Understanding swine metabolism is important to the pork industry, for the improvement of feed efficiency and meat quality, in addition to animal wellbeing. We have recently discovered two stress genes (Luman/CREB3 and LRF/CREBRF) that regulate animal responses to stress. Mutation of these Luman or LRF gene resulted in animals that are more tolerate to stress, in the meantime being lean with very low abdominal fat. Here we propose to further our study on how these genes regulate metabolism using a swine liver cell system.

With the recent legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada, cultivation of cannabis sativa has increased significantly, including rapid adoption of outdoor cultivation. Given the cheaper cost of production compared to indoor cultivation, the growth in outdoor cultivation will likely outpace that of indoor. However, while outdoor cannabis cultivation faces many of the same pest challenges as indoor cultivation, there are no pesticides registered for outdoor cannabis. Growers must rely on other integrated pest management (IPM) tactics to manage pests.

Borealis AI has access to a huge amount of financial data related to the stock market and is interested in leveraging recent developments in machine learning to better understand this data. Some potential questions emerging from this data are: (1) Given the closing price of a stock in the recent months, can we predict the stock returns within the next month? (2) If a stock crisis occurs, can we predict and control the spread of the crisis? (3) Given the current stock’s history, can we help reduce the risk of investment?.

Canada is a signatory to global commitments to reduce greenhouse gas levels and one important way this will happen is through the implementation of nature-based solutions for climate change. One example of natural climate solutions is GHG offsets based on restoration, protection and establishment of forests, wetlands, grasslands and peatland areas. Indigenous Peoples are critical to the success of natural climate solutions.

There is growing recognition that enhanced soft skill acquisition and development are critical for society and its members to adapt to the changes associated with the future of work in Canada, Soft skills in a work context are commonly measured in interviews, but this method has its drawbacks as there is the possibility for interviewer bias and interviewee faking, both of which could skew the assessment of skills in interviews. To circumvent these issues, nugget.ai developed an online simulation-based method for screening soft skills.

Soil organic matter and soil organic carbon (SOC) are the important drivers of soil health. Although winter wheat and red clover have improved the soil health and system resiliency in Ontario (Gaudin et al., 2013), little is known on how quickly changes to soil health can be made and under which management systems. With Federal and Provincial government policies on carbon trading, a better understanding of the impact of management on carbon sequestration would be valuable. However, meaningful Ontario data are needed.

The main goal in talent acquisition is to find and hire the best applicant for each position which places heavy emphasis on an organizations ability to accurately assess candidates. However, an applicant’s anxiety can impede this process as it has been shown to lead to reduced interview scores while not being indicative of work performance. Furthermore, applicant’s anxiety may also impact the amount of faking behaviours that occur in the interview process further distorting the predictive validity of their scores.

Scientists have been interested in the effects that microorganisms have on their host plants for over a century, however, recently researchers have been able to better tackle these questions with the advent of new technology. In particular, beneficial microorganisms associated with roots can increase crop resiliency against disease, pests and extreme weather events, making this avenue of research important for the protection of crops from climate change.

For over 10 years, eQcell Inc. has been treating horses with stem cells. In order to efficiently direct future research, a full picture of the efficacy of past treatments is necessary. This project will follow up with all clients across 8 clinics to collect an up-to-date snapshot of previously treated horses’ health and progression or regression from the time of treatment. These data will help generate hypotheses and narrow the research focus of the company to where stem cells may be best applied.

One of the main challenges in tree fruit orchards is to accurately predict apple yield and identify the health of individual trees (e.g., healthy foliage, fruit development, detecting and identifying diseased trees). Manual performance of these tasks is labour intensive and costly. Therefore, automated processes provide novel solutions with enhanced accuracy, efficiency, and productivity.