Improving driving safety is an ongoing challenge with far reaching consequences for Canadians. One method of improving driving safety is by improving driver performance with hazard perception training. Hazard perception is a driver's ability to anticipate dangers in the road environment and is predictive of the likelihood of being in a crash. Several countries including the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Australia have introduced this training as part of getting a license but there is no current equivalent in Canada.
Many of the flavours found in whisky and other distilled spirits are derived from alcoholic fermentation, most commonly by the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Given the biodiversity of different yeast strains and species, there is an opportunity to identify strains that can produce alcoholic beverages with unique flavours and aromas. The Measday lab has isolated hundreds of yeast strains from uninoculated fermentations of wine grapes from the Okanagan Valley, BC.
This work aims to protect oat oil and produce new formulated products for food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and household care applications. Specifically, nanocellulose and food-grade cellulose derivatives will be used to stabilize oat oil-in-water emulsions which will be dried into oil powders using spray drying. The powders appear dry but are >90% liquid oil and can be used in the dry form or reconstituted by hand-shaking them in water. Attempts to isolate nanocellulose from oat hulls will be undertaken as a step towards “all oat” dry oat oil powders.
This project aims at providing a comprehensive appreciation of the net carbon capture potential of using pine beetle affected wood as feedstock for biochar (a carbon rich material) production and use throughout British Columbia. The carbon capture potential will be assessed by balancing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production, transport, and amendment of the biochar on agricultural fields with a model of the soil carbon and plant growth impact of biochar addition.
Earth elevation data is an important tool that helps scientists predict how rivers will respond to large floods and increased inputs of rocks and sand. Recent technological advances in elevation data collection are very effective for dry land, but much less effective for the wetted parts of the river. This causes gaps in the elevation data, which researchers generally fill by either 1) collecting underwater elevations or 2) using math equations to predict elevations.
The goal of this research project is to understand how well blockchain and distributed ledger projects conducted in humanitarian settings live up to their potential for benefitting technology users. The research will consider this question through the lens of data justice, an emerging framework that looks at the storage and protection of digital data and how technology users are treated when they produce digital data. This framework is relevant to the production of the data generated by the way individuals lead their social and economic lives online.
Our proposal will focus on data synthesis for retina-based disease diagnoses, such as Glaucoma detection. Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of irreversible but preventable blindness in working-age populations. In 2013, 64.3 million people aged 40–80 years were estimated to suffer from glaucoma, while this number is expected to increase to 76 million by 2020 and 111.8 million by 2040.
Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease(COPD) are the two common lung conditions in British Columbia(BC). Given the dynamic character of these two diseases and modified treatment options in recent years, this proposed study aims to assess and update the economic burden of asthma and COPD in British Columbia and determine regional differences and the impact of social-economic aspects on the burden of asthma and COPD.
A continuous observational pool of individuals with asthma and COPD will be built utilizing BC health administrative data from 1997 to 2021.
The Chilako river is a 6th order river located approximately 15km west of Prince George, British Columbia. It serves as a main tributary to the Nechako River and is identified as a key spawning habitat for salmon in central British Columbia. However, disturbances such as agriculture, forest harvesting, forest fires and the Mountain Pine beetle have dramatically changed the ecosystems in the area. Landowners and residents have observed changesand expressed concern about flooding, deforestation, and stream bank erosion.
The material properties of thermoplastic polymer composite parts manufactured by the fused filament fabrication additive manufacturing process are highly dependent on the thermal history. A good understanding of the heat transfer in fused filament fabrication is crucial for an accurate stress prediction and subsequently for repetitive, high-quality printing. A numerical simulation to model the thermal history dependent crystallization and fusion bonding kinetics of a 3D-printed fiber reinforced semi-crystalline thermoplastic composite will be developed and experimentally validated.
