Innovative Projects Realized

Evaluation of Flexkor as a flexibility aid for elite athletes

The purpose of this research is to determine if athletes who use the Flexkor device to facilitate PNF stretching before their workouts will result in comparable gains in hamstring flexibility and strength as would be obtained by athletes who use a trained therapist. It is also hoped that this research will further educate athletes and coaches on the importance of stretching for injury prevention.The partner will benefit from participating in the internship in a few ways. First, the partner will obtain research results that provide insight into how well his product works for improving the hamstring flexibility of athletes, compared to an athletic therapist. Feedback to the partner will be made regarding the design and use of his product in a real world situation. This can be used to further enhance the design of the product.

Kitchener Bioretention Planters Evaluation

Low impact development (LID) technologies are increasingly part of the urban landscape for Canadian municipalities. Bioretention planters, also known as rain gardens, are an LID technology that infiltrates and filters runoff at the source. Though design guidance exists, there is little data available on the long term performance of LID technologies, such as bioretention systems. This study aims to contribute to the literature of field studies on the long term performance of bioretention systems, in terms of the hydrologic performance and maintenance needs. The study site will be the bioretention planters along the King Street corridor in Kitchener, Ontario, which were installed in 2009-2010. In partnership with GHD Ltd. and the City of Kitchener, this study will aid with determining what factors are leading to the currently observed poor performance of the bioretention planters in the King Street corridor, and advise on potential remedies.

Responsible Development of Unconventional Hydrocarbon Reserves

Unconventional oil and gas resources are currently a significant portion of global oil and gas production and it is anticipated to continue its growth as production from conventional resources decline. Unconventional oil and gas resources include low permeability (“tight” resources e.g. shale), heavy oil and oil sands reservoirs amongst others. Economic and responsible development of these unconventional resources is a priority for society, governments and industry. Post the Paris Accord, it is imperative that new technologies and processes are researched and developed to minimize upstream greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oil and gas activities, otherwise there is a risk that Canada’s hydrocarbon resource endowment could be stranded in the future, forgoing the vast economic benefits that Canada has received over past decades. TO BE CONT”D

E-Community Health and Toxicity

Online communities abound today, arising on social networking sites, on the websites of real-world communities like schools or clubs, on web discussion forums, on the discussion boards of videogames, and even on the comment pages of news sites and blogs. Some of these communities are “healthy” and foster polite discussion between respectful members, but others are “toxic” and devolve into virulent fights, trolling, cyber-bullying, fraud, or worse even, incitation to suicide, radicalization, or the sexual predation and grooming of minors. Detecting toxic messages and toxic users is a major challenge, in part because they are adversarial users who are actively trying to circumvent or fool detection software and filters. TO BE CONT’D

Understanding historical forest landscape dynamics in the Alberta foothills

An emerging strategy for managing natural resources such as Canada’s forests more sustainably and responsibly is to use knowledge of how Mother Nature has done it to help guide our hand. This so-called ‘ecosystem-based” approach has gained favour with provincial and federal governments, as well as national and international certification agencies. One of the foundations of such an approach is a fundamental understanding of how natural forest ecosystems have worked for millennia over time and space; how has Mother Nature provided the huge, rich array of goods and services such as timber, clean water, recreation, fishing, hunting, and critical species habitat that we enjoy today. In the Alberta foothills, the key drivers of change are climate and wildfire. TO BE CONT’D

Enhancing Recommendation Engine for Open Source Software with Community Structures and Copulas

In the constantly expanding world of open source software and services, developers find it increasingly difficult to choose open source that is compliant, secure and reliable. There are millions of open source software and services publicly available today, and compliance, security and quality related information is extremely difficult for developers to find, making mindful selection of open source an onerous process. Black Duck Software is building a semantic search engine that allows users to describe their requirements in natural language and receive results that meet quality, legal and security requirements. In this research project, the candidate will develop mathematical models and computational techniques that analyze open source software and make suitable recommendations based on user specified criteria that meet quality, legal and security requirements. TO BE CONT’D

Dynamic Bandwidth Management

In the telecommunications industry, many schemas exist to cap or limit bandwidth at certain levels for clients. However, there are no real options available to allow clients to intelligently utilize spare bandwidth above their committed purchase rates. We propose to design, implement and evaluate novel bandwidth allocation mechanisms for high speed networks like the Cybera network. Cybera is a not-for-profit, technology-neutral organization responsible for driving Alberta’s economic growth through the use of digital technology. Cybera’s core role is to oversee the development and operations of Alberta’s research and education network, providing its members (clients), including educational institutions, business incubators and not-for-profits with network connectivity to each other and the Internet. The objective of this project is to provide minimum bandwidth guarantee to clients, while allowing all active clients in the network to fairly share any spare capacity. TO BE CONT’D

Characterization of Plant Growth Promotion effects through the application of Bacteria Pseudomonas spp. strains. KGS-2 and KGS-8 for enhanced Commercial Value of field crops

This project will provide characterization of two strains of Pseudomonas spp. for the use of plant growth promotion. The project will accomplish this through direct field trials in order to show the benefits of these strains when inoculated on canola. We wish to explore/demonstrate other key features of these organisms such as bioremediation hydrocarbons and heavy metals in plant soils in a greenhouse setting

The use of PGPB on high insoluble phosphate soils will i) reduce nutrient run off in water systems such as Lake Winnipeg; ii) Increase crop yields; iii) enhance the degradation of nutrients in swine manure to allow more respreading per location. Through the genomic and physiological characterization of these strains and direct comparison to other similar organisms an understanding of features that are beneficial can be produced, saving valuable time and resources at the field and greenhouse testing levels.

Étude de la relation entre les données d’imagerie thermique acquises par drone et des indicateurs agro-météorologiques de stress hydrique dans la culture de pommes de terre

L’irrigation des cultures de pommes de terre permet d’éviter l’apparition d’un stress hydrique, qui peut réduire la qualité et le rendement de la culture, et en diminue la rentabilité pour les agriculteurs. Pour être efficace, celle-ci doit cependant être appliquée en bonnes quantités, aux bons endroits et aux bons moments. Si la capacité des données infrarouge thermique pour l’évaluation du stress hydrique a déjà été largement démontrée, les outils utilisés ne permettent pas de capter aisément la variabilité intra-parcellaire des besoins en eau. Les capteurs embarqués sur drone pourraient permettre de capter cette variabilité et ainsi d’intervenir plus efficacement avec l’irrigation. Cette recherche vise ainsi à étudier la relation entre les données d’imagerie thermique acquises par drone et des indicateurs agro-météorologiques de stress hydrique dans la culture de pommes de terre, dans le but de développer des indicateurs de stress hydrique mesurables par drone. TO BE CONT’D

Development of a Cavity Ring-Down Instrument for the Detection of ambient HO2 Radicals

There is no memorandum project overview associated with this application.

Chemical process design of the production paths of transport fuels using renewable energy and CO2

There is no memorandum project overview associated with this application.

Developing a new approach to unravel microbial activities in aquatic environments.

There is no memorandum project overview associated with this application.