Secondary forest permanence in the Brazilian Amazon

To avoid dangerous climate change, large quantities of carbon dioxide must be removed from the atmosphere. Forest growth is one of the most efficient strategies for achieving this, with tropical secondary forest key to recovering carbon stocks. The carbon benefit of secondary forest, which grows on cleared land following abandonment, is determined not only by […]

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Predicting life history traits for data-poor ray species

Fisheries are the main global threat to elasmobranchs (sharks and rays). Elasmobranchs commonly display conservative life history traits (slow growth, long life, late sexual maturity and low fecundity), making them extremely vulnerable to non-natural mortalities. However, there is significant variation, with some species exhibiting life history traits more resilient to exploitation. In order to assess […]

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Social Media and Canadian Women’s Physical Activity Participation: Developing a New Methodology for Understanding Digital Health

The proposed research will explore how Canadian women’s interactions with health and fitness content on Instagram impacts upon physical activity participation. This research is sorely needed because, while social media is increasingly pertinent to the formation of everyday health practices, this dimension is seldom explored. In addition, this project will pilot a novel method, developed […]

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Chemical and biological characterization of the non-tetrahydrocannabinoid profiles of medicinal plants

We propose to perform detailed studies that characterize chemically and biologically and the unaltered ancestral plant species of the Cannabis genus. Chemically, these studies will provide the chemotype profiles for each parental species for a spectrum of non-tetrahydrocannabinoid compounds. Biologically, these studies will provide the pharmacological profiles for each parental species. These data will enable […]

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Safe and Effective Enclosure for Electric Baseboard Heaters

Vent & Cover wants to develop in conjunction with UBC and UWO, an enclosure that can slip over electric baseboard heaters and create a safe-to-touch exterior while still allowing the heater to heat the room safely and effectively. The project will have 2 major components, the first of which is to develop an efficient thermal […]

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Automobile Purchasing Behaviorial Data Collection, Management, and Analysis

This project investigates automobile purchasing behavior of female millennials. In order to achieve the goal of understanding and making use of purchasing behavior, data are to be collected, managed, and analyzed. In addition to using existing data and third-party data, two major tasks of data collection are the use of questionnaire and web crawling to […]

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Mobile Health Application Validity and Efficacy Study

The first MITACS internship for this project focused on design of the “Be Kalm” Anxiety App. The second internship will focus on the programming, implementation, and evaluation of the resulting design. The App will combine several interactive methods of diffusing anxiety with the use of images, music and heart rate monitoring. The HeartBeats music player […]

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Research into Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) Explainability

Machine Learning is advancing at an astounding rate. It is powered by complex models such as deep neural networks (DNNs). These models have a wide range of real-world applications, in fields like Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval and others. But Machine Learning is not without some serious limitations and drawbacks. The most serious […]

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Translation for educational change: Translator identity and the Global Storybooks project

Our research seeks to better understand challenges that translators encounter in translating stories for the diverse sites on the Global Storybooks portal (https://globalstorybooks.net/), and how they resolve these challenges. We will draw on our existing database of translation data to investigate how translators draw on a range of linguistic resources to achieve a satisfactory representation […]

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Orpheus VR – Exploring Intersections of Narrative and Sound in Virtual Reality

OrpheusVR is a new operatic experience that immerses audiences in a virtual, mythical world and allows them to have agency over the outcome of the narrative as well as the music and orchestration that drive the storytelling. The experience uses interactive sound to enable creative gameplay that will guide audiences through a fresh new take […]

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Systematic Conservation Planning in Tsay Keh Dene Territory: Incorporating Climate Change and Bridging Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Systematic Conservation Planning (SCP) is the idea that the practice of protecting lands should be examined on a broad scale and be holistic in nature. Available areas of land with conservation potential should be examined critically for whether they fit into a larger ecological network – either as a link between existing protected areas, or […]

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