Research into brain diseases has until recently focused on neurons, but in the last several decades, blood vessels have taken a new spotlight. When blood vessels are damaged, substances can leak from the blood into the brain. Such leak can affect memory and mental health, but surprisingly, its impact on psychiatric disorders has yet to […]

The aim of this pilot project is to develop a shoreline map to define coastal areas with different likelihood of accumulating beach litter. This will be done by collecting information at selected locations and, using readily available digital georeferenced information of the coastline, developing a model that allows the prediction of the accumulation likelihood along […]

Each day several email messages containing respiratory care topics, issues, and latest treatments are exchanged within the Respiratory Therapy community. Effective exploration and visualization of informal knowledge in these email threads and combining them with the scientific articles published in the Canadian Journal of Respiratory Therapy (CJRT) has the potential to inform future respiratory care […]

The heart is an electrically driven pump. A major cause of death world-wide is a disturbance of the heart’s electrical activity (arrhythmias) due to a reduced blood supply (ischemia). We have shown that stretch of the heart during ischemia triggers deadly arrhythmias, which may be caused by changes in cellular processes. This project will discover […]

RACK1 is a host protein that participates in important cellular processes, such as cytoskeleton stability and autophagy degradation. Bacteria can manipulate these processes to establish intracellular infection. In preliminary experiments, I found that RACK1 depletion in host cells led to altered infectivity of the food-borne pathogens Shigella and Listeria. Thus, the objective of this project […]

In this project, a pre-conditioning system to remove the oxygen prior to reaching a bioelectrode system sensor will be developed and tested. Bioelectrode system sensors require anoxic conditions for operation, and a low complexity solution would extend use cases of the technology. Bioelectrode system sensors measures the microbial activity of bacteria and the data can […]

Cutting edge techniques in artificial intelligence will be applied to extract semantic information from natural language and work towards building a system that can help engineers write clearer and less ambiguous requirements for complex systems. Models will be developed that are similar to current techniques used by popular translation tools, and will be adapted for […]

The necessity of cost-efficient and reliable wastewater treatment processes has increased in order to meet more stringent levels of environmental regulations, increased system reliability requirements and tightening operational budgets. To aid in meeting these operational goals, a strong market for low-cost, high-fidelity sensor technology that can relay real-time information to system operators on all aspects […]

An estimated 15% of Canadian children have dyslexia, which limits their ability to reach their full potential as productive members of society. Over the past 20 years, Halifax Learning Centre (HLC) has developed and successfully delivered their SpellRead program to thousands of clients, and has seen very positive outcomes. As HLC looks to deploy this […]

This project will develop a novel sensor based gesture controlling system aiming at significantly improving game player’s satisfaction via realistic playing engagement/experience. With such interface technology, the player can control the game directly via his/her natural gestures and body movements which are translated into game interface parameters in real time. The objectives of this project […]

The proposed research builds on our previous work, for which an internship was awarded. The objectives of this main phase of our investigation conists of several numerical and experimental tasks with the main aim of establishing long-term performance of pre-stressed fiber-reinforced system (Tenlam), and the glulam beams reinforced with the system. Moreover, the aim is […]

To meet the targets set out in Nova Scotia’s Renewable Electricity Plan (REP) on April 2010, the province is establishing a Community Feed-In-Tariffs (COMFIT) program, which sets out to encourage communities to develop renewable energy projects. The REP stipulates that 100 megawatts of renewable electricity projects are to be supplied through COMFIT. The proposed research […]