This thesis explores the field of sustainability, development and tourism to advance an understanding of its fundamental concepts, their integration, and their relevance to the sustainability discourse generally. The tourism locale chosen for the case study chapter was Banff, Alberta, Canada. The research process and analysis was guided by the qualitative, inductive method of grounded theory. This general method of comparative analysis of literature, documents and incidents was used to discover the four concepts that are argued to be essential to the understanding of, and action leading to, sustainability. The four concepts are: interdependence, risk and uncertainty, conflict, and ethics. The results indicate that to advance the implementation of sustainability, a clear mandate for ethics in land-use planning and policy decision making is required. The role of social science practised as applied ethics in decision making processes affecting sustainability must be given more serious consideration for this to occur. Moreover, it is suggested that the difficulties emerging in the tourism domain, particularly in park and other natural settings, need to be discussed as issues basic to sustainability rather than as pertinent merely to tourism and parks management.
The Dial-A-Ride Problem with Time Windows (DAEIPTW) is concerned about the satisfaction of a set of customer requests serviced by a fleet of vehicles starting at and returning to a central depot. Each request has a pickup and a dropoff stop. Time windows, precedence and vehicle capacity constraints must be satisfied. The DARPTW in paratransit is a special case of the DARPTW where the load of transportation is seniors and/or handicapped people and related paratransit constraints must be also satisfied. Since the DARPTW is NP-hard, heuristic solutions are mainly considered for the problem. In the thesis, the heuristic solutions for the DARPTW in paratransit include route construction and post-optimization. Insertion heuristics is used to construct initial routes. The post-optimization includes intra-route and inter-route optimization. The intra-route optimization is performed with an Or-interchange algorithm. For the inter-route optimization, four selection horizon heuristic algorithms are proposed and developed. A comparison of the Or-opt intra-route heuristic algorithm with the four inter-route heuristic algorithms and a comparison among the four interroute optimization methods are presented from 8 test problems. The results show that the inter-route post-optimization is a useful tool for improvement of the quality of the initial routes.
This thesis analyses the understandings of experience that illustrate inherent meaning, both personal and cultural, as expressed through the life stories of two Inuvialuit women from the Canadian Western Arctic. The object is to provide insight into the thinking patterns and beliefs encountered among post-residential school Inuvialuit and to explain how these experiences continue to affect their daily lives. The legitimacy of using the life history approach is well established. Analysis is difficult, however, because anthropologists distinguish and identify personal meaning and cultural meaning from a single observed behaviour that is always a blend of the individual and cultural. I have attempted to appreciate and affirm the intellect while also valuing and enhancing those other parts of being which Western culture traditionally ignores - concepts, feelings, experiences, intuition, and awareness. I have drawn upon my own experiences as an Inuvialuk woman who has passed through the same residential school system.
Designing a reliable and effective ventricular assist device (VAD) presents many technical challenges. Problems include anatomical fit, sepsis, reliability, durability, low heat dissipation, high efficiency, minimal maintenance and monitoring. The HeartSaver VAD™ currently being developed by the Cardiovascular Devices Division of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and World Heart Corporation is an innovative, new design which overcomes many of the technical challenges inherent to previous VAD designs. The current design concept uses silicone oil as a hydraulic fluid to displace a flexible polyurethane diaphragm which pumps blood out of the device. This design concept overcomes some difficult problems with VAD design. However, it also raises questions relating to the fact that polyurethanes are typically highly permeable materials and the loss of hydraulic fluid may adversely effect the performance of the VAD. This thesis documents an investigation into the permeability of silicone oil (decamethyltetrasiloxane) through a polymer diaphragm (Biospan - a segmented polyether-polyurethane) into whole bovine blood. The development of a test apparatus to determine the permeability rate of silicone oil through the diaphragm and a simple method for determining the diffusion coefficient of candidate biomaterials are presented. A method to extract silicone oil from whole blood for gas chromatography/mass spectrum (GC/MS) analysis is also discussed. The results from the experiments show that the silicone oil/polyurethane/whole blood system has a permeability coefficient of 4.1x10"n cm2/s, a diffusion coefficient of 3.1xl0"08 cm2/s and a solubility coefficient of .0013. Using these values (which are specific only for the test model) the loss of silicone oil through a 60.5 cm2 diaphragm with a thickness of .060 cm over one year would be 1.31 ml. The total volume of hydraulic fluid in the device is approximately 295 ml and the loss of 1.31 ml during a year is insignificant. The thesis concluded that analysis of blood for silicone oil contamination can be performed using GC/MS. Silicone oil does permeate through segmented polyetherrpolyurethanes at a slow rate.
