Concordia University

Since 2020, and heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a spike in reports of hate-motivated activity within universities across Canada. However, the experiences of hate by university students continue to remain under-researched and underdeveloped in Canada. This article presents findings from a Canada-wide survey conducted on the experiences Canadian university students have with hate-motivated activity within in-person and online campus spaces. The focus of this study was to provide an understanding of Canadian university students' experiences with hate, both online and offline, its consequences and possible solutions. By learning about student experiences, we document the varying types of hate students experience on campus, its physical, emotional, and mental impacts, the services and support that exist, and how universities understand and respond to hate. The main conclusions of our study are 1. Most of the students experience hate more than once, more repeatedly online and in multiple university spaces, than they do in-person 2. There are higher instances of students who report experiencing hate based on their ethnicity and attributed race/skin colour, physical appearance, and religion. 3. Hate incidents affect students’ mental health, academic growth, and sense of safety. 4. Students agree that their university can do more to prevent hate, both online and offline. With this data, we aim to increase awareness of the different degrees of hate on university campuses and help improve universities' anti-hate and anti-racism frameworks. • Students experience hate both online and offline in Canadian universities. • Hate is experienced most often based on ethnicity, race, skin colour, and religion. • Experiencing hate impacts students’ mental health, academic growth, and safety. • Students call for stronger prevention and support systems to address gaps. • Article offers policy recommendations to improve anti-hate frameworks.

• Near deadlines, creativity shifts from divergent exploration to convergent efficiency. • Motivation fluctuates with task relevance, workload balance, and personal investment. • Guidelines foster psychological safety, enabling risk-taking within defined boundaries. • Structural clarity mitigates ambiguity, fostering motivation through achievable goals. • Subjective creativity definitions (problem-solving vs. experimentation) shape deadline impacts. Educators in creative disciplines face a persistent challenge: balancing structured guidance (e.g., deadlines, guidelines) with the flexibility necessary for fostering originality. This study investigates how tertiary music and music-technology students perceive the impact of deadlines and structural guidelines on their creativity, motivation, and work quality. Employing a qualitative design with open-ended surveys (n = 35), we analyzed 9,355 words of student responses through grounded theory, supplemented by post-hoc quantitative categorization. Findings reveal that 74% of students associated deadlines with heightened motivation, yet their effects on creativity were polarized: 46% reported enhanced focus, while 31% cited constrained exploration. Structural guidelines were similarly divisive, viewed as clarifying (63%) or restrictive (34%). Crucially, students’ subjective definitions of creativity and motivation mediated these outcomes—those framing creativity as problem-solving thrived under deadlines, while proponents of unrestricted experimentation found them stifling. Motivation rooted in personal investment drove sustained effort, whereas external pressure led to stress-driven compliance. Grounded theory analysis uncovered an interconnected academic ecosystem, where task type, workload, and emotional states dynamically shaped engagement. The study advocates for structured uncertainty in pedagogy—designing adaptable frameworks that harmonize accountability with artistic autonomy. By centering student voices, this research underscores the need for educators to align constraints with learners’ evolving conceptualizations of creativity, ensuring pedagogical structures catalyze rather than inhibit creativity.

Steel Thin-walled Beams with restrained flanges are commonly used in structural systems where partial or full lateral and rotational restraints may occur, such as in steel–concrete composite beams used in slabs and in highway bridge decks. While these restraints enhance global stability, they can also trigger complex buckling behaviours. One such mode is lateral-distortional buckling (LDB), which arises when the tension flange is restrained against both lateral translation and rotation, leading to web distortion and twisting of the compression flange during buckling. Numerous studies have shown that existing empirical methods for predicting the elastic critical moment of LDB lack sufficient accuracy. This paper presents a numerical approach for estimating the elastic lateral and distortional buckling capacity of thin-walled I-beams under uniformly distributed loading. The developed method, referred to as Distortional Beam Formulations (DBF13), offers an efficient and practical modeling framework that incorporates second-order shell kinematics to accurately capture LDB behaviour. To validate the proposed formulation, Shell-element models were used in case studies and compared against existing experimental and analytical data. A total of 3540 analyses were conducted on doubly-symmetric and mono-symmetric I-section models under various boundary conditions to evaluate DBF13 across different buckling scenarios. Additionally, the effects of the cross-section classification, beam span, flange and web slenderness ratios were examined. The case study results underscore the reliability of DBF13 in predicting the Lateral Torsional Buckling as well as the Lateral Distortional Buckling behaviour. In the eigenvalue predictions, DBF13 has shown an average difference of less than 11% compared to shell model results.

Urban vegetation varies with socio-economic gradients, as lower-income neighborhoods often host sparser and less diverse green spaces. This disparity may affect respiratory health by influencing exposure to bioaerosols. Understanding the characteristics of this aerobiome could help anticipate risks related to allergies and other respiratory conditions. Here, we hypothesized that urban vegetation cover and socio-economic status shape urban bioaerosol dynamics. We sampled bioaerosols at 65 sites across three Canadian cities of varying population size and density using an active air sampler over four months, and characterized their bacterial, fungal, and plant particles composition using amplicon sequencing. Seasonal alpha diversity varied significantly for fungi and plant particles. Based on beta diversity, sampling period alone explained up to 40% of plant particle, 29% of fungal, and 11% of bacterial bioaerosol composition variation. In contrast, vegetation cover explained only a minor portion of the variance in bioaerosol composition, and median household income, almost none. These findings provide a critical baseline for understanding the urban aerobiome and highlight the need to study how vegetation identity and diversity, rather than cover alone, may shape bioaerosol dynamics in cities. As cities grow and urban greening initiatives expand, demystifying the aerobiome dynamics becomes an urgent public health priority.