Bidirectional Real-time Control of An Upper-limb Prosthetic Hand

The human hand is a sensation-rich body part, and the loss of hand significantly influences the quality of life. Prosthetics are designed as artificial limbs to replace or substitute the missing part. For providing a natural and intuitive perception of grasp or pressure, a bidirectional prosthetic hand should be able to detect action intentions and […]

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Sketch Input for Interactive Component Recognition on Mobile Devices

For both aircraft assembly and maintenance, mechanics need to quickly access information about parts and determine part numbers. Part numbers can be retrieved from 3D models of the aircraft but locating such models within an airplane is very difficult, particularly on small mobile devices. An additional complication is that the objects to be recognized are […]

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Evaluating Collaborative GIS for Marine Conservation Planning

The advent of interfacing with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) on multi-user touch tables presents an opportunity for greater involvement and collaboration in marine conservation planning. However, there is limited research on the effectiveness of collaborative GIS in small groups for Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) for conservation. The research focuses on two case studies in British […]

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Ships and Whales in Gitga’at Territory: Risks of whale-vessel interactions.

As whales recover from the past centuries of whaling and as global trade compels shipping traffic to increase, we expect negative whale-ship interactions such as fatal strikes and noise disturbance to become an increasingly serious issue. To develop cost-effective and broadly applicable methods of assessing the risks of ships to whale feeding grounds, I propose […]

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Improving avalanche forecasts in data-sparse areas with physical snowpack modelling

Assessing dangerous avalanche conditions requires a reliable stream of weather and snowpack data, which can be difficult and expensive to collect in many remote areas of Canada. Snowpack conditions can be simulated in these areas by coupling weather forecast models with physical snowpack models, however, this method has had limited adoption by avalanche forecasters. The […]

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Natural products for Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) pest management

Spotted Wing Drosophila is an aggressive invasive pest that is high research and management priority for the BC and Canadian berry and small fruit industry. Spotted Wing Drosophila can substantially reduce crop yields despite heavy uses of chemical insecticides, which in some cases can be harmful to the environment and human health. Botanical extracts from […]

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Fluoride Removal from Brine Solutions

NORAM Engineering and Constructors have a technology called salt splitting. This technology is used to produce caustic soda and sulfuric acid. However, the presence of fluoride in this technology can cause the breakdown of the coating on the titanium anode, which can cause premature anode failure. As replacing these titanium anodes can incur significant costs, […]

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Application of advanced analytics in PEM fuel cell development and engineering

This project is a collaboration between Triptech Engineering and Software Services LTD and Laboratory for Alternative Energy Conversion (LAEC) at SFU to develop data analytics solutions for PEM fuel cell industry. The fuel cell industry is suffering from component/system failure and coping with analysis of tremendous amounts of data. Knowledge extraction from this complex data […]

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Array Aspect Ratio Effect on Reversible Fibrillar Adhesion

Many small insects and creatures utilize reversible adhesion to vertically scale up walls and surfaces. The adhesion mechanisms are reliant on the tip geometry of highly dense fibrillar arrays as opposed to surface chemistry. The arrays can switch between high strength and completely non-adhering states. I will be investigating the role of array aspect ratio […]

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Interaction between cannabinoid drugs and sodium channels in diabetes/high glucose induced oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and neurotoxicity

Diabetes mellitus, a common metabolic disorder, exhibits neuropathic complications that can eventually lead to disabling pain (Todorovic 2015). This is attributed to hyperglycemia/high glucose resulting in neuronal hyperexcitability (Todorovic 2015). Importantly, diabetes-evoked neuronal hyperexcitability and neurotoxicity can be caused by alterations in voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) expression (Hong, Morrow et al. 2004), resulting in changes […]

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Interaction between cannabinoid drugs and sodium channels in diabetes/high glucose induced oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, and neurotoxicity – Year two

Diabetes mellitus, a common metabolic disorder, exhibits neuropathic complications that can eventually lead to disabling pain (Todorovic 2015). This is attributed to hyperglycemia/high glucose resulting in neuronal hyperexcitability (Todorovic 2015). Importantly, diabetes-evoked neuronal hyperexcitability and neurotoxicity can be caused by alterations in voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) expression (Hong, Morrow et al. 2004), resulting in changes […]

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