Innovative Projects Realized

Role of nocturnal fluid redistribution in the pathogenesis of sleep apnea Year One

Sleep apnea is a common respiratory disorder among heart failure (HF) patients where it increases the mortality risk. Therefore, it is important to develop new treatments for sleep apnea. We have proposed that fluid which is accumulated in the legs during day moves towards the head when lying down to sleep and accumulates in the neck or lung; which could be a major contributor to the development of sleep apnea in HF patients. Therefore, we aim to determine whether: 1) the relative degree of fluid shift into the neck and lungs at night is associated with the severity of sleep apnea; 2) the respiratory sounds recorded from the neck and lungs can be used to estimate the amount of nocturnal fluid accumulated in the neck or lungs. If so, a new approach for the therapy of sleep apnea would be to prevent fluid accumulation in the legs during the day.

TMI Television Development Intern

Tyson Media Inc. (TMI) is an award-winning Television Production company based out of Vancouver, British Columbia. producing content for Netflix, Amazon Video, OutTV, and Discovery Channel, among others. An integral part (and key challenge) of the industry is the development of innovative and new programming concepts/shows. Together with Capilano University, TMI will recruit students to work alongside its development team and producers to research, plan and create new and compelling content/programming for the 2023/24 season.

Charitable Gaming Platform Innovation and Enhancements

Charitable Gaming Platform Innovation and Enhancements
The Lotto Factory was established in 2018 and has developed, tested, and deployed an online gaming platform for the charitable and not-for-profit sectors. This initial version of the platform has been adopted by more than 150 charitable and not-for-profit organizations allowing them to raise much-needed unrestricted funds online. Our platform has gained market acceptance and validation while also attracting the interest of competitors expressing their interest in purchasing or licensing our technology.
We have recently concluded the need to pivot as an organization and develop new and innovative products and processes to meet market demand while also meeting provincial jurisdictional requirements. It is worth noting there are just under 85,000 registered charities in Canada as well as a greater number of bonafide not-for-profit community-based organizations which could benefit from our platform.
These new and innovative products and platform enhancements have been identified and suggested/provided primarily by clients and/or regulators over the past three years. Each enhancement or new product will require a detailed scope of work through which to identify the processes and technical problems which the interns will need to develop and/or solve.
The interns will assist in the development of new processes and the creation of innovative products which will be beneficial to charitable and not-for-profit organizations.

Investigation of Plant Volatiles on Grapes and Wine

Grapes will be exposed to volatiles from plants to investigate if the sensory profile of wine made from those grapes can be improved. The volatiles from forest fire smoke can get into grapes and negatively affect the sensory profile of wines, which is referred to as smoke taint. Grapes are most susceptible to smoke taint during their ripening stage, or veraison. Using this logic, the grapes will be subjected to plant volatiles during veraison. Additionally, grapes exposed to smoke will be compared with those not exposed to smoke by using metabolomics, which is the study of small molecules within cells and tissue. This will help scientists better understand the pathways and interactions of smoke taint compounds in the grapes. The project will require the development of new methods to quantify the terpenes in wine and to better understand the smoke taint compounds.

Preliminary study to measure the physiological mechanism of the BPRelief band at lowering high blood pressure in humans.

Hypertension is a cardiovascular condition that leads to 8.5 million deaths per year around the world and is linked to a higher risk of stroke and kidney failure. Hypertension is defined by a higher-than-normal force the blood pushes on blood vessel walls in between each heart pump. Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years to control for high blood pressure. WAT Medical Enterprise Inc. is a Canadian company that developed a wrist band (BPRelief) that stimulates acupuncture points to decrease high blood pressure. For this project, a cold pressor test triggers a temporary increase in blood pressure to see if the BPRelief band can decrease it. If the BPRelief band can decrease the increase in blood pressure during the cold pressor test, this study would serve as a proof of concept for the BPRelief and lead to projects in participants who live with high blood pressure.

A semantic-based packet forwarding model for SDN

Software designed Networks (SDN), in particular OpenFlow and FORCES, encourage the writing of network protocols and policies as programs with the stated goal to make those programs ever more expressive, more predictable, more evolvable and more usable. Within the OpenFlow initiative, the level of programmability is expressed in a set of policy rules that are distributed over a set of matchfield tables. The rules are expressed as matchfields and actions whereby the matchfields require searching over a 14-tuple structure. This is the main bottleneck issue for flow packet processing.

Développement de stratégies de gestion de la reprise après pannes

Suite à une panne du réseau électrique, les principaux équipements des ménages voient leur consommation énergétique s’accroître pour combler le déficit accumulé pendant la panne. Par exemple, les équipements de chauffage et climatisation s’activeront à pleine capacité jusqu’au rétablissement des températures de consigne. Il en résulte, au niveau du réseau de distribution, en une demande supérieure à celle normalement rencontrée en période de pointe. C’est donc la puissance en période de reprise qui est utilisée aux fins du dimensionnement du réseau de distribution. Si on limitait la puissance associée à la reprise, on pourrait réduire les besoins d’investissements qui seront associés à l’accroissement général de la demande en électricité, qui sera substantielle si on veut atteindre les objectifs de décarbonation de l’économie.
Ce projet vise l’élaboration de stratégies de contrôle qui permettraient de réduire la demande en électricité de certains équipements des ménages suite à une panne d’alimentation électrique.

Determination of antioxidant profiles of haskap berries using Raman spectroscopy

In Canada, haskap berries are gaining increasing popularity due to their health benefits. The health-promoting effects of haskap berries are primarily attributed to the antioxidants in the fruits, especially anthocyanins, phenolic acids, and vitamin C. Since the quality of haskap berries largely depends on their antioxidant levels, it is of great importance for the berry industry to develop rapid detection methods to evaluate the antioxidant capacity of fresh haskap berry products. The aim of this project is to evaluate the antioxidant capacity of different varieties of haskap berries grown in Canada by using chemical-based antioxidant assays, and to develop a Raman spectroscopic method for rapid detection of antioxidant capacity of fresh haskap berries. This project will eventually provide a practical approach for the food industry to rapidly determine the antioxidant-rich haskap berries.

Provincial Health Authority: Organizational Transition

There are no shortage of news stories concerning the challenges in the healthcare system. These include covid impacts, financial challenges, human resource challenges related to recruitment, burnout and retention, as well as the need for the system to operate more efficiently (see https://www.cma.ca/news-releases-and-statements/canadas-health-system-life-support-health-workers-call-urgent ; https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/our-current-health-care-disaster-could-have-been-averted/ ). Provinces often devote up to 40% of their budgets to healthcare with NL spending an just under $10,000 per person on health care. (see https://vocm.com/2021/11/04/province-5-billion-health-care/ ).
The provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador formally launched the creation of a Provincial Health Authority in the spring of 2022 and appointed a transitional provincial CEO (David Diamond) on June 1, 2022 to lead the creation of the same with a timeline of 10 to 18 months (see https://www.gov.nl.ca/releases/2022/health/0425n01/). As noted in the press release announcing the new authority, key challenges facing the new authority include to “reimagine healthcare” in such as way as to “create more consistency in health care throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as avoid duplication in associated corporate services such as human resources, payroll and finance.“ (see https://www.gov.nl.ca/releases/2022/health/0425n01/).

iSpine: A Innovative Spine Image ProcessingToolkit

A versatile spine modeling toolkit would enable the automatic assessment of gross anomalies and the evaluation of limited regions and spine components such as vertebra and discs. The system would consist of modules for: 1) segmenting the spine; 2) modeling spinal components; 3) detecting, assessing and analyzing salient features; and 4) generating information for medical diagnosis, patient reporting and clinical management. Despite a clear need for a versatile spine assessment toolkit, none is commercially available today. Some components of the proposed toolkit have been researched by our group in the past, but have neither been fully developed for cross-platform application nor made robust enough for clinical use. The major novelty of this project is creating the application software. Other novelties include adapting algorithms and code so that the component modules handle CT and MR images, deriving a set of validation metrics for a cross-platform application, designing the shell program, developing the test protocols, creating a feature set and distilling information that could be used for patient management and clinical decision-making.

Formal Adoption of Agile Methodology

First Canadian Financial Group (FCFG) provides services and products to automotive and recreational vehicle dealers across Canada. First Canadian Insurance Corporation is a life company providing creditor group products on vehicle loans. Millennium Insurance Corporation is a property and casualty company offering after-market warranties, protection products and agreements, and total loss assistance on financed vehicles.

Our strategic objective to leverage technology has resulted in more changes that require testing and complex specifications. We continually enhance or introduce products and programs to meet the changing demands of the dealer while improving the sales experience. Our role also includes a need for reporting and statistics. As such, FCFG is continually making changes which require development and testing for the dealer portal and our administration teams to manage. We are building a team of Business Analysts for documenting processes, developing specifications including use cases and quality assurance.

Optimizing a Dissolved Air Flotation Pilot Plant amid Changing Source Water

The impacts of climate change on source and receiving water quality are estimated to be profound. Climate change adaptation requires an anticipatory reaction across the water community to address design approaches to manage water quality and treatment costs into the future. The consideration of climate change in design is only recently gaining the attention of the water and community. Evolving source water risks, ongoing process challenges, and age/reliability of key process components have created an elevated risk of process failure, evidenced by quantity or quality of water that can be produced. For that reason, we have established a collaborative team of researchers and strong partnerships with CBCL Limited and Halifax Water to work with on improving water quality under climate change pressures through advancing science and technology. Our team will work with CBCL and Halifax Water to operate and optimize a dissolved air flotation pilot plant amid changing source waters to help support future design considerations.