Fundamental questions remain on how polar oceans will respond to climate change and how rapidly changes will occur. Based on observations made from satellite, there is growing evidence that ocean and sea ice interact at scales on the order of a few tens of kilometers, the mesoscale. However, it is not clear how exactly the […]

Peatlands act as vast carbon (C) reservoirs by regulating decomposition over millennia. Considerable changes due to anthropogenic activities such as peat extraction have shifted long-term C sink to atmospheric C source. Previously, bioengineering tools as rewetting were used to reverse post-extracted peatland hydro-physical properties, and phenolic addition was used on small scale to test the […]

Aerosol particles and their interactions with clouds are one of the largest sources of uncertainty in global climate change. Many aerosols that activate into cloud droplets form from gas-phase reactions of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs). Surfactants are a special class of compounds in aerosol particles which partition to the surface of a particle or an […]

Long-lived animals, including seabirds, must balance investment in current reproduction with investment towards survival and future reproduction to maximize their lifetime fitness. Breeding is a critical stage in birds annual life cycle and requires high energy expenditure. Increased reproductive effort in the current year can therefore lead to costs that will have downstream consequences into […]

While we have been able to learn a great deal about the early moments after the Big Bang from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, most of the universe remains unexplored. In particular, the cosmic Dark Ages, a time before any stars or galaxies existed, remains a mystery. This is a time when the cosmos was […]

This proposal uses advanced techniques in sound recording and analysis, statistics, and scientific computing to measure how echolocating bats adjust signal strength and the spatial geometry of their sonar beam to aid in auditory perception. A second but related project will compare vocalizations of young bats at different developmental stages and measure developmental changes in […]

The human brain can be subdivided into structural regions based on the organization of neuronal cells. To identify these regions, postmortem human brains are cut into thin histological slices, scanned using light-microscopic scanners, and analyzed by neuroscientists. However, established analysis methods are time and labour intensive and do not scale to the large amounts of […]

In our project, we plan to improve the interfacial properties between metallic Li anodes and garnet-based Li7La3Zr2O12 (LLZ) electrolyte. The approach is to use coating techniques such as chemical and physical vapor deposition (CVD/PVD), and atomic layer deposition (ALD) to deposit a thin protection layer on a dense LLZ separator which is co-sintered with a […]

As more and more people record their lives and actions in Social Media, it has become an invaluable resource for the study of society’s opinions and sentiment. From individual life events (e.g., someone’s purchase of a digital camera) to collective events of major societal impact (e.g., the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic), social media has […]

Cancer poses a large and growing impact on the Canadian population and health care system. Developing technologies for accurate diagnosis of cancer in the early stage will decrease cancer mortality rates. Specific and sensitive detection of cancer biomarkers for point-of-care diagnostics applications has been a challenging goal for a long time in clinical diagnostics for […]

The project involves modifying silicone with phenolic antioxidant as an agent that will enable the ability for the silicone to be used as a dielectric for elastomer actuators which have biomedical devices and soft robotics applications. The outcome of the project would be the discovery of new sustainable way to synthesize dielectric elastomer with green […]

The Apricot Seed Wasp Eurytoma samsonowi Vasiljev (1915) (Hymenoptera: Eurytomidae) is a phytophagous parasitic wasp species associated with stone fruits, detected first in the oases of Gafsa southwest of Tunisia. It causes high infestation on apricot to reach up to 76% as yield loss rate. Among control methods, mass trapping with sex pheromones is considered […]