Enviroshake Inc. markets a very successful product: composite roof shakes. These shakes have the appearance of cedar but outperform cedar roof shakes in lifetime. The current composite roof shake is primarily composed of a mixture of commercial plastics blended with wood fillers. Enviroshake Inc. would like to redefine the binding agent to a lower priced material whilst maintaining or improving upon the performance of the shakes.

The project will involve a partnership between the Western University, where the intern is enrolled in the Chemistry PhD program, and the Surface Science Western (SSW). The SSW is a commercial organization which does contract research and problem-solving for industrial companies and is contracted to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to support the development of corrosion models for copper waste containers.

Cancers are treated today with the appropriate combination of chemotherapy drugs, surgery and radiation. Chemotherapy is almost invariably dosed intravenously, and enters the systemic blood flow where it circulates around the whole body, coming into contact with healthy cells as well as cancerous ones. This systemic dosing has two big problems: too little drug gets to cancer cells, and too much drug comes into contact with healthy cells, causing side effects. Frequently, these dose-limiting side-effects prevent us from delivering the maximally effective anti-cancer drug dose.

Air Phaser is a proprietary product produced by Air Phaser Environmental and designed to oxidize and/or reduce air-borne pollutants that need to be transformed to environmentally benign forms. The Air Phaser uses electrical discharges to destroy and break down the VOC’s present in the contaminated air. Although, the technology is effective for many VOC’s, some classes of compounds, specifically aromatic species, are not degraded enough to completely eliminate odor or potential adverse health impacts.

A series of rapid and cost effective analytical methods will be developed to enable routine screening of feedstock material and products.  These techniques include sampling with lasers so that the need for digestion with highly corrisive acids is effectively eliminated.  These techniques will have less waste and use less hazardous materials than traditional methods and this will reduce the environmental impact of critical analytical testing.   Developing these technologies will ensure that Natural Factors continues to be an industrial leader in quality assurance and control.  The new techno

The proposed research will work to characterize plasmas of the type that form where the charging roll contacts the photoreceptor in a typical xerographic printer.  Laboratory experiments will form discharges under ambient atmospheric conditions and at the high-vacuum exit of a dielectric-barrier-discharge pulsed molecular beam.  Spectroscopic measurements will record fluorescence emission signatures of plasmas under these conditions, and time-of-flight mass spectrometry will monitor the presence of reactive intermediates.