Innovative Projects Realized

Seeing the bigger picture: understanding marine integrated management to support conservation and sustainability

There is international recognition of the need to conserve marine biodiversity and safeguard ecosystems, as reflected by international agendas and goal setting. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14, Life Below Water, calls for the conservation and sustainable use of marine resources. Achieving international goals will require unified actions across ocean sectors, necessitating integrated approaches to management. Currently, a mutually agreed upon definition of integrated management is lacking, and management tends to occur via individual sectors. If governments, industries, and conservation authorities hold different views on integrated management, the uptake of integrated approaches may be delayed and progress toward conservation and sustainability goals impeded. This research will review the diversity of views on integrated management within the scientific literature, and will analyze the influence of this scientific discourse on policy in European and Canadian contexts. This research is expected to advance the understanding of integrated management and to identify points of improved integration between conservation, industry, and policy. Where conservation and industry have historically collided, this research seeks to identify synergy that may facilitate integrated management, supporting progress toward Canada’s national and international conservation and sustainability goals.

In-situ Electrochemical Scanning Tunneling Microscopy on Novel Metallic Single Crystals

With the increase of CO2 emissions, pollutants and waste production from developed/developing countries, there has been an urgent need for the scientific community to come up with effective and reliable solutions to these environmental concerns. The demand for renewable and clean energy alternatives has never been so urgent. While there have been developments in various fuel cell technologies, the high-cost of platinum-group nanomaterials being used for electrocatalysts is currently prohibitively expensive. Nickel nanomaterials have been identified as candidates to be used as high activity, cheaper alternatives. This project proposes to use in-situ electrochemical scanning tunneling microscopy to study processes related to alkaline fuel cells and water electrolysers. There exists a significant knowledge gap involving the fundamental surface phenomena taking place on monocrystalline surfaces that can be present on nanomaterials. TO BE CONT’D

Impact des propriétés physiques de la neige sur les lemmings en Arctique

Mon projet de doctorat porte sur l’impact des propriétés physiques de la neige sur les lemmings en Arctique. Ces petits mammifères sont un maillon clé de l’écosystème arctique, étant la proie principale des prédateurs vivant dans ces régions. Les changements climatiques sont susceptibles de modifier la qualité de la neige en Arctique, ce qui pourrait affecter les lemmings qui dépendent de la neige lors de la période hivernale. Les lemmings creusent des réseaux de tunnels sous la neige pour s’alimenter de végétation, mais nous ignorons encore comment la neige influence leurs déplacements. Étudier les tunnels de lemmings dans le manteau neigeux et développer des systèmes optiques permettant de les photographier sous la neige sont deux méthodes qui nous permettront de mieux comprendre leur écologie hivernale. Mon projet de doctorat vise à mieux comprendre, à l’aide des méthodes mentionnées, l’écologie hivernale des lemmings. TO BE CONT’D

Kinetics of Enzymes in Crowded Environment – In-vitro modeling of Biological entities

Enzymes are macromolecules that speed up the rate of chemical reactions by many orders of magnitude. Different classes of enzymes are present in a cell at different copy numbers to control and fine-tune its metabolism. The kinetics of enzymes differs depending on the physical properties of the local surroundings. Due to the high complexity of a cell’s composition, it is hard to extract information on enzyme kinetics by in vivo experiments. We will perform in vitro experiments using advanced scientific techniques such as fluorescence spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to characterize the structural dynamics of enzymes in artificially crowded environments and correlate that with the kinetics measured through standard UV/Vis spectrophotometry. We will combine results of different experiments performed at both the host and parent institute to develop an improved understanding of how environmental factors such as (i) excluded-volume and (ii) non-specific interactions modulate kinetic processes.
In addition to that we will study the role of confinement on macromolecular diffusion by preparing gels using different methods and characterize them by performing small angle X-Ray scattering at the host institute […]

Targeting lifestyle behaviours among teenage and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors in the United Kingdom and Canada

Improvements in survival rates of cancer diagnosed between the ages of 13 and 29 have led to a growing number of survivors of teenage and young adult (TYA) cancer living with quality of life challenges well into adulthood. TYAs are at an increased risk for physical and mental heath challenges following diagnosis and treatment, and these risks may be exacerbated by engaging in health risking-behaviour (e.g., poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and substance abuse). Lifestyle changes may be effective for protecting TYAs from these health risks, yet a there is a need for the development of age specific lifestyle interventions. However, global inconsistencies in the care of TYAs has made this challenging. This projects aims to report on these inconsistencies, merge existing lifestyle strategies developed at the University College London and University of Toronto, and build a platform for age-appropriate resources for TYA supportive care in the United Kingdom and Canada.

Research on High-Performance Graph Differencing, Fuzzy Hashing and Clustering Algorithms

Metafor is developing a new class of IT system management solutions and as a part of this, Metafor wants a method to show differences between multiple deployed instances of an application. Metafor would also like to have the ability to group many application in different clusters based on their structural similarities. We would like to be able to do so by calculating hash values for each tree, or to find an alternative way which is inexpensive in CPU and memory usage. Moreover, we would like to find ways to apply the tree differencing techniques already developed, to models of applications that are unavoidably messy and cyclic, reflecting their often chaotic reality. To implement this, Metafor requires an accurate and high-performance generalized graph differencing algorithm. All the implementations will be done using the Java and Scala programming languages.

An Investigation of Chinese International Graduate Students’ Opinions of Individual Writing Consultations

This research project aims to investigate how Chinese international graduate students perceive Individual Writing Consultations (IWCs), and the findings will be used to provide constructive suggestion for writing IWC administrators. Two questions will be used to guide this study:

1. What are international graduate students’ opinions of IWCs?

2. How can IWCs improve their service so as to better benefit Chinese international graduate students?

Qualitative data will be collected by semi-structured interviews with 8-16 Chinese international graduate students who are taking or finishing education program in the past three years at a University in Southwestern Ontario and who are taking or finishing archeology and humanities program in the past three years at a University in Southern Netherlands. Participation will be voluntary and, with permission of participants, the interviews will be recorded with a digital device, and transcribed before analysis.

Synthesis and Characterization of Superhydrophobic Coatings on Stainless Steel for Hydraulic Energy Systems

The main intended research activity of this international collaboration is to fabricate protective composite layered coatings for hydraulic turbine systems. The use of self-lubricating polymer bearings has become popular in order to reduce maintenance costs caused by the manual application of oil or grease lubrication. However, such materials are not suitable for larger loads, and therefore need to be replaced frequently. The addition of a hard metallic bottom layer under the polymeric material would drastically improve the load capacity of the coating, making this new technology suitable for repairing many parts within the turbine system. In hopes of prolonging the coating’s lifespan in aqueous environments, the metallic layer has been chosen to be composed of mainly a very corrosion resistant material, stainless steel. By combining the inexpensive polymeric coating methods created at UCL and thermal spray metallic coating technologies, the ideal corrosion and erosion resistant coatings can be synthesized, characterized, and implemented in industrial applications.

An evaluation of the impact of the Fearless Physical Activity Program and the Canadian Congenital Heart Alliance’s online resources using the RE-AIM framework

This study aims to evaluate the instructor manuals of the Canadian Congenital Heart Alliance’s Fearless Physical Activity event. The hosts are provided with these manuals prior to each event session. These instructors will be provided with an evaluation checklist, and will be interviewed, post-event, to assess the instructor resources. The objective is to determine whether the resources provide the necessary information in an easy to understand manner, and whether the instructors felt as though any additional resources are missing that would have assisted them in the implementation of the Fearless Physical Activity event. The CCHA will then be able to re-structure the manuals using this feedback to ensure the implementation of the event is straight-forward for future instructors, and will assist in the consistency of the quality of delivery of every event.

Bien-être et productivité des truies logées en large groupe : impact de la lignée génétique et de la hiérarchie sociale

Au Canada, les truies gestantes devront être logées en groupe d’ici 2024. Cependant, l’hébergement en groupe implique des complications en termes de bien-être (instabilité sociale, agressions, blessures) et peut être associé à des baisses de performance (e.g. nombre de porcelets sevrés par truie) et des plus grands coûts de production. La génétique est souvent mise en avant en raison de sa relation avec les comportements d’agressivité chez les truies, exacerbés lors des mélanges et regroupements. Néanmoins, il existe peu d’études réalisées dans un contexte d’élevage avec de larges groupes d’animaux. Ainsi, le projet vise à évaluer l’influence de lignées génétique et du statut individuel dans la hiérarchie, sur le bien-être et les performances reproductives de truies élevées en larges groupes. TO BE CONT’D

Engendering Dialogue and Meaningful Participation Among Constituencies Working Toward Ending Homelessness in Victoria, BC., Phase II

This work will build on the findings of the literature review conducted in Phase I. Phase II will focus on engaging people with experience of homelessness in vetting and refining inclusionary principles identified in Phase I and developing a draft inclusionary policy for the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness.The work is also highly relevant to Vancity. The Statement of Values and Commitments, developed in 2000, acts as a compass to guide Vancity’s business decisions and strategies to stay on course. One of the issues most important is addressing homelessness. This work builds on VanCity’s former Community Leadership Strategy to tackle poverty in the communities in which we live and work and will help guide their thinking about meaningful community engagement and impact, and will inform future consultation processes with various community voices and stakeholders.

Germanium nanomaterials/polymer hybrid for solar cells

Due to the limited sources of fossil fuel and growing demand of world-wide energy, research on inexpensive alternative energy sources has significantly increased past few years. While the conventional silicon solar cells are expensive, they are also unable to provide enough energy density for current and future societal needs. Semiconductor polymers are excellent candidates as active materials in photovoltaic devices because they are solution processable and possess tunable properties. It is possible to use them for industrial roll-to-roll processing using techniques as well as screen printing, doctor blading, ink-jet printing, and spray deposition. Currently in organic/polymer solar cells are only achieving up to 13% power conversion efficiency. This metric must be improved if these devices are to become commercially relavent. A promising approach is to incorporate inorganic semiconductor nanomaterials into the polymers to further enhance their optical and electrical properties, ultimately leading to improved power conversion efficiencies. The research described in the present application focuses on synthesizing germanium quantum dots, preparing hybrids with organic semiconductor polymers and evaluating the performance of the resulting hybrid in proto-type solar cells.