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Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , GICEDCAM: A Geospatial Internet of Things Framework for Complex Event Detection in Camera Streams(2026-01-15) Honarparvar, Sepehr; Liang, Steve; Saeedi, Sara; Stefanakis, Emmanuel; Wang, Xin; Jabari, Shabnam; Xu, Lincoln LinlinComplex Event Detection (CED) in video streams is increasingly important for surveillance, safety monitoring, and real-time situational awareness. However, detecting complex events remains challenging due to missed object detections, unreliable spatial–temporal relationships, and the high computational cost of existing frameworks. This dissertation addresses these challenges through a manuscript-based thesis consisting of three integrated studies. The first study presents a systematic review of event-matching methods in video-based CED, analyzing 92 papers published from 2012 to 2024. The review shows that Object Detection and Spatio-temporal Matching (ODSM) approaches are the most suitable for near-real-time applications but still suffer from missing simple events, inflexible event-reasoning mechanisms, and limited scalability. These findings motivate the methodological gaps addressed in the remaining two studies. The second study develops an Internet of Smart Cameras (IoSC) architecture that uses edge–cloud collaboration and overlapping camera views to compensate for missed detections. By integrating simple events detected from multiple viewpoints, the IoSC framework significantly reduces false negatives and improves complex-event recognition. Experiments on COVID-19 risk-behavior scenarios show that the IoSC design improves CED accuracy by 1.73× compared to single-camera edge processing. The third study generalizes these insights into GICEDCAM, a geospatial IoT framework that distributes CED workloads across edge, stateless, and stateful layers. GICEDCAM introduces a spatial-event corrector, implemented using Bayesian networks, LSTM models, and trajectory analysis, to reconstruct missing spatial relationships and reduce false positives. Evaluations across four complex-event scenarios demonstrate that GICEDCAM reduces end-to-end latency by up to 36% and lowers computational cost by 45% relative to an open-source baseline, with performance advantages increasing under higher object densities. Among corrector variants, the trajectory-based method offers the best accuracy–latency trade-off for real-time deployments. Together, these three studies contribute a unified, scalable, and geospatially enriched approach to real-time complex event detection. The thesis advances CED research by (1) identifying methodological gaps in the literature, (2) demonstrating how multi-camera fusion reduces missing simple events, and (3) introducing a multi-layer IoT architecture that improves event-level reasoning, scalability, and computational efficiency.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Investigating the Role of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 in the Regulation of Spermatogenesis in Adult Danio rerio (Zebrafish)(2026-01-12) Neumann, Jesse Stephen; Habibi, Hamid; Cobb, John; Ruckstuhl, Kathreen; Thundathil, Jacob ChackoGlucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is a product of post-translational modification to the proglucagon peptide produced by the enteroendocrine L-cells and the central nervous system. There is evidence that GLP-1 has broad physiological functions, including glucose-dependent stimulation of insulin secretion, reduction of gastric emptying and food intake, as well as having cardio- and neuroprotective effects. GLP-1 has also been shown to reduce the inflammatory response and apoptosis, and to be involved in the control of learning, memory, and reward behaviour. Currently, GLP-1 receptor agonists are in clinical use for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and neurodegenerative disorders. More recently, studies have shown evidence for expression of the GLP-1 receptor in human and rodent testes, specifically within Leydig cells. However, no information is available on the direct action of GLP-1 on spermatogenesis. Using an ex vivo testis tissue culture system unique to zebrafish, we were able to study the direct effect of GLP-1 on spermatogenesis. Our results provide novel evidence for the presence of GLP-1 receptor and proglucagon, a GLP-1 precursor, within zebrafish testis tissue. Direct action of GLP-1 was tested on basal and LH (hCG)-induced spermatogenesis from spermatogonia stem cells to spermatozoa. Treatment with increasing concentrations of GLP-1 did not alter the basal and hCG-induced spermatogenesis in the zebrafish testis. These ex vivo findings in a zebrafish model contribute supportive evidence consistent with the current absence of reported testicular safety issues associated with therapeutic use of GLP-1 agonists in males.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , The Boom: Oil, Popular Culture, and Politics in Alberta, 1912-1924(University of Calgary Press, 2025-12-10) Chastko, PaulThe story of the first Turner Valley boom and the charlatans, frauds, and evangelists who made and lost fortunes in the early days of Alberta oil. When the Calgary Petroleum Products’s Dingman No. 1 Well began operation in Turner Valley on May 14, 1914, it unleashed a spectacular frenzy of greed and excess. In a fever of free-market capitalism over 500 oil companies were created, selling fortunes on paper to eager investors. But fewer than fifty ever drilled for oil, and the Alberta oil industry suddenly began to look like one big swindle. The public, and investors, demanded answers. Enter George Edward Buck, a charismatic revival preacher and self-proclaimed oil tycoon who made himself and his company the centre of every conversation while he salted his wells and misled investors. Far from the only person to profit from the sensational publicity of the Turner Valley Boom, Buck became the public face of all unscrupulous businessmen and an international scapegoat to preserve the integrity of Alberta oil. The Boom is a history of the Turner Valley era that rescues the miscreants and charlatans from obscurity. Industry historian Paul Chastko returns the larger-than-life promoters, wildcatters and oil evangelists to the story. He shows the ways that Albertans, determined to overcome the obstacles of economics, geography, geology, and the market, made a conscious choice to pursue petroleum development and created an oil culture that continues to this dayItem type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Strategies for Powerful Quantum-Enabled Bitcoin Miners(2026-01-09) Manson, Zachary Allan; Sanders, Barry Cyril; Oblak, Daniel; Safavi-Naeni, Reyhaneh Alsadat; Hobill, David WesleyBitcoin miners equipped with purpose-built quantum computers that execute Grover’s algorithm on classical candidate blocks, measuring the resulting quantum state to yield a potentially valid proof-of-work, pose a threat to Bitcoin’s security against 51% attacks. I aim to assess this threat by employing a game-theoretic framework inspired by the Lee-Ray-Santha quantum races model, extending it to better reflect how quantum miners would behave in practice. These extensions address some of the simplifications of prior works, where quantum miners performed only one quantum measurement (which does not maximise their resources), and were assumed to employ a peaceful strategy, wherein the quantum miners discard the resources already invested into searching upon receiving a broadcast of a newly-mined block (which is not enforceable). I consider a setting in which the quantum miners perform multiple quantum measurements between successive blocks, employ Sattath’s Aggressive Quantum Mining Strategy (AQMS), and must allocate limited quantum resources across these measurements. When employing Sattah’s AQMS, a quantum miner halts their execution of Grover’s algorithm and measures the resulting quantum state upon receiving a broadcast of a newly mined block, attempting to create a temporary fork and thereby decreasing the effective hash rate required for a 51% attack. In this novel setting, I derive the payoff matrices for the quantum miners and compute optimal quantum mining strategies that correspond to Nash equilibria. I simulate the deployment of these optimal quantum mining strategies within the Bitcoin network and estimate their effect on Bitcoin’s security against a 51% attack. I determine how two quantum miners should optimally allocate their quantum resources based on the network difficulty. Overall, I find that even when behaving optimally, two quantum miners cannot create enough temporary forks to render the Bitcoin network vulnerable to this quantum threat, given realistic constraints on their quantum resources. This thesis contributes to the growing body of research on the potential threats posed by scalable quantum computers, using the case of two quantum miners as a step toward understanding how quantum miners in general could affect Proof-of-Work-based cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , An Ultra-Wideband-Based Indoor Ranging and Positioning System with Wireless Synchronized Beacons Networks for Asynchronized Receivers(2026-01-16) Cao, Ying Xuan; Fapojuwo, Abraham; Dehghanian, Vahid; Fapojuwo, Abraham; Dehghanian, Vahid; O'Keefe, Kyle; Ghannouchi, FadhelThis thesis designs and studies an Ultra-Wideband (UWB)-based radio frequency (RF) infrastructure aimed at accurate ranging and positioning in GNSS-denied environments such as tunnels and other indoor facilities. This study evaluates the performance and reliability of UWB ranging technology in multipath-rich environments with Line-of-Sight (LOS) path clear, LOS path weak, and LOS path blocked conditions between two modules. The thesis proposes a novel Leading and Secondary beacons – Time Difference of Arrival (LS-TDOA) method for beacon-based positioning systems to eliminate synchronization requirements between beacons and receivers while mitigating clock errors to achieve a good balance in the trade-off between device compatibility, deployment convenience, and positioning accuracy. The thesis details the proposed LS-TDOA algorithm, system-level design, UWB technology selection, wireless channel analysis, and hardware implementation. The thesis provides a comparative analysis of the LS-TDOA with Two-Way Ranging (TWR) and traditional Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) methods and highlights its efficiency. Simulation and experimental results confirm the feasibility and accuracy of the LS-TDOA approach. Finally, the thesis provides some future work suggestions focusing on scalability and performance in complex environments.
