Innovative Projects Realized

Wild bee microbiomes and pollinator health – Year Two

The holobiont view of organism microbiomes suggests that microbial communities influence and are influenced by animal behaviour. While many microbes are beneficial and necessary for digestion and homeostasis, others can be detrimental, including pathogens leading to compromised immunity and disease states. Recent studies suggest microbiomes covary with landscape floral and fungal diversity, yet fine scale data does not exist examining consistent hubs for beneficial and pathogenic microbes outside of select few crop and flower species. There is evidence that floral diversity promotes healthy microbiomes, but this research has largely focused on mammals and there is surprisingly no data on wild bees in urban systems. Bees are a keystone group responsible for pollinating most wild plants. Yet populations of many wild bees are declining and to ensure sustainable pollination, their conservation is essential. As cities are often hotspots for bee diversity, they may be crucial reservoirs for the maintenance of bee diversity, and particularly so when cities are surrounded by forests or croplands that are less favourable for bees. It is known that habitat heterogeneity is an important correlate of bee diversity, and urban centres, where land management practices vary harbour diverse wild bee assemblages. We will combine state-of-the-art metagenomics document wild bee microbiomes and nutritional ecology for the first time to provide conservation guidelines to promote the sustainability of populations of the major wild pollinators in urban centres. Our findings will be relevant to the >80% of Canadians that are urban dwellers.

Wild bee microbiomes and pollinator health

The holobiont view of organism microbiomes suggests that microbial communities influence and are influenced by animal behaviour. While many microbes are beneficial and necessary for digestion and homeostasis, others can be detrimental, including pathogens leading to compromised immunity and disease states. Recent studies suggest microbiomes covary with landscape floral and fungal diversity, yet fine scale data does not exist examining consistent hubs for beneficial and pathogenic microbes outside of select few crop and flower species. There is evidence that floral diversity promotes healthy microbiomes, but this research has largely focused on mammals and there is surprisingly no data on wild bees in urban systems. Bees are a keystone group responsible for pollinating most wild plants. Yet populations of many wild bees are declining and to ensure sustainable pollination, their conservation is essential. As cities are often hotspots for bee diversity, they may be crucial reservoirs for the maintenance of bee diversity, and particularly so when cities are surrounded by forests or croplands that are less favourable for bees. It is known that habitat heterogeneity is an important correlate of bee diversity, and urban centres, where land management practices vary harbour diverse wild bee assemblages. We will combine state-of-the-art metagenomics document wild bee microbiomes and nutritional ecology for the first time to provide conservation guidelines to promote the sustainability of populations of the major wild pollinators in urban centres. Our findings will be relevant to the >80% of Canadians that are urban dwellers.

4G Cellular Trespasser Detection System for Farms

There is a strong demand for effective means to detect and record trespass activities onto farm properties, which cost the agriculture industry many hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The goal of the project is to design and develop a trespasser detection system based on the presence of a human being carrying a cell phone. The detection system can be used to surveil farm premises in order to detect and immediately report the presence of any person illegally entering/trespassing on agricultural properties. It will be a very solid addition to Be Seen Be Safe Ltd, the partner organization’s expanding portfolio of offerings to the agricultural community in the biosecurity and farm security space in Canada.

Management of Context for Smartphone-based Push Marketing for Brick and Mortar Retailers

Smartphones are not only incredibly powerful computing devices, but also sophisticated sensor platforms. Leveraging sensed user context, such as location, to provide targeted advertising has been discussed as a potential application of ubiquitous sensing in the literature, and is beginning to appear in industrial applications. In this proposal we describe the innovations necessary to realize context-sensitive advertising in a traditional brick and mortar store, where user-specific offers are pulled from a server when the phone determines that the user is likely about to shop at a particular store. This innovation will require research and development in ubiquitous systems, sensor data analysis and human computer interaction. The final product will be an innovative and competitive system that will provide College Mobile with an ongoing competitive advantage in supplying brick and mortar companies with user-specific smartphone advertising solutions. Investigating this challenging problem will advance user modeling and small-screen interaction research.

Supporting positive well-being of early career veterinarians

The aims of this research are to 1) assess mental health status and challenges longitudinally as veterinary students transition into working in the profession; and 2) develop a tool that is especially suitable to support positive mental health of early career veterinarians.

Questionnaires will be distributed to all Canadian veterinary undergraduate students in their final year and during their transition into the workplace to assess mental health status longitudinally. Individual one-on-one interviews with recent graduates will provide additional in-depth insights. We will involve veterinary undergraduate students and recent graduates to develop and evaluate a resilience training tool that provides strategies to increase mental health especially during the first years as practitioners.

This research will raise awareness of mental health issues in the veterinary community. Once its benefit is established, the program will be made available to all Canadian veterinary colleges, students, and recent graduates. VetStrategy will benefit by gaining information about the mental health status of veterinarians in Canada, including veterinarians employed by their organization.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) thermometry

We are creating a powerful tool for improvements in surgeries of the brain and spine. A new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine will be used inside operating rooms so patients undergoing surgery can be imaged in the middle of the surgery for quality control. For instance, surgeons can obtain an MRI to ensure the entire tumor was removed before ending the surgery. Beyond surgery, low field MRI has many exciting applications to improve treatment options. A technique called MR thermometry can map the temperatures of tissues inside the body. This helps for monitoring of treatments from ultrasound, laser, or microwave heating techniques.

Advanced thermal simulation for mold and die

With newer manufacturing technologies, the need to find the optimum cooling or heating patterns in molds is more important than ever before. The industry has not taken full advantage of solutions available to them in building new and improved manufacturing processes. This project aims to develop, validate and optimize the computer simulation results for cooling and heating with the use of Siemens FloEFD software. It is aimed to develop best practices for conformal cooling application which is for cooling 3D printed components. This application requires 3D printing or additive manufacturing techniques to build more sophisticated and efficient molds. Since, the field is relatively quite new it is intended to bridge the gap in the industry and software technology platform. The intern will be benefited by getting first hand industry experience and commonly with the industry partner be a part of future proofing Canadian tooling and mold industry.

Développement de l’identité scientifique, sentiment d’appartenance et d’exclusion chez les étudiantes et étudiants issus de minorités sous-représentées.

Depuis quelques années, nous entendons de plus en plus parler d’équité, de diversité et d’inclusion. Des événements tragiques en lien avec le décès de personnes racisées ou autochtones ont amplifié l’intérêt pour les questions de justice sociale. Dans le monde universitaire, il est question de former une relève diversifiée, productive et informée sur les questions d’équité, diversité et inclusion. Cette recherche consiste à effectuer une revue de balayage pour tracer un portrait global de l’expérience des étudiant.e.s de cycles supérieurs issu.e.s de minorités sous-représentées et, parfois, marginalisées. Nous explorerons les barrières et les facteurs facilitants ainsi que le développement de l’identité scientifique chez ces étudiant.e.s.

Utilisation de l’apprentissage par renforcement pour la prévision de la demande énergétique

Hydro-Québec has data acquisition systems for a multitude of sensors, some of which have been installed since almost 20 years in its electrical generation equipment (turbine-generator units – TGU). The collected data is primarily used to ensure that the information is adequate in the event of an equipment breakdown or for specific behavioral studies. Data from monitoring systems are little used in routine maintenance management activities, often due to lack of time and adequate and/or effective analysis methods. Equipment maintenance is an important part of Hydro-Québec’s equipment management activities. The creation and maintenance of a surveillance system is a major investment for the company. With the development of machine learning analysis approaches, the goal is to provide operators with a clearer view of real-time asset status and predictions about their potential for use.

Effet du myriophylle envahisseur sur les cyanobactéries en milieu lacustre

Le myriophylle à épis est une plante aquatique exotique envahissante dont les populations sont en pleine expansion au Québec. Plusieurs travaux en laboratoire ont montré que le myriophylle libère, en se décomposant, des substances toxiques pour les cyanobactéries. Le myriophylle peut aussi héberger sur ses tissus des algues microscopiques qui captent des nutriments qui ne sont plus ainsi disponibles pour les cyanobactéries. Le but de l’étude est de vérifier si l’hypothèse d’un lien de cause à effet entre le myriophylle (plus grande abondance) et les cyanobactéries (moins grande abondance) est plausible en nature. De façon plus précise, il s’agira 1) d’établir, à l’aide de données historiques, un parallèle entre la prolifération du myriophylle et les floraisons de cyanobactéries, et 2) de comparer les caractéristiques de sites fortement envahis par le myriophylle à celles de sites sans myriophylle. Une campagne d’échantillonnage sera effectuée dans le lac en 2022 afin de mesurer, au fil de l’été, la biomasse du myriophylle et la concentration en éléments nutritifs, en substances bactéricides et en cyanobactéries de l’eau.

Wearable Ultrasound Technology for Cardiovascular Health Monitoring

The proposed research concerns the construction of a computer simulation environment for the artery phantom with cardiac cycles and ultrasound signals obtained using our novel wearable ultrasound sensor (WUS) technology when monitoring the cardiovascular health. It is difficult to assess health indicators of the artery of a living subject experimentally for comparison with those estimated using our WUS and associated software. Computer simulation offers the ability to design controlled experiments with all the health indicators and conditions known so that the performance of our estimation can be readily evaluated. This is valuable for verifying the estimation obtained by the technology we have designed and can be used to investigate limitations and areas that require further research.

Curing and characterization of tire tread reclaimed rubber towards enhanced physical properties

International legislation and growing environmental issues have put a lot of pressure on companies and manufacturers to minimize and recycle scrap. Such demands have had significant consequences for the rubber tire industry to use recycled rubbers from the scrap tire. As such, this research project is an initiative taken by the Nanomaterials and Polymer Nanocomposites Laboratory (NPNL) at the University of British Columbia and Circular Rubber Technologies (CRT) in BC to design a processing and formulation to improve the physical properties of reclaimed rubber (obtained from scrap tire) so it can be reused as the rubber materials for tire industry or any other relevant industry.