Rhodnius prolixus is a hemathophagous insect that has served for decades as a model to study insect physiology. Rhodnius prolixus is also a major vector of Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease that kills 45,000 people annually and affects over 8 million people worldwide. The genome of R. prolixus contains ~15,500 predicted protein-coding […]

High dimensional signals may arise in many fields of science. For example, biomedical signals such as EEG and EMG can be modeled by few latent processes measured by a large set of noisy sensors. In such applications the goal is to identify the latent intrinsic variables, which describe the true, intrinsic state of the system, […]

Local site conditions can strongly influence the amplitude and duration of ground motion during an earthquake. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze and understand the mechanical properties of soils. By testing the same samples with similar conditions in different devices we can obtain more accurate results for dynamic loading tests and imitate the stress history […]

Loss of skeletal muscle integrity arising from disease, injury, or genetic conditions is debilitating to human health and happiness. Efforts aimed at identifying drugs that improve skeletal muscle strength and form relies on assays of cells grown within two-dimensional culture dishes. While this format has served the community well for several decades, three-dimensional tissue models […]

Carbon dioxide, a green-house gas that contributes to global warming. It is overabundant and therefore inexpensive. Nowadays, there are many attempts to use carbon dioxide as carbon source in variety of products, such as plastic, foams, fuel etc., which will reduce its amount in atmosphere. However, for now most of these methodologies are not efficient […]

Reward is a common way to increase students’ learning motivation in traditional classroom learning. The traditional rewards, such as stamps and stickers, are usually symbolic and valueless to students and may not get students motivated. This project proposes an educational reward plug-in for massively open online course (MOOC) platform like Moodle and edX where students […]

There is a need for higher functioning prosthetic components available at a lower cost. The Niagara Foot™ is a low cost, high function energy return prosthetic device targeted towards developing regions. The system is comprised of keel and cover components developed through partnership of Niagara Prosthetics and Orthotics International (NPOI) and Queen’s University. A new […]

Globally, poverty is a continuing problem that is not easily resolved. 650 million people in India live below the poverty line. In the south of India in the rural region around the city of Mysore, half of women are illiterate, and lack equal opportunity of employment. Although research has been done on technological and financial […]

Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is a major cause of death worldwide (“WHO | The top 10 causes of death,” 2014). In Mexico, high incidence rates of diagnosed T2D (9.2%) and obesity (34.4%) pose a burden for the health system (Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica (INSP), 2012b). A national strategy for diabetes management, the Grupos de […]

Ce projet de recherche en linguistique, reposant sur une collaboration entre des chercheurs brésiliens et canadiens, visera à analyser la structure et le sens des constructions linguistiques qui servent à exprimer la localisation dans l’espace. Les langues qui seront principalement à l’étude sont le m?bengokre, le panará et le tapayuna, trois langues autochtones amazoniennes parlées […]

Depuis quelques années, des spécialistes de l’histoire du scepticisme ont remarqué que plusieurs thèmes de la philosophie de Hobbes semblent avoir été influencés par des arguments sceptiques, sans pour autant que cela fasse consensus. J’ai donc entrepris, dans le cadre de mes études doctorales en philosophie, de me pencher sur la question, et d’étudier les […]

Dans la nature, certaines plantes peuvent relâcher des substances biochimiques ayant des effets positifs ou négatifs sur d’autres organismes végétaux. Elles sont appelées substances allélochimiques. L’étude de leurs effets sur les semences de mauvaises herbes et d’organisme ciblés, dans un contexte d’agriculture urbaine, pourrait mener au développement d’un bioherbicide de faible toxicité. Ce projet a […]