Projets novateurs réalisés

An Investigation into Determining the Source of Elevated Metals in Seepage at Mount Polley Mine

After identifying elevated metal concentrations in two seepages from a waste rock pile at Mount Polley Mine, an investigation was launched to determine the potential source as well as the implications for potential treatment. Evidence points to a previously unidentified source of acid mobilizing metals from the waste rock pile and being neutralized along the way, before daylighting at the base of the pile. The most likely source that was identified was a sulphur pile, which was stockpiled on site as a source of acid for leach pad research. Acidic drainage from the sulphur pile has been confirmed and there was evidence that this acid had breached its containment. Rock samples from under the sulphur pile were collected and determined to have been altered by acid generated from the sulphur pile. A geochemical model will be built and possible treatment options will be recommended to Mount Polley Mining Corporation.

Ultrasound Device for Superficial Targets

This project intents to design and build a prototype for a device that uses low-intensity ultrasound for localized treatment of malignant skin cells. The industrial partner is interested on evaluate the performance of a current cosmetic device and the feasibility to use a device with similar characteristics to treat malignancy. We propose to first characterize this existing device to determine the conditions of operation, then evaluate the biological effects that are expected for those conditions. We will then design a prototype device that can maximize the effects and test this prototype on live cells comparing malignant vs. normal skin cells. TO BE CONT’D

The exosome-mediated role of plasma gelsolin in modulating macrophage functions in chemoresistant ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer (OVCA) causes more death than any female cancer in the world. Although patients respond to treatment initially, 70% of them relapse and do not succumb to treatment. Up-to-date, there is no established treatment for such patients. There is therefore the need to investigate the tumor microenvironment for novel targets to enhance treatment. Although immune cells help to kill cancer cells, there is a population (M2 macrophage) that produces soluble factors to enhance tumor growth and chemo-resistance. We have previously shown that OVCA patients that do not respond to treatment produce increased levels of a protein, plasma gelsolin (pGSN). Although we have shown that this pGSN kills tumor-killing immune cells, we have yet to demonstrate whether pGSN enhances the functions of M2 macrophage. Investigating if and how pGSN enhances the functions of M2 macrophage will lead to novel targets that could be exploited to enhance patient survival.

Light-Activated LiYF4 Microrotors for Temperature Sensing

In March of 2018, the Jaque Group of the Autonomous University of Madrid reported for the first time the development of lightactivated, remote-controlled microrotors for potential applications in temperature sensing, i.e., microparticles exhibiting rotational motion upon irradiation with near-infrared light, from which the temperature of a liquid medium can be inferred. This novelty opens the door to a new generation of temperature sensors with unprecedented thermal accuracy and is of great interest to biomedical applications such as photothermal cancer therapy. The herein proposed research project seeks to expand the scope of materials with this capacity by exploring the effect of microparticle shape and chemical composition on its efficacy as a temperature sensor. This will be accomplished by applying our newly developed synthesis approach towards bipyramidal-shaped LiYF4 microparticles with ranging lanthanide ion concentrations, followed by assessing their temperature-sensing efficacy with the help of highly-specialised instrumental infrastructure provided by the Jaque Group.

Evaluating Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network simulator by Termite

Plant monitoring by sensor devices and cameras contributes to having better environmental conditions for plant growth, irrigation, and productivity. However, transmitting the plant images or sensor data packets in a wide farm is not available over a pre-existing infrastructure network. A Delay Tolerant Network, which may be composed of human-centric devices (also known as a Pocket0-Switched Network) can transfer messages from farms to analysis centres via wireless technologies of devices. Selecting the appropriate device in each step can have effects on the performance of routing. Di?erent studies provide ideas for increasing the performance of DTNs. However, it is difficult to compare the performance of various routing algorithms, because they are designed for different scenarios and with different encounter patterns. To address the mentioned challenge of DTNs, PYDTN has been proposed to implement various algorithms of DTN in a single framework. Termite is an emulation testbed for encounter networks and can determine the topology evolution of the encounter network. Thus, PYDTN can use Termite to have a dataset of encounter network and evaluate different algorithms. Evaluating the simulator with realistic dataset before implementing them in farms can reduce the implementation cost and increase the performance of routing algorithms.

Advanced Diagnostics in Plasma Assisted Combustion

Due to its effect on the climate and the environment, combustion of fossil fuels has become an important concern for power generation gas turbines and aeronautical engines. Increasingly rigorous emissions restrictions on polluting species such as NOx have led these industries to develop lean combustors. This technology allows the flame to burn at a lower temperature and leads to lower emission of NOx molecules. However, lean burn engines suffer from flame instability and lean blown-out. This requires the development of new methods to achieve stable lean combustion and to delay the lean-blowout limit. One possible way to improve flame reactivity is Plasma Assisted Combustion (PAC). The basic mechanism of PAC consists of delivering a pool of reactive species to the flame front which promotes faster reaction pathways bypassing other slower combustion chemical reactions. Adding a relatively small amount of electric energy to a flame results in important improvement of the laminar flame speed and flame stability. However, the fundamental mechanisms leading to combustion enhancement using PAC are still not well understood and require advanced diagnostics in well controlled experiments in order to quantify the effect of the key parameters leading to the reported enhancement. TO BE CONT’D

Non Linear optical studies of diamine based hybrid perovskites

Developing energy efficient materials for new age technology is an area of extreme interest in academics as well industries. Hybrid perovskites are have proved to be rapidly growing to be promising materials in the field of solar cells with efficiencies reaching 23%. The versatile nature, simple synthesis route, tunability, dimensionality effects and other interesting features entice these materials in synthetic manipulation of robust materials. Applications in variety of fields such as solar energy harvesting, energy storage devices such as batteries, optoelectronic devices such as solid state lighting (LEDs), field effect transistors (FETs) and many others have been explored in bulk as well as nanoparticles. Non-linear optical (NLO) properties are important in terms of optical devices such as LASERS and optical information processing and storage. The use of hybrid perovskites in NLO based optical memory storage are yet to explored in depth. This project is based on exploring the NLO properties of diamine based non-centrosymmetric hybrid perovskite single crystals. Diamine based cations would be used to control the non-linearity in hybrid perovskite single crystals which has not been in literature thus far. TO BE CONT’D

Realisation d’un vaccin sous-unitaire contre les infections a Salmonella et a Streptococcussuis chez Ie porco

Le stagiaire participera a la mise au point d’un vaccin sous-unitaire, a administration orale,

contre deux pathogimes d’importance pour la filiere porcine canadienne, a savoir Salmonella

el Streptococcus suis. II s’agit d’un vaecin utilisant des p rol!~ ines recombinantes

immunogenes encapsulees dans des microspheres polymeriques, permeltant un relargage

progressif des protE~ in es au niveau mucosal.

Le stagiaire participera a la production et a la purification de proteines recombinantes, qui

seronl ensuile encapsulees dans un polymere (de Iype PLGA). Les diverses formulalions

(proleine(s)/polymere) seronl ensuile leslees dans leur capacite a acliver des ceilules

dendriliques porcines – cel1ules cle de la reponse immunitaire – dans un modele in vitro.

Le potentiel immunoprotecteur du vaccin Ie plus prometteur sera ensuite evalue en

experimentation animale au niveau de la reduction du taux d’animaux porteurs de

Salmonella, et au niveau de la protection contre les infections a S. suis, reduisant par Ie fait

merne les risques zoonotiques associes…………………

Studying mispronunciations in accented speech

This project will investigate the impact of foreign accent on native listener’s semantic processing in Spanish. As such, participants will listen to Spanish words that are produced by native Spanish speakers or native Chinese speakers. Stimuli will include commonly mispronounced words in Spanish (e.g. pelo, ‘hair’) and words that are non-commonly mispronounced in Spanish (e.g. pena, ‘pity’). The commonly mispronounced words will involve mispronunciations on the alveolar sounds /r/ and /l/, phonemes that are restricted in Mandarin Chinese. While participants listen to the stimuli, their neural reactions will be measured via the EventRelated Potentials technique, a temporally reliable brain imaging technique. We anticipate that all mispronunciations will lead to an increased difficulty with semantic integration (indexed by an increased negativity in the neural activity, 400ms post-stimulus) when they are produced by a native Spanish speaker. In contrast, for stimuli produced by a native Chinese speaker, we anticipate that only non-commonly mispronounced words will lead to this same effect.

A comprehensive kinetic model for diffusion-controlled diacrylate photocuring

In this internship, mathematics will be used to predict chemical changes in materials that are deposited on paper during high-speed printing. These changes result from light-induced photocuring of acrylate and diacrylate monomers, converting liquid monomers deposited on the paper into a solid polymer matrix. In previous mathematical models, unrealistic simplifying assumptions were made concerning the photocuring chemistry, which neglected the influence reactions involving oxygen from the surrounding air. In the proposed modeling work, additional chemical reactions (including reactions with oxygen) will be considered so that model predictions will be more reliable. At the end of this internship, we will be able to predict the properties of the polymer materials more precisely, resulting in a better understanding of the final polymer film. The proposed mathematical model will be used to simulate new types of printer operation that may lead to improvements in high-speed, high-quality printer operation.

Determination of quality changes in freeze-dried pet food products during atmospheric cold plasma treatment

Champion Pet Foods is a prominent pet food manufacturer in Canada. They manufacture high-end high quality dry pet food products. They are interested to use new processing technologies to eliminate the harmful bacteria from their products without damaging their quality. At University of Alberta, we are testing the effectiveness of new technologies such as atmospheric cold plasma to eliminate harmful bacteria from food products. As consumers do not like low quality foods, it is important to understand the quality changes in foods during processing of foods using new technologies. This project aims to study the effect on quality of dry pet food products when processed with atmospheric cold plasma, which is an advanced food processing technology. As part of the quality analysis, we will monitor the fat oxidation, color and hardness of dry meat based pet food products after atmospheric cold plasma treatment.

Enzymatic approaches to add value to underutilized marine

Using simplified language understandable to a layperson, provide a general, one-paragraph description of the proposed research project to be undertaken by the student(s) as well as the expected outcomes. (Approx. 150 words) Seaweeds have been used traditionally as food, medicines, fodder and fertilizers since time immemorial. Dulse (Palmaria palmata), an edible red alga is widely distributed in cold waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is harvested and historically consumed in the costal areas of Canada (east coast). The chemical composition and nutrition value of dulse has been studied, from which it has been suggested that dulse has great potential to be further processed into value-added products. Although dulse contains various nutritious and bioactive components, the high degree of structural complexity and rigidity of its cell walls prevents the release of those intracellular constituents during digestion in the human gastrointestinal tract. Enzymatic processing can degrade cell walls and break down polysaccharides and proteins into oligosaccharides and peptides with bioactivity. This project will study on the effects of enzymatic treatments on the bioavailability of other bioactive compounds of dulse; besides, a comprehensive in vitro study on bioactivity, and ability to remove heavy metals will be investigated