Projets novateurs réalisés

Evaluation of dehydrated corn silage for lactating dairy cows

Dehydrated corn silage is produced by drying corn silage to a moisture content of approximately 10%. It is being exported to Japan to be used as a forage for dairy cows, and its market is expected to expand in the future. However, its feeding values have not been studied. The objective of the proposed project is to determine nutritional values of dehydrated corn silage for dairy cows. The intern is an international graduate student from Japan and fluent in Japanese, and she will work with Barr-Ag staff to disseminate research outcomes to dairy producers in Japan, end-users of the dehydrated corn silage.

Modeling animal movement for sustainable livestock management

An ongoing interdisciplinary project conducted in Argentina looks to understand how the population dynamics of sheep, and
therefore livestock production, depends on individual behavior, climate, landscape structure and management in order to improve
the design of sustainable management strategies aimed at solving real problems of animal production and conservation of natural
resources. Data from a total of 60 sheep were collected in Patagonia, both GPS (at a 5 min temporal resolution) and
accelerometer data (40 Hz), over a period of 8 months in order to examine how the sheep alternate between a limited set of
stereotypic behaviors, each characterized by different movement strategies, in response to changes in their internal states and in
the environment. Due to the large number of individuals and the amount of data collected, this dataset is unique and provides
many opportunities for development of statistical methodology to answer practical questions related to natural grasslands
conservation and development of sustainable management practices.

Poultry health surveillance in Alberta for prevention of emerging infectious disease.

The broad objectives of this project are:

I. To reduce the risk of emerging infectious diseases related to poultry; and

II. To improve Alberta poultry industry productivity and profitability

To reach these broad objectives we will address 3 specific objectives:

1) Determine what the knowledge needs of the poultry industry are and how knowledge is best disseminated to improve disease prevention in poultry flocks and preparedness and response to disease outbreaks. We will engage poultry producers from the start of the project and through stakeholder forums and interviews with expert informant interviews will understand the concerns of the producers nd what surveillance outputs can best inform their management strategies. Through consultation we will establisdh the format of the output for producers, other industry input providers (feed producers, processors, veterinarians, academics, and government). Throughout the project there will be monthly stakeholder meeting and quarterly stakeholder meetings to discuss progress, address concerns and to seek additional input. This work will facilitate building collaborative relationships between industry, academia, and government agents (Anholt et al., 2012; Horowitz, 2003).

Waste Collection / Street Sweeping / Snowplow Route Optimization

A key objective of this project is to develop an advanced routing strategy that can generate optimal routes for curbside waste collection, residential sweeping, and snowplowing services to improve operational efficiency and save overall costs. To achieve this goal, optimal routing models and algorithms will be developed by integrating graphic theory, vehicle routing problem, and optimization, as well as GIS (Geographic Information System) techniques. To represent real-world situations, various and complicated operational constraints for each service will be incorporated into the developed models. The proposed model and analytical data will offer practical, scalable, and sustainable solutions to enhance the service performance and quality while generating the least operational expenditures and environmental footprint.

Operationalizing Bayesian multi-state models and financial institution resources for business firm life cycle modelling

Like most living organisms, the life cycle of a business can be divided into distinct, complex phases. These life stages are determined by various internal and external factors such as financial resource availability, managerial ability, and market conditions. The ability to model firm life stages would help financial institutions (FIs) such as ATB identify and meet the time-specific needs and challenges of their business clients. However, properly analyzing the wealth of data collected by FIs is difficult. As one challenge, FIs currently do not manually classify business into life stages and, as another, the amount and type of data available differs across firms. In this internship, we propose developing a life cycle modelling framework that addresses these and other real-world practicalities of financial data in a way that can be readily operationalized for the benefit of FIs’ business clients.

Cloning, expression and characterization of a novel gene involved in Amaryllidaceae alkaloid metabolism

Amaryllidaceae alkaloids (AAs) are a group of specialized metabolites found predominantly in the Amaryllidaceae plant family. Approximately 650 naturally occurring AAs have been identified, many of which possess a variety of potent biological and pharmacological properties. In contrast to the large body of knowledge on the pharmacological and phytochemical aspects of AAs, their molecular and physiological features are less explored. A better understanding of AA biosynthesis and metabolic regulation is crucial to take advantage of new metabolic engineering technologies for improving the efficiency and sustainability of plant or microbial AA production.This internship will focus on the characterization of tyrosine decarboxylases (TYDC) potentially involved in the biosynthesis of AA. Two TYDC transcripts were identified in the transcriptome of Amaryllidaceae plants but their function remain unknown. This project will help to understand AA biosynthesis to provide tools for alternative biotechnologies for the production of high-valued AAs.

Détection et explication de bris des bornes de recharge rapides pour véhicules électriques

L’objectif du projet est de détecter rapidement des bris dans les bornes de recharge rapide. Pour ce faire, nous devrons extraire des données actuellement stockées dans des fichiers et ensuite les analyser à l’aide de l’apprentissage automatique. Finalement, pour les bris détectés, nous tenterons de trouver les facteurs les expliquant le mieux possible.
Pour les avantages escomptés pour AddÉnergie à la suite de ce stage, ils auront en main des outils permettant de détecter rapidement des bris dans leur borne de recharge rapide. Cela leur permettra donc de réparer rapidement les bornes roblématiques et d’ainsi fournir un meilleur service à leurs clients.

International Student Experiences : Fairness, Equity, and Race

This project will ultimately highlight the ways in which international students experience higher education (as framed by policy, racism, and student testimonies I will have collected prior to departure).The project is 2 pronged: one area focusing on a policy driven manuscript informed by international student testimonies to be used for my dissertation, and the other area, a conceptual piece on international students and race. Both areas of the project will utilize a critical lens that frames international student experience through inequity.

Area 1) This research will focus on the inequities that international students encounter through work, academics, healthcare, and experiences on campus. These inequities will be further analyzed within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This project forms the basis for one of the chapters in my dissertation. While I will have collected testimonies pre-departure, the analysis will be conducted under the supervision of Dr. Syvlie Lomer.

Area 2) In addition to the analysis of policy and international student experiences, I will also investigate a new line of inquiry on the intersections of international students and race.

Anti-Fouling and Anti-Fibrotic 3D Bioinks for Printing Implantable Tissue Constructs

While 3D printing has been hyped as the solution to the current shortage of organs available for implantation, the very limited scope of hydrogel-based “inks” that are available to print an implant has limited the practical implementation of 3D printing in regenerative medicine. In this project, we will combine the materials expertise of the Hoare lab at McMaster University in the design of spontaneously-gelling hydrogels that quickly convert from liquid-like materials to gels upon mixing and the printing expertise of Aspect Biosystems, a rapidly-growing Vancouver-based company that has developed a unique microfluidic 3D printer ideally suited to print spontaneously-gelling hydrogels, to develop new bioinks that can support high-resolution printing, high cell viability, and significantly improved tissue compatibility and stability in the body following implantation. The successful execution of this project will result in at least 1-2 candidate bioink designs that can be marketed by Aspect Biosystems to its printer customers as well as used internally for creating implantable regenerative therapie

A systematic characterisation of galactic planetary nebulae with a novel Fourier transfrom spectrograph

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the Universe, making them perfect laboratories to study galaxy
formation and evolution. This evolution is closely influenced by the environment of a galaxy and sometimes, when two galaxies
are so close to one another, a merging event unfolds. Such an event leaves long lived fossil records in the outer part of the
resulting galaxy, detectable long after the merging took place. Thus, the main goal of my internship project is to use a special kind
of celestial object, i.e. planetary nebulae, to probe the population of stars inside galaxies as well as the merging history of these
galaxies. This will be done using data from a large sample of galaxies taken by the Canada-France-Hawai’i telescope. The
expected outcome of my project is to write a scientific paper showing the results found regarding the link between the properties
of planetary nebulae with the properties of the stars in the perspective of merger histories.

Drivers of Time to Resolution and the COVID-19 Pandemic

ATB conducts enterprise-wide stress tests regularly in line with regulatory requirements such as for the annual Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process (ICAAP) and for quarterly reporting purposes. This requires forecasting a conditional pro-forma financial statement over a three-year period and the resulting key risk ratios. Credit losses tend to have the largest impact under most scenarios but an important secondary factor is the expected changes to net interest income. As more loans move from performing to non-performing it can have an important impact on net interest income because the times to resolution can vary with the business cycle and other economic factors. There is both a funding cost and a capital cost that has to be absorbed by the organization as the backlog increases. The focus of this project is to analyze the relationship between the business cycle, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the time to resolution using different survival analysis modelling approaches and machine learning methods.

Modélisation et caractérisation à la pression atmosphérique de lentilles électrostatiques à focalisation forte de type quadripolaire

Le projet de maîtrise consiste à faire l’essai d’un certain type de lentilles électroniques spécialisées, appelées lentilles à focalisation forte, que sont les lentilles quadripolaires électrostatiques. Ces lentilles sont généralement utilisées dans des appareils analytiques comme les microscopes électroniques, les spectromètres de masses, les accélérateurs de particules qui fonctionnent tous à de très basses pressions. L’élément particulier de ce projet est celui d’opérer ces lentilles à la pression atmosphérique et d’en découvrir les caractéristiques opérationnelles afin de pouvoir les utiliser dans certaines sources ioniques qui elles aussi opèrent à la pression atmosphérique, dans le but d’augmenter leur luminosité. L’entreprise Phytronix fabrique une source ionique de ce type et désire à améliorer son produit. L’essai d’un doublet ou d’un triplet optique sera au coeur des expériences qui seront effectuées. C’est dans un mode pointe-plan d’une décharge couronne que seront effectuées les mesures de focalisation de ces lentilles quadripolaires.