Innovative Projects Realized

Faith-Based Discrimination and Mental Health: Gaps in Service for Muslim Women Seeking Mental Health Care Services

Members of Canada’s Muslim communities face unique mental health care needs as their racial and religious background informs identify and experience. Researchers, advocates and service providers are starting to understand the unique mental health needs of Muslim communities, but we are still learning about how the mental health care system can provide the most appropriate supports and services. This community-based study draws on the personal experiences of Muslim women and mental health workers to understand what is working well for this community and what needs to be improved.

Production et viabilité des graines d’épinette noire dans la forêt boréale du Québec

L’écologie de la reproduction de l’épinette noire dans les forêts nordique est peu compris. En particulier, il existe un manque général de données sur la production et la maturation des cônes / graines en fonction des variables climatiques, des caractéristiques abiotiques et des caractéristiques biotiques. Aucune étude n’existe actuellement pour quantifier ces différences sur un grand gradient longitudinal de température, de précipitation ou de régime des feux. En améliorant notre compréhension de la reproduction de cette espèce, nous pouvons grandement améliorer notre capacité à modéliser la dynamique de régénération de cette espèce commune et répandue, ainsi que sa vulnérabilité et sa résilience aux changements du régime des feux prévus en fonction du changement climatique. TO BE CONT’D

Delayed-sustained drug release from electrostatic dry coated capsules with ultra-fine powders

Pharmaceutical drugs can be made in different forms such as tablets, solutions, capsules, etc. depending on ease of administration, the effect of the drug on the body, and the effect of the body on the drug. Capsules are composed of an outer gelatin shell in which the drug is packed. They are more expensive to produce compared to tablets, but can include drugs in liquid forms, drugs with low compressibility, or slowly dissolving drugs. To protect the drug from contamination, the capsules need to be coated. The present way to coat a capsule is through an aqueous process which is long and expensive. Instead, Zhejiang University of Technology is working on developing a new technique to coat capsules using electrostatic dry powder. The aim is for the capsules to delay the release of the drug until it is in a specific site such as the intestine. TO BE CONT’D

A Feasibility Study on Various Options for a Subcritical Integrated Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment

In January 2000, the US Department of Energy organized a meeting between nine nuclear countries to discuss the potential of a large scale collaboration, aimed at developing the generation four nuclear reactors. The meeting was concluded by the formation of the Generation IV International Forum (GIF). The Canadian nuclear industry have taken particular interest in two generation IV design concepts: the Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactor (SCWR) and the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). Whereas supercritical water, as a coolant, is already in use in coal-fired plants, the fluoride molten salt (to be utilized in the MSR) is a highly unconventional coolant. Under atmospheric pressure, the fluoride molten salt boils at ~1400°C, thus, the risk of over-pressurization from steam build up is eliminated. Furthermore, Terrestrial Energy, since 2013, have been working on developing the Improved MSR (IMSR), in which the nuclear fuel is incorporated into the coolant. TO BE CONT’D

Climate and land use change impacts on bumblebees

Bumblebee species are critical for pollination of crops and wild plant species but face critical threats from many sources. Some of these threats include climate change, habitat loss, and agricultural intensification. However, these threats may also interact to accelerate extinction risks among these species, eroding their contributions to vital ecosystem services and degrading the effectiveness of existing conservation strategies in both North America and Europe. By integrating massive datasets on bumblebee species distributions across both of these continents, and by applying a new methodological framework, we seek to provide the first spatially explicit predictions of the future of bumblebee biodiversity to consider the direct and interactive impacts of future climate change, habitat loss, and intensification. TO BE CONT’D

Développement d’une méthodologie d’amélioration des processus, baséesur la démarche Six Sigma, mais limitant les analyses statistiques formelles par des analysesgraphiques («Six Sigma Lite»)

Le projet de recherche s’inscrit dans le contexte du génie industriel. C’est-à-dire dans les

techniques d’amélioration de processus. Une démarche très populaire propose de suivre les

étapes suivantes pour y arriver : Définir le problème, le quantifier, l’analyser pour finalement

améliorer le processus et le contrôler. Des outils statistiques permettent de réaliser ces cinq

phases mais leur usage est souvent réservé à l’ingénieur industriel. Le but de ce projet est

d’étendre cette méthodologie en limitant les outils et en les rendant plus simple d’usage.

Nous comptons rendre les résultats davantage graphique qu’axé sur les données pour en

faciliter l’analyse. L’organisme partenaire offre les formations sur cette démarche et

comprennent bien les besoins de l’industrie. Ce n’est pas nécessairement des ingénieurs

industriels qui se retrouvent à faire de l’amélioration de processus. De plus, ce projet

permettra d’éviter l’utilisation, l’achat de logiciel spécialisé en statistique car notre démarche

s’intègrera à Microsoft Excel.

Characterization of a new ion source for mass spectrometry

Characterization of the energy distribution of ions generated by the plasma in an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) instrument is necessary for a new ion source in that it influences the ion sampling process, transmission efficiency, focusing, and mass analysis in ICP-MS. These energy distribution phenomena are also analogous to the ion beam that has been generated from an electron impact ionization (EI) source. Similarly, better understanding of the ion beam profile results in a better optimization of the EI source for superior performance. Recently, we (The Centre for Advanced Coating Technologies (CACT), UofT) developed a new generation of ICP torches, with a conical geometry, which, in comparison with conventional torches, has been proved to provide higher ionization/excitation temperature, higher electron number density, higher robustness, lower interference from easily ionizable elements, and lower multi-element detection limits. TO BE CONT’D

Design of an Anthropomorphic Lower-Limb Exoskeleton System

Human locomotion can be influenced by several factors such as neuromuscular and joint disorders that affect the functionality of joints and can cause partial or complete paralysis. Reduced mobility is estimated to
affect over 1% of the population in the world. Many individuals require mobility assistive technologies to keep up with their daily life and the demand for those devices increases with age. A wearable robotic exoskeleton is an external structural mechanism with joints and links corresponding to those of a human body and synchronized with its motion to enhance or support natural body movements. The exoskeleton transmits torques from its actuators through rigid exoskeletal links to the human joints and augments human strength. TO BE CONT’D

AiTree: A computer vision system for automatic characterization and geolocation of single urban trees

What effect do urban trees have on the livability in our cities? What is the economic value of a single urban tree and which ecosystem services does it provide? Where are potential hot spots of invasion by forest invasive alien species? These and many more questions about urban trees are becoming increasingly prominent due to global urbanization trends, effects of climate change and new international trade routes. Despite the importance of urban trees, global sources of urban tree inventory data are limited by a reliance on manually collected data with low spatial and temporal resolution. Existing tree inventory data is restricted to street trees or other trees on public land and lack information on a large proportion of the urban forest, trees on residential property. TO BE CONT’D

Dynamic Controller Placement Problem in Software Defined Networking

Software-defined networking (SDN) technology is an approach to cloud computing that facilitates network management and enables programmatically efficient network configuration in order to improve network performance and monitoring. SDN suggests centralizing network intelligence in one network component by disassociating the forwarding process of network packets (data plane) from the routing process (control plane). The control plane consists of one or more controllers which are considered as the brain of SDN network where the whole intelligence is incorporated. With multiple controllers, one critical issue is the controller placement problem. The controller placement problem typically refers to how to place controllers in an SDN-enabled network and how to allocate associated switches to those controllers. TO BE CONT’D

The effects of a step-wise exercise regime and dietary soluble fiber intake on behaviour and welfare, gut health, and metabolism in mid-distance training sled dogs

Regular exercise has also been associated with positive effects on the health and mood of dogs, although extreme exertion, such as that experienced by sporting dogs, can lead to activity-related injuries and a reduction in welfare. Sporting dogs commonly experience gastrointestinal upset, but trainers tend to not recognize the importance of dietary fiber to support gut health. Moreover, while physical activity is viewed as an essential part of a dog’s physiological and psychological welfare, research on basic topic of how behavior and welfare may be influenced by the amount or intensity or exercise is sparse. Our primary objective is to evaluate the effects of a carefully controlled step-wise exercise regime and a specially designed bled of dietary fibers on the behaviour, welfare, exercise performance, gut health, and metabolism of client owned sled dogs preparing for their competitive racing seasons.

Evaluate effect of chemical compounds on plants using statistics and machine learning

To understand the effects of various substances on plants in terms of yield and disease severity (phytopathology), we need to evaluate both statistical significance and biological relevance when conducting biological experiments. Biological relevance refers to the nature and size of biological changes or differences seen in studies that would be considered relevant, while Statistically significance is the likelihood that a relationship between two or more variables is caused by something other than chance. The primary goal of the project is to apply statistics (experiment design, hypothesis testing, regression analysis) to understand effect of different substances on plants in-vitro, in-planta and in-field. The secondary goal of the project is to develop machine learning / deep learning models that produce estimates of plant health based on imaging and other sensor data generated by Terramera.