Benzodiazepine and Opioids Use in Alberta

Opioids have received much attention in the media, public and government because of the risks associated with them, including fatalities. Concurrent use of BZRAs (benzodiazepines used for treating anxiety and insomnia) and opioids is of particular concern because this is a recognized risk factor for fatal opioid overdoses. Despite this warning, concurrent use is still […]

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Development of a human immortalized FSHD cell line to study the epigenetic targeting of DUX4 to treat FSHD

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is a debilitating disease resulting from the loss of skeletal muscles mainly in the face, shoulder blades and upper arms. FSHD results from expression of the protein DUX4 which causes skeletal muscle cell death and therefore loss of muscles. This project aims to immortalize isolated skeletal muscle cells from patients with […]

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Speech Localization and Recognition for Humanoid Robotics

Robots and other autonomous machines currently have limited sound awareness and speech recognition capabilities, which limits their ability to interact with humans. Applying insights from cognitive neuroscience provides novel ways to improve these interactions. The primary objective of this proposal is to implement an auditory AI for robotics that finds human talkers in the environment […]

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Air Quality Assessment for a chemical manufacturing plant.

Pollutants from various anthropogenic sources contaminate the environment which in tum affects the ambient air quality. When general population gets exposed to these contaminant through contaminated air they would have adverse health effects. The objective of the project is to perform air quality assessment for a chemical manufacturing plant, located in Alberta (exact location is […]

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Advancing Human Performance in the Canadian Football League

North American professional football players struggle with mental health challenges such as addiction and depression during and following their athletics careers. Despite the fact that these athletes value positive emotional, psychological, and social mental health, little is known about ways organisations can protect and promote these parts of athletes’ mental health. Therefore, the purpose of […]

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Autonomous structure detection and inspection using unmanned aerial systems

In this project, a new method is developed to optimize the performance of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for autonomous detection and on-the-job view-planning of infrastructure elements with the purpose of their accurate three-dimensional (3D) modeling. The existing view-planning approaches in the literature have mostly modeled non-complex or small-scale objects and have rarely been adapted […]

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CO2-EOR in Devonian Reefs of Alberta – Reservoir Characterization and Screening

Devonian reservoirs have contributed significantly to the development of the petroleum industry in Alberta. This is mainly due to their favourable characteristics of high permeability enhanced by dolomitization in these often reefal structures. Although many have had good recoveries, much oil remains to be recovered. Many of the same characteristics that led to good production […]

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Integer Factorization

This project lies in an area of mathematics called computational number theory. Specifically, we will be studying the topic of integer factorization. The idea is that all non-prime integers can be factored into a product of smaller integers. While this seems simple, it is computationally difficult and although various factoring algorithms attempt to solve the […]

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Calcium Supplements, Elemental Bioavailability, and Uptake by Bone

The goal of this Mitacs research proposal is to develop and apply experimental methodology capable of distinguishing the influence of calcium supplement dosage form upon elemental calcium uptake, plasma concentration and spatial distribution in the bone of laboratory rats. In order to achieve those endpoints, we plan to utilize the compound strontium ranelate, which serves […]

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Social Enterprise, Impact and Sustainability Using the Logic of Business Models

Social enterprise is an approach that applies business tactics to solving a social or environmental challenge. Social entrepreneurship can be found in any organizational setting: non-profit, business, and government. This Research Project is designed to study innovative social enterprises, with the goal of creating a taxonomy of business models in social entrepreneurship. Taxonomic information is […]

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Investigation into the potential of convenient EEG platforms in performing auditory attention detection

n noisy environments, normal hearing individuals demonstrate an ability to tune into a desired speaker while attenuating irrelevant background noise. Previous studies have shown that by analyzing brain wave data in the form of electroencephalography (EEG), and applying a technique called stimulus reconstruction technique, we can determine and even roughly reconstruct the attended speech. These […]

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Sernova’s Cell Pouch SystemTM: next-generation preclinical development and assessment of engraftment efficiency in clinical islet transplantation

Next generation preclinical development (caspase inhibitors, stem cell evaluation) and islet metabolic engraftment efficiency in a Phase I/II clinical study of the Cell Pouch™ for islet transplantation in Type 1 diabetes. (The Cell Pouch System™ is a proprietary non-biodegradable polymer device designed by biologists, scientists and engineers which unobtrusively fits under the skin, rapidly incorporating […]

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