Innovative Projects Realized

The design and fabrication of a novel and passive hand tremor attenuator

Parkinson’s disease is most highly recognized by tremors of the hands that occur in those afflicted with the disease. Though the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease involving motor function begin with very slight tremors of the hands, they further develop into issues such as difficulty swallowing, severe postural problems and extremely limited mobility. In this proposal, a method of reducing these tremors that appear during the early stages of the disease is developed by creating a wearable passive device that reduces vibrations of the hand and arm through the use of magnetic actuators. The proposed wearable technology has surpassed other known alternatives in selected testing scenarios while possessing a light weight of only 120 grams.

Development of a Factory Model of Steel Production through ElectricArc Furnace

Over the decades use of Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF) in steel production has grown dramatically.

However, EAF operation involves relatively low level of automation and multivariable interactions and

subtle relationships that may be easily overlooked. Detailed process knowledge, in the form of a

model, makes it possible to take advantage of more complex relationships to provide information such

as finding the optimal balance and timing of the energy contributions from chemical and electrical

sources. The proposed project focuses on two aspects of the steel production process with EAF at

ArcelorMittal to improve the quality of steel and minimize production costs. The first proposed task is

to develop an optimized slag model for an EAF to reduce energy utilization, alloy consumption and

maximize yield. The second task is developing a caster model that (1) calculates the optimum

parameters to cast quality, (2) predicts liquid steel temperature from upstream parameters, (3) calculates billet core temperature to define maximum casting speed. The…………………………………………………

New high performance cooling fluids based on boron nitride for power electronic applications

Pour bien fonctionner, l’électronique de puissance, par exemple les moteurs électriques, doit être refroidie avec des liquides qui conduisent bien la chaleur, tout en étant de bons isolants électriques. La disponibilité de ces fluides est actuellement une limite importante si on veut utiliser des puissances plus élevées. L’objectif général de ce projet est de développer un nouveau fluide caloporteur possédant de bonnes propriétés d’écoulement et d’isolation électrique. Les objectifs spécifiques sont : (1) De développer des fluides caloporteurs à base d’émulsions concentrées de Pickering, en utilisant des particules de nitrure de bore – ces particules conduisent très bien la chaleur et sont de bons isolants électriques; (2) D’établir la relation entre les propriétés thermiques, la conductivité électrique, et l’écoulement de ces émulsions, en fonction de la composition; (3) D’optimiser les propriétés thermiques, électriques et en écoulement, de la formulation retenue.
Le second objectif sera réalisé en France. Il s’agira de caractériser les propriétés thermiques des formulations développées à l’aide d’une caméra thermique permettant d’obtenir le profil de température dans un fluide. Développer une meilleure compréhension de ces aspects permettra de raffiner la composition de la formulation par l’amélioration de ses propriétés.

Influence of Classroom Assessment on Motivation, Autonomy and Creativity in Children

In the present study, classes of Grade 4 students in each of Ontario and Notodden will work individually on a creative art project over the span of between six to eight weeks. A 2 x 2 design with teacher feedback (positive and general vs. positive and constructive) and evaluation expectation (expecting evaluation vs. not expecting evaluation) as the independent variables will be used. Students will complete a measure of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and perceived autonomy before and after completing their art project. Pre- and post-test results will be compared to determine the influence of different forms of assessment. Additional measures of affect will be taken. All projects will be evaluated by a panel of teachers for creativity and technical competency at the end of the six weeks.TO BE CONT’D

An examination of shrub and animal density-dependent interactions in desert ecosystems

The proposed project is to determine if shrub and animal densities in Desert ecosystems are related to one another. This will be done by looking at the total number of Shrub individuals in a given area (Breaking up into high, medium, low and no shrub sites) and recording the total animals that are found in the site. Animal encounters will be seen through Camera Trap recordings, Walking a transect (Straight line) near the site and finally sitting for an hour and observing each site. It is expected that a higher density of shrubs in a given area will be associated with a higher density of animals in that area and that there will be a greater richness of animal species with higher shrub densities.

Co-creating societal progress: Developing participatory processes for working with governments to meet targets for ecological transition.

Climate change demands that governing institutions at every level of society define targets for ecological transition. The UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals are one such agenda. Actually meeting those targets takes more than planning, however — it requires the stimulation, development, and implementation of citizen-led solutions. With innovation labs and research institutes providing platforms to propagate solution prototypes, the remaining question becomes one of implementation. For prototypes to be put into action, participating actors must feel empowered and motivated to self-organize across sectors. Governmental cooperation, particularly at the regional and local levels, thus becomes a key factor for success. It is believed that co-creation — an approach to creative practice that involves active participation from all stakeholders — can increase the effectiveness and long-term success of multistakeholder partnerships. The proposed research will explore the conditions necessary for these partnerships to move forward with their projects, and identify tools and support measures to enable them to flourish.

Évaluation du comportement et des propriétés mécaniques d’une cornière en carton

Des cornières en carton sont utilisées pour la protection des angles de colis ou de palettes, pendant leurs manutentions (chargement, transport, etc.). Elles jouent un rôle important dans le renforcement de la résistance à l’empilement des cartons. Le projet porte sur une amélioration des propriétés des cornières fabriquées par Abzac. Les différentes tâches seront les suivantes : – Développer une nouvelle résistance à la compression plus compétitive tout en réduisant les matières premières. (Augmentation volume massique de la cornière); – Imaginer, créer, concevoir, définir un test de torsion ; – Optimiser les propriétés mécaniques écrasement, torsion ; – S’assurer de la répétabilité et reproductivité des tests. Abzac Canada Inc.

Deploying electric vehicles in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area: Health and climate benefits and strategy development

In Canada, the transportation sector is the second largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter and a large contributor to air pollution emissions, which can cause significant health impacts. Since electric vehicle (EV) does not generate any exhaust emissions, introducing EVs can bring health and climate co-benefits to society. From a life cycle perspective, this study will evaluate the environmental, health and economic impacts of introducing EVs in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Based on the impact evaluation, the intern will assist Pollution Probe in creating a generic municipal zero emission vehicle EV deployment framework, as well as an Electric Mobility Strategy tailored to the City of Toronto. The development of this framework and strategy is important, since electric mobility benefits can only be achieved through widespread EV adoption, and comparable studies have not been undertaken in Canada.

Motivating Stakeholder Engagement in a UK-Canada Circular Economy Trade Agreement

Following up on literature gaps identified in a research report entitled ” Understanding the Future of Canada-UK Trade Relationships in a Circular Economy Context” prepared in part by this application’s Academic Supervisors and funded by a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, this research project will investigate how to motivate UK stakeholders and increase their engagement in a new trade agreement between Canada and the UK that supports and motivates a circular economy. Based on a recent OECD report, a circular-economy is one that integrates economic, environmental, and social sustainability concepts through a redesigned “closed loop” cyclical use of resources (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2018). With a direct link between international trade and the transition towards a circular economy, better understanding the needs and desires of UK stakeholders in regards to Canadian trade policy could lead to increased support of a circular trade agreement. While no direct surveys or formal interviews will be performed, informal discussions related to specific literature on this subject will take place. The higher the engagement – the more justifiable, effective and successfully negotiated a Canada-UK circular trade agreement could be.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2018). https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy

Advanced Signal Processing and Machine Learning for BLE-based Indoor Localization

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a new emerging paradigm and is rapidly gaining ground in different applications of significant engineering importance including but not limited to smart buildings, and smart public environments. The main enabling factor of this promising paradigm is integration of identification, localization, and navigation technologies with smart hand-held devices equipped with sensing, processing, and communication capabilities. Stringent accuracy requirements along with lower cost, energy efficiency, and high security standards make indoor localization a challenging problem, which in turn calls for in-depth research on alternative and innovative multi-sensor solutions. In particular, the main objective of this research program is development of advanced signal processing and machine learning solutions to micro-locate and track a person within a delimited physical space (e.g. building) using the industrial partner’s Smart Bluetooth locating infrastructure installed within this space.

New Orthogonal Polynomials and their Applications

We propose development and validation of novel mathematical tools which can be

used for information processing for object and/or model identification and detection within

decision support systems (DSS) in various decision frameworks such as situation

assessment and analysis, genetic modeling and analysis, medical imaging, etc. The project

will have two main novel contributions: (1) introducing new families of polynomials and (2) the

discretization of old and new polynomials. Specifically, in the proposed research, symmetries

of n dimensional lattices for defining families of orthogonal functions and orthogonal

polynomials will be exploited in order to be used in n dimensional Fourier analysis in digital

and analog signal processing, as well as in object and pattern recognition methods. The

aforementioned symmetries have been recently linked to knot symmetries and to DNA

properties, [BPP]. The project aims at better in-depth understanding the of these relations which will further lead to fundamental contributions in knot theory and group theory and their

various practical applications……………….

Active learning for automatic generation of narratives from numeric financial and supply chain data

One of the major responsibilities of financial and business analysts is to generate narrative reports summarizing business trends based on time series data. As it stands, this analysis is typically done manually, requiring analysts to pour over huge amounts of data looking to understand trends, and performing ad hoc analyses to establish relationships between data streams. As such, it is currently a high touch process and even with the many analysts currently employed, important trends can go undetected for long periods of time. As in other fields, a push toward automation has the potential to increase efficiency in the financial and business analysis sector, increasing the speed of analysis, decreasing error rates, and freeing analysts from low-level tasks to allow them to focus on high-level synthesis. One of the challenges in automating financial and business analysis tasks is that analysts tend to rely on years of experience and domain specific knowledge to achieve good results. Thus they rely on a “Gestalt” to lead their analysis, which is difficult to replicate using a pure rule-based system. TBC