My doctoral dissertation is titled “Defending an Essentialist Ontology of Kinds, Laws, and Biological Taxa.” In it I attempt to defend and develop a school of thought that has become quite prominent in recent philosophy of science / metaphysics, ‘natural-kind essentialism.’ This is a view according to which the world is divided up into objects belonging to distinct natural kinds, kinds with essences that function as the criteria for kind-membership and that determine the range of behaviours these objects can engage in. It is a theory that has deep roots, going back to Aristotle, but one which can, I believe, make a significant contribution to our understanding of the background ontologies that must be presupposed in physics, chemistry, and biology.
Shakil Rifaat
Engineering & Architecture
Over the last fifty years, the lollipop design has become the basic building block of many suburban road networks in most North American cities. Although developed to improve the social living environment, this combination of cul-de-sac and loop streets has the support of many traffic engineers because of its traffic calming effects. Perhaps due to its intuitive appeal, few studies were conducted to examine the impact of this design on road crashes. The objective of the study is to examine the safety effects of different neighborhood design and street patterns using different performance indicators as well as controlling for external influences such as traffic volume, land use, neighborhood density and the economic, social and demographic composition. It will extend the previous study by examining the impact of different street patterns on the frequency and severity of crashes instead of simply analyzing the occurrence or non occurrence of a crash. Using data from the City of Calgary, traffic safety performance functions using the count data models, ordered and unordered response models will be estimated to provide policy makers with evidence based recommendations on the type of subdivision that is safer for Calgary and other rapidly expanding cities.
Sarah Manske
Medical & Health Sciences
I am interested in understanding the determinants of bone strength so that we can ultimately improve our ability to prevent fractures in older individuals. I am particularly interested in how muscle forces impact bone structure. As such, I am using Botox to induce muscle paralysis, and studying the effects of muscle disuse on bone. One method that has been shown to slightly enhance bone adaptation is to apply low magnitude, high frequency vibration, however we do not understand the mechanism by which this occurs. I am testing the hypothesis that vibration enhances bone adaptation by mimicking normal muscular activity.
