In order to maintain safe and efficient operations, railway systems periodically use large, special purpose, trackbound grinding machines to re-establish the desired profiles of rails, and to remove surface damage that has occurred under operating conditions. The accuracy of the grinding process is typically measured using quality indices to compare the resulting rail profile to […]

Our abdomen can contract in order to help us breath. Restricting our abdomen has previously shown to reduce the function of our lungs at rest, and change the way we breath during exercise. Women’s athletic apparel has trended towards high-waisted, lower body garments. A high-waisted band, although not as severe as abdominal strapping, can apply […]

Women use sports bras to reduce the breast movement and discomfort during exercise. In order to provide support, sports bras have a tight fit, adding pressure to rib cage. Pressure applied to the rib cage via a sports bra, can provide resistance during inspiration, and increasing the effort and work required to breath. The purpose […]

International legislation and growing environmental issues have imposed a lot of pressure on companies and manufacturers to maximize the recycling systems. Such demands have had significant consequences for the plastic industries to use recycled plastics from the disposed plastic wastes. Therefore, this study is an initiative taken by the Nanomaterials and Polymer Nanocomposites Laboratory (NPNL) […]

We will build a prototype system that can be used to predict the outcome of treatments for congestive heart failure given a patient’s personal health record or electronic medical record. This will be based on building a relational probabilistic model that is based on standard medical ontologies, initially on expert knowledge, and can make predictions […]

There is a health crisis in Canada where substance abuse and addiction disorders have been growing out of control, resulting in the death of 19,355 Canadians from 2016 to 2020. Researchers describe the crisis to be getting worse in that opioid-related deaths tripled from 2000 to 2015 in Ontario, Canada and increased by 120% since […]

Soil contamination by petroleum and other heavy hydrocarbons is a major environmental concern. One way to address it is the in situ thermal remediation technology: the contaminated soil is heated up with an array of large heating devices, thus accelerating evaporation of the contaminants and cleaning the soil in a matter of months. The goal […]

Transportation is now recognized as a social determinant of health. And yet the current transportation system is not set up to meet the day-to-day needs of the aging population. Within the next decade, a quarter of the population in BC will be over the age of 65. As the population ages, a decline in cognitive […]

Most of the cost of a product is determined by its design. Among current design theories and methods, there lacks a formal design method to support the design of a product that can be used as two or more products, an example of which is a sofa bed. Design for Versatility (DFV), as a design […]

The Canadian Government offers many forms of support to start-up businesses and entrepreneurs. However there is no single, easily accessible source of information available to entrepreneurs to be able to determine which funding programs they are eligible for and which programs fit closest to their business. This research, in conjunction with Twothirds Water Inc. and […]

The proposed research project will aim to measure the reliability of changes in brain activity induced by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). rTMS is a non-invasive therapy that has been used to evoke changes in local and network-level brain activity in various clinical populations, including stroke and depression. The proposed project will test rTMS effectiveness […]

Innovation in health-science companies goes hand in hand with uncertainties that may lead to product failures. Failures may offer opportunities to learn valuable lessons to improve organizational practices. However, firms may fail to learn because business leaders may regard these failures as threats to their personal reputation and professional image and try to justify these […]