Microgrid Protection Design Investigation using Real-Time Hardware-in-the-Loop

The electric power grid in Canada provides energy to the country. In order to provide more reliable power, to include more clean energy and to supply energy to remote Canadian communities, part of the power grid may be required to operate autonomously. At the distribution level, microgrids, which can be isolated from the main grid, are being deployed for this purpose. Protection schemes in microgrids are very different to those in conventional grids. This project deals with the design and deployment of microgrid protection schemes.

Adsorption of tannins on copper surface

Tannins, natural renewable molecules, have exhibited excellent corrosion inhibition properties, comparable to those of non-renewable counterparts. TGWT Clean Technologies Inc. has a portfolio of tannin-based corrosion inhibitors, which are being used in industry to protect mild steel (MS) steam boilers, high efficiency condensing aluminium boilers, as well as multi-metal heating and cooling closed-loop systems. Copper equipment is ubiquitous in industry, e.g. heat exchangers.

Machine Vision Yield Monitor for Vegetable Crops

Machine Vision (MV) is a technology that aims to translate visual data from images or videos into useful information for industrial processes. The use of MV in precision agriculture is currently expanding and has helped to accelerate and improve sorting, grading and yield estimation. The goal of this research project is to develop a MV yield monitor for the large scale industrial farm Delfland Inc. that will identify, sort and count vegetables according to their size.

Minimizing crop stress with micronutrients: Agronomics

When plants are stressed they produce "reactive oxygen species" (ROS). Plants manage ROS with specific enzymes, many of which require micronutrients for activity. In the case of herbicide tolerant crops, the application of herbicide kills weeds in the crop but also stresses the crop for a time. The proposed work will test the hypothesis that crop plants will be better able to deal with stress resulting from herbicide application, when they are given additional micronutrients, in the form of Axter products spray-applied to crop leaves. The crops used in this work will be soybean and corn.

Development of Sense and Avoid System for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been drawing great attention in the recent decades due to the applications in the pipeline monitoring, film, mapping, agriculture, to name just a few. The question that comes up is: is it safe to share the sky with manned aircraft and other unmanned systems? For the safety of the manned aircraft and UAVs themselves, as well as for people on the ground, the Sense & Avoid system (S&A) should be developed and implemented on the UAVs.

Hybrid Power Systems for Integrated Energy and Food Production in Autonomous Communities

Community integrated energy and food systems bring production and management to the local scale in order to increase autonomy and resiliency. These are particularly expedient in the face of global climate change, more frequent and severe extreme weather, geopolitical instability and peak oil. Bioenergy systems offer enormous potential for such applications because they stand at the nexus between food and energy security; specifically, food waste is an input to bioenergy systems, and bioenergy effluent is an agricultural input.

The I-Score Study: The development and validation of a patient-reported measure of antiretroviral therapy’s interference with life.

Many HIV-positive persons on HIV medication have trouble taking this medication as prescribed by their doctor (treatment adherence). This threatens the long-term ability of the drugs to preserve a patient’s health. For 1 in 5 in Canada, their medication does not work, in part because of adherence problems. Furthermore, doctors and their HIV-positive patients do not always discuss treatment difficulties and how to resolve them in sufficient depth. The I-Score Study is a 24-month research project that will develop a questionnaire to be filled out by patients as a part of routine HIV care.

Investigating productive uncertainty in technological intelligence practices

This project aims at investigating productive uncertainty as a determinant factor in stimulating the exploration of innovation. Data will be collected through stakeholder interviews and observations of technological intelligence practices at Université de Bordeaux’s Via Inno lab. Via Inno engages with industrial partners to explore future development opportunities, which present an ideal case study to explore conditions of uncertainty.

Neuromorphic Computing with Stochastic Binary Weights Based on Magnetic Tunnel Junctions

Many problems which are best solved by neural networks are exhibiting rapid growth in nascent and existing fields, such as natural language processing, and image recognition for self-driving cars. Current limitations in manufacturing technologies impose limits that prevent these performance demands from being met through conventional methods. Neuromorphic computing has been proposed as a potential solution for problems best solved with artificial neural networks.

Research that tunes into emotions

Working under the direction of Professor Alexandre Lehmann, the Australian psychology major is using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brains of 20 volunteers to see how they react to different types of sounds. Karina demonstrates her research

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