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Recent Submissions

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    Modeling uncertainty in duplicate elimination
    (University of Waterloo, 2008-07-17) Beskales, George; Soliman, Mohamed A.; Ilyas, Ihab F.
    Real-world databases experience various data quality problems of different causes including heterogeneity of consolidated data sources, imprecision of reading devices, and data entry errors. Existence of duplicate records is a prominent data quality problem. The process of duplicate elimination often involves uncertainty in deciding on the true duplicates. Current tools resolve such uncertainty either through expert intervention, which is not always possible, or by taking destructive decisions that may lead to unrecoverable errors.
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    Continuous languages
    (University of Waterloo, 2008-03-12) Ang, Thomas; Brzozowski, Janusz
    A language is prefix-continuous if it satisfies the condition that, if a word w and its prefix u are in the language, then so is every prefix of w that has u as a prefix. Prefix-continuous languages include prefix-closed languages at one end of the spectrum, which include prefix codes, at the other. In a similar way, we define suffix-, bifix-, factor-, and subword- continuous languages and their closed and free counterparts. We generalize these notions to arbitrary binary relations on the set of all words over a finite alphabet. This provides a common framework for diverse languages such as codes, factorial languages and ideals. We examine the relationships among these languages and their closure properties.
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    Temporal misalignment of renal sodium transport promotes non-dipping blood presure phenotypes
    (Public Library of Science (PLOS), 2026-08-13) Layton, Anita T.
    Non-dipping blood pressure (BP) phenotypes are strongly associated with cardiovascular and renal morbidity, yet the physiological mechanisms governing nocturnal BP dipping remain incompletely understood. Experimental evidence suggests important roles for circadian timing, renal sodium handling, autonomic regulation, and sleep-wake behavior, but their interactions are difficult to isolate experimentally. We developed an integrated circadian-sleep/wake computational model of long-term BP regulation incorporating rhythmic modulation of renal sympathetic nervous activity, vascular tone, renin-angiotensin-aldosterone signaling, tubular sodium transport, and behavioral sleep-wake influences. The model reproduced a physiologically realistic healthy dipper phenotype with robust nocturnal BP reduction and daytime-predominant natriuresis. Component analyses demonstrated that vascular rhythmicity and sleep-wake modulation were dominant determinants of BP dipping, whereas intrinsic tubular sodium transport rhythmically redistributed natriuresis toward the nighttime period with modest effects on BP dipping. In contrast, altering the phase of tubular sodium transport produced marked effects on both natriuresis timing and BP regulation. Delayed tubular sodium transport phases shifted sodium excretion toward the nighttime period and converted the model from a dipper to a non-dipper phenotype despite preservation of rhythmic oscillations in other physiological systems. Sodium loading and enhanced salt-sensitive tubular sodium reabsorption amplified vulnerability when tubular sodium timing was delayed. These simulations suggest that physiological BP dipping emerges from coordinated temporal interactions among cardiovascular, renal, and behavioral regulatory systems. Non-dipping behavior may therefore arise not only from impaired rhythmicity, but also from misalignment among otherwise preserved physiological oscillators, particularly under sodium-loaded and salt-sensitive conditions.
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    Environemental impacts of laboratory and scientific equipment: Focus on equipment operation and procurement
    (Public Library of Science (PLOS), 2026-08-20) Cimprich, Alexander; Kasaeipour, Sahand; Young, Steven B.
    Climate change and environmental sustainability are major priorities across scientific and policy domains. Scientists themselves are starting to recognize that their own activities have direct and indirect environmental impacts. These impacts result from things like material and energy use and waste generation in conducting scientific research, particularly in laboratories. In this article, we build upon growing efforts to measure and manage these environmental impacts by conducting cradle-to-grave life cycle assessments (LCAs) of widely used scientific and laboratory equipment. We considered over 3000 pieces of equipment used by Government of Canada laboratories. Our study contributes in four ways. First, although previous work has examined laboratory consumables and other impact drivers like building energy consumption and transportation, our study draws attention to the environmental impacts of laboratory and scientific equipment. Second, our study demonstrates a novel approach for screening large and varied sets of equipment-level LCA results to sustainability transformations by highlighting leverage points informed by the life cycle profile of equipment. Our results suggest a tendency for laboratory and scientific equipment to be use-intensive (as seen, e.g., in the case of refrigerators and freezers where the use stage accounts for approximately 97% of life cycle GHG emissions). However, this life cycle profile varies across environmental indicators (e.g., climate change, acidification, smog formation, and ecological toxicity) and with changes in equipment usage frequency (i.e., hours per year in operation). Some equipment, like scanning electron microscopes, can be production-intensive. These findings suggest that sustainability transformations for laboratory equipment need to consider the life cycle profile of the equipment and involve leverage points beyond procurement decisions.
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    Reciprocity in global health: How successes from the global south can inform global health interventions in Canada and the U.S.
    (Public Library of Science (PLOS), 2026-08-27) Masvawure, Tsitsi B.; Ndu, Mary; Oga-Omenka, Charity
    Global health has traditionally functioned as a project of high-income countries (HICs) addressing health challenges in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This "outward facing" orientation has created conceptual and operational boundaries that obscure the persistence of health inequities within HICs and perpetuates the false assumption that resource-rich nations have resolved fundamental health equity challenges in their own countries. In this essay we argue that HICs have global health problems of their own and should be considered legitimate sites for global health intervention. We propose an approach to doing global health in the global north that is based on reciprocal learning and where solutions to global health problems can also be found outside the borders of HICs. Complementing the extant scholarship on the need to decolonize global health, this essay highlights LMIC-led successes that can inform global health practice in the U.S. and Canada thus positioning global health as a truly egalitarian project.