralogical work determined that pyrrhotite was the main sulphide mineral present in the tailings. Scoping level flotation tests determined that the reagents sodium isopropyl xanthate, sodium hexametaphosphate, and Aero 6493 had the greatest influence on flotation results. A Box-Behnken experimental design was conducted to optimize the flowsheet. Grinding, magnetic separation, and flotation were employed to recover up to 86.5% of the total sulphur in a concentrate weighing 29.8% of the initial mass. The low-sulphide tailings contained 1.96% sulphur, which would reduce the impact of acid rock drainage if implemented. Analysis of the low-sulphide tailings determined that the remaining sulphur was primarily found in the -38 micron fraction, which is difficult to recover by flotation. Preliminary flotation tests were completed in an attempt to recover copper and tungsten in the tailings not recovered during the mine’s operation. Both metals were unable to be recovered at high grades, with further research required to determine appropriate recovery methods. The findings of this thesis demonstrate the effectiveness of reprocessing mine waste from the Cantung Mine to reduce the potential of future environmental impacts.Item The Universal Rotation Curve of Disk GalaxiesIn the standard model of cosmology, the formation and evolution of dark matter halos plays an essential role in galaxy development. However, the response of the halo to internal baryonic processes is difficult to observe. We tackle this problem through an investigation of the Universal Rotation Curve (URC) hypothesis. A URC is an analytic function that can predict the rotation curve (RC) of any disk galaxy and, through the relations used to define it, directly correlate stellar properties to dark halo parameters. By examining these dark-luminous relations for different galaxy morphologies, we can study how dark halo shapes change with variations in stellar distributions. As a practical tool, a well-characterized URC can predict RCs for any galaxy with photometric data, greatly expanding the data available for dynamical analyses. We utilize our extensive data set of 3,846 disk galaxy RCs with matching surface brightness profiles to test two popular URCs proposed by Persic et al. (1996), Karukes and Salucci (2017), and Di Paolo et al. (2019). We find that neither URC candidate achieves an adequate level of accuracy to qualify as truly "universal". Specifically, we note systematic under-predictions over outer regions of galaxies, implying the modelled dark halo is not dense enough at galaxy outskirts to reproduce observed RCs. Furthermore, we develop neural network equivalents for each URC which predict RCs with higher accuracy - showing URC inaccuracies are not due to insufficient data, but rather non-optimal formulations. We extend the neural network application to determine the feasibility of a URC in general, and conclude that a URC with an acceptable level of accuracy (less than 15 per cent) is not possible with the data available to us. Key improvements for future URC iterations are an extension to two-dimensional bulge-disk decompositions, allowing for a reliable bulge component in a URC, and the inclusion of additional galaxy properties (e.g., star formation rate, environment data). While noting the shortcomings of our tested URCs and the need for additional data for conclusive results, we speculate that the halos for galaxies in our sample show signs of halo contraction driven by both adiabatic evolution and mergers.Item Investigating Charter City Ideologies and Geographical Imaginaries: The Case of Próspera and SingaporeIn 2011, economist Paul Romer gave a Ted Talk titled, “Why the World Needs Charter Cities.” During his lecture, Romer described an idealized form of urban governance. The essence of Romer’s talk was to reshape the connection between cities and economic development through emphasizing an unregulated competition between cities as a mode of spurring economic growth. Romer’s talk echoes a sentiment from like-minded individuals and institutions that believe cities should be organized around a libertarian ideology where institutions and landowners, rather than public governance structures, have the greatest amount of power in urban development. My thesis investigates the ideology that underlies the charter city idea through a study of Próspera, a charter city located in Honduras, and the libertarian ideology used to both promote the city and develop its constitution and institutions. This study also includes investigating the perceived historical continuity between Próspera and cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong that are seen as embodying the charter city model. Charter city advocates draw on idealized versions of such cities’ rapid economic development as both inspiration for, and justification of, their approach to urban governance. In contrast, in this thesis I highlight that charter cities alleged link with such sites do not reflect the reality and context upon which their economic growth occurred. Through focusing on ZEDEs (Zones for Employment and Economic Development), the enabling legislation passed in Honduras that allowed for Próspera’s establishment, I argue that the institutions which make up Próspera are more reflective of the colonial administration of Singapore and its contemporary use of state power to boost economic growth than of an idealized libertarian governingItem Incidence, Phenotype and Course of Acute Onset Restless Legs Syndrome (+ 4 Weeks) In Patients With Acute Stroke – Prospective Observational Cohort StudyObjectives: The objective of this study was to determine prevalence of acute (new) onset restless legs syndrome (RLS) and of chronic bilateral symmetrical RLS in patients with recent stroke and evaluate the relationship with cardiocerebrovascular parameters like history of hypertension, subcortical location of stroke and cerebral small vessel disease. Methods: Consecutive acute stroke patients were recruited from the stroke unit of the Kingston Health Sciences Centre; total of 113 patients were included in the study. A pre-determined sleep questionnaire was administered, and details of stroke and hematology were collected from the hospital database for analysis. RLS diagnosis was done according to the criteria determined by the International Restless Legs Syndrome Study Group (IRLSSG). Results: Out of 113 patients, 30 patients (26%) met the IRLSSG criteria and were diagnosed with RLS, the majority of them being women. RLS diagnosis showed a statistically significant association with subcortical stroke location and cerebral small vessel disease. Half of these patients showed similar or worsening RLS symptoms upon a three to six month follow up. Conclusion: RLS prevalence in the stroke population has consistently been shown to be associated with subcortical stroke regions, highlighting its capability as a predictive factor for stroke and vice versa. Patients that develop acute RLS or other sleep disorders can experience symptoms for months post-stroke; therefore, detailed diagnostic and therapeutic interventions would be helpful in stroke recovery.
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