Effects of Probiotics on Anxiety and Depression

Dr. Potter has recently begun exploring the impact that probiotics (beneficial bacteria found in some food sources such as probiotic yogurt and kefir) have on anxiety and depression. Other researchers have shown that probiotic bacteria exert a significant effect on anxiety and depression-like behaviours in animals. A few studies have extended these findings to humans. […]

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Hybrid Nanogenerator for Renewable Energy Harvesting from Ocean Waves

To harvest renewable energy from ocean waves, in this research we propose to study innovative triboelectric nanogenerators, a new type of energy harvesters especially good at converting small-scale mechanical motions into electricity. Although ocean wave energy is one of the most abundant and widely distributed renewable energy resources, it has not yet been extensively used […]

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Multi-Initiative and Latent Communications-Tolerant Controller for a Clean Uncrewed Surface Vehicle Tasked to Environmental Assessments

The outcome of the Project is an intelligent uncrewed surface vehicle or USV (free-swimming robot) that can deploy an underwater remotely operated vehicle or ROV (robot tethered to the surface vehicle) to survey and inspect the submerged infrastructure of offshore wind farms. Its advantages to Canada include its much smaller carbon footprint compared to the […]

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Using AI to Improve the Understanding and Diagnosis of Bipolar Neuroprogression

Traditionally, research into brain diseases has mainly focused on neurons. However, in recent decades, the brain’s blood vessels have taken a new spotlight. It is now known that when these blood vessels are damaged, potentially harmful substances can leak from the blood into the brain. In this project, I will study the role of leaky […]

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Transcriptomic responses of in ovo delivered bioactive substances in heat stressed broiler chickens

Heat stress causes significant economic losses to the poultry industry. Several bioactive substances have reported heat stressmitigative properties. However, the conventional routes of bioactive substance delivery, i.e., via the feed or water, limit their efficacy. Delivering these substances via the in ovo route might help overcome the limitations of the conventional delivery routes. This delivery […]

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ANS LAB

Over the past 30 years, there has been no statistical change in the gap between the unemployment rates of African Nova Scotians and the provincial average. Despite multiple interventions and a wide range of educational and employment supports, African Nova Scotian (ANS) unemployment rates continue to be disproportionately higher than the provincial average. In early […]

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Advanced Grazing Systems: Understanding farmer motivations, learning and adoption for scaling up carbon-smart livestock production

High-skill clean-tech, such as adaptive grazing (AG), has the potential to both increase soil carbon sequestration and assist producers in developing more sustainable operations. This research aims to address these gaps through a multi-year analysis of a peer-mentor AG training program. Working in combination with the NGO Seed Change we propose to conduct a mixed-methods […]

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Improving sheep production efficiency by genomics and metabolomics blood biomarkers of feed efficiency and subclinical parasite infection

This proposal is devoted to two areas of sheep production: animal health (parasitic infection) and feed efficiency, which both areas are economically important and make a substantial impact on the profitability and sustainability of the enterprise. We will investigate to find potential biomarkers that could be indicator of parasite resistance and/or feed efficiency and could […]

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Hardware-in-the-loop software for modeling autonomous sailboat performance

The objective of this project is to develop a hardware in-the-loop sailboat model software that can represent the sailboat’s performance during its mission. At its core, the controller will be programmed on an embedded processor, and will communicate with all of the sailboat’s sub-systems that can be modelled in software. First, to represent the sensor […]

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Youth Engagement Project

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, maintaining high levels of student engagement was a difficult task for JA. March break 2020 heralded the most sudden of changes in the span of a few days, putting an end to traditional face-to-face tutoring and in-person events and activities, and heralding remote synchronous and asynchronous digital teaching and learning experiences. […]

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Improvement of web-based Human Machine Interface (HMI) for enhanced user interaction experience with novel glaucoma detection devices

Diagnosis of glaucoma during the early stages is critical to prevent permanent structural damage and irreversible vision loss. Glaucoma is typically detected through an examination of structural damage to the optic nerve combined with measurements of visual function. This research project aims to focus on the development of an enhanced graphical user interface to perform, […]

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