This research project will suggest guidelines that can be used by practitioners to formally represent the business benefits of blockchain. The business benefits focused on in this study are the increased financial value and the improved productivity. Formal methods will be applied to communicate these business benefits in unambiguous ways. Specifically, financial methods will be applied to quantify the financial value and conceptual modeling methods will be used to model the business processes related to the blockchain technology.
The main goal of this research project is to study if a protein named SEMA3C can be a biomarker for early detection of an aggressive and lethal form of prostate cancer, named Double Negative Prostate Cancer (DNPC). To test if SEMA3C is a contributing factor in the progression of DNPC, we will compare SEMA3C level in tissues from patient and healthy individuals. Then, we will study if SEMA3C level changes in parallel to genetic variations, happening in tumors with cancer growth.
This project enhances scholarly and public understandings of how technical scientific knowledge shapes legal outcomes, especially through the process of finding facts. Fact determination is an unregulated yet enormously consequential task for courts. Yet the law of evidence remains widely conceptualized as an essentially rule-bound domain, including in legal pedagogy. Meanwhile, despite judicial efforts at gatekeeping for reliable science, forensic expertise continues to feature in miscarriages of justice.
To decarbonise, the participation of the oil industry is key. Rather than process crude oils, refineries are able to co-process biogenic feedstocks alongside their fossil fuel to reduce the carbon intensities of the fuels they produced. Our project will evaluate what’s the impact of adding these biogenic feedstocks to the existing refining units by long term operations and what we can expect from the future more challenging biocrudes when they are available. The result of the work can be used by the refinery to further improve their process.
The research program in this project aims at advancing the use of cellular communications for Internet-of-Things applications. The academic researchers and the partner organization have identified three work items that revolve around the self-estimation of cellular IoT devices (1) to improve energy and spectrum efficient transmission of short and intermittent data packets, (2) to enable cellular non-terrestrial communication with low-cost devices, and (3) to help realize tracking applications that can benefit from device-to-device communication.
Spinal cord injury (SCI) results in severe paralysis, for which there are no effective treatments. Advanced technologies, however, can play an important role in assisting in the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of SCI patients who suffer many impairments beyond the loss of voluntary muscle control. In this proposal, we will develop and apply innovative technologies for SCI. We will develop a novel biosensor for the injured cord to inform doctors how to best support its healing in the early stages of injury.
There is an increasing interest in applications of machine learning to solve mining and geotechnical problems; this is made easier thanks to user-friendly and open source machine learning codes and improved computational power. The benefit of incorporating machine learning in rock engineering design are apparent, including the reduction in the time required to sort and characterize field data and the capability to find mathematical correlations between complex sets of input data. However, there are challenges to be investigated, including the use of qualitative data.
Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is an important disease characterized by recurrent blockages of the upper airway during sleep leading to breathing cessations (up to 100 times per hour); OSA is common and is widely under-diagnosed. OSA might cause cancer or lead to cancer progression, potentially mediated through low oxygen levels; however, evidence for this association is limited. This research study will use rigorous methods to determine if there is a potential link between OSA and cancer; specifically, we will link our large database of approximately 1800 patients with suspected OSA.
Wearable body sensors are groundbreaking in that they allow for continuous and unobtrusive physiological measurements. The promise is that someday soon, smartphones will monitor our bodily state and thus prevent all kinds of wellbeing implications: acute physiological issues like stroke or heart attack; less acute but still serious illness, such as chronic illnesses caused by destructive behavioural patterns; and everyday psychological experiences such as stress and bad mood. But this is not yet a plug and play matter; simply attaching a heart rate sensor does not fulfill this dream.
HOB! is a community-based action research project with the aim of supporting visible minority newcomer women (VMNW) in starting entrepreneurial businesses. The research objectives of the project include identifying challenges and opportunities that VMNW face in the business environment of Canada. Moreover, this research will provide suggestions for improvement of employment and self-employment services for immigrant women.
