Innovative Projects Realized

Exploratory Study on the Prevalence of Alexithymia in a Child Welfare Population

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Alexithymia is a personality construct that represents a reduced ability to identify and describe feelings, a limited imagination, and externally oriented thinking.not classified as a mental disorder in the DSM-IV. Alexithymia raises special clinical issues: 1) it is known to be a trait and distributed across the general population where prevalence is 8-10% (Karukivi, 2011; Taylor & Bagby, 1988) and 2) it is a dimensional personality trait that varies in severity from one person to another (Parker, Keefer, Taylor, and Bagby, 2008). Since alexithymia in adolescents is likely to predict poorer outcome in several different mental disorders, the possibility of alexithymia in a child welfare population should be explored efficiently (Karukivi, 2011).

Évaluation de la toxicité d’effluents miniers sur la daphnie

Comme dans toute industrie d’importance, les activités minières engendrent des rejets liquides qui nécessitent une gestion spécifique afin de garantir leur innocuité environnementale. Pour réduire l’impact du déversement de ces effluents miniers dans l’environnement des normes environnementales ont été définies. Malgré les traitements des eaux, les objectifs environnementaux de qualité des effluents peuvent occasionnellement ne pas être atteints avant d’être rejetés dans l’environnement et être toxiques pour des organismes aquatiques comme les daphnies.
Mine Raglan est une entreprise désireuse de respecter en tout temps les réglementations et de réduire l’empreinte environnementale de ses effluents miniers.
Le présent projet a donc comme objectifs principaux d’évaluer la toxicité d’effluents miniers sur la daphnie et de proposer des solutions de traitements des contaminants. Les recommandations de gestion et de traitement des effluents pourraient s’appliquer à toutes les mines en milieu nordique.

La perception du temps : un prisme pour comprendre le processus entrepreneurial chez les séniors

Depuis quelques années, on assiste à un nouveau phénomène lié à l’allongement de la vie humaine : l’entrepreneuriat sénior. Un examen du secteur de la PME au cours des dernières années permet de constater qu’un nombre croissant de ces entreprises ont été créées par des personnes ayant 50 ans ou plus. Ainsi, l’entrepreneuriat senior est un phénomène dont l’intérêt est croissance. De toute évidence, les défis sont différents pour un entrepreneur de 30-40-45ans comparativement à un autre de plus de 50 ans puisque les périodes de vie sont fort différentes. La perception du temps chez le sénior en démarrage ou qui souhaite passer à l’action sous peu influence forcément l’engagement entrepreneurial à cet âge. TO BE CONT’D

Radiofrequency Treatment for Emphysema in Rat Model

Emphysema, a lung disease that millions of Canadians currently suffer from, has few safe and non-invasive options available. One of the features of emphysema is the lack of proper blood flow in the diseased lungs and this results in poor gas exchange. IKOMED Technologies Inc. and the two interns will test an innovative technology that has the potential to remove diseased lungs non-surgically. Together they will test and optimize this application using small rats to check both safety and effectiveness of this new treatment method. IKOMED Technologies Inc. is the sponsor of this work and will be acknowledged in potential publications. The data collected may be used for future patenting of this new treatment technology.

Smart Control Valve Development for Viscous Flow Metering

The operation of complex industrial plants is based on the measurement and control of critical process variables. In most process industry applications, the final control element is usually a control valve, which has been identified as often the limiting element in improving performance of the control loop. Wave Control System (WCS) is developing a new generation of smart control valve with metering function to satisfy the metering requirement of crude oil and other fluids with various viscosity. Compared to the conventional valve, the proposed control valve with metering functions reduces the cost of installation significantly and lead to improved process control. Successful completion of this project will improve the control loop performance and reduce the installation cost of sensors, actuators and associated pipelines. This will find essential applications in the Canadian process industry including oil and gas extraction, refinery and chemical industry for improved production efficiency and product quality.

Sigma factor expression in E. coli environmental isolates

Water quality is critical for a many human activities. With respect to recreational water,

a particular type of water source, there are often relatively high levels of microbial

contamination in relation to other types of water sources (e.g., drinking water). E. coli

is used as a microbial indicator for water quality because E. coli accumulation is

positively correlated with fecal contamination. It is recognized that this current

approach, however, is not fully protective of the health of the public using beaches. E.

coli strains differ enormously in pathogenic potential as only few strains carrying

disease-causing genetic determinants (e.g., strain O157:H7). This study will be taken

place to examine the differences in genetic composition and gene expression between

E. coli laboratory strain and environmental strains. Well-understood sigma factor

genes will be employed as model genes to operate this study.

Condition assessment of infrastructure facilities using combined image processing and sensing technologies

As Canada’s infrastructure grow older every year, the inspection and maintenance of these capital intensive assets becomes more challenging. Most deterioration mechanism occur over a long period of time. Certain defects remain unnoticed during regular inspection until it is too late. Unfortunately, delayed diagnosis of defects can significantly increase the annual cost of maintenance.
Inspectors and maintenance managers demand innovative methods that help them identify and quantify deficiencies earlier, and more accurately. This R&D project proposes an innovative condition assessment of infrastructure facilities without direct interaction of labour in a timely and cost-effective manner. A combined approach of sensing technology and image processing is proposed to 3D-map the condition of a structure over time. To do so, highly accurate sensors and transducers are installed along the structural members under inspection to monitor the internal changes. The sensing results are combined with the map of surface changes. TO BE CONT’D

Investigation of In-Situ Flux Effect on Hydride Properties in Zr-2.5Nb Pressure Tubes in CANDU Reactors

In the operation of CANDU reactors, the Zr-2.5Nb pressure tubes holding the cooling water and fuel bundles are susceptible to hydride cracking-induced crack initiation mechanisms, known as delayed hydride cracking and overload crack initiation. It is required to evaluate the likelihood of DHC and overload crack initiation from service-induced flaws to determine whether the pressure tubes are still fit for continued service for the integrity assessment of pressure tubes. Furthermore, the continuous fast neutron irradiation alters the properties of the pressure tubes, which pose potential effect on the formation of brittle hydride and possible crack initiation as well. This proposed experimental work will address hydride cracking mechanism change upon irradiation by using proton irradiation from an accelerator, which is much faster and less expensive compared to in reactor neutron irradiation. TO BE CONT’D

Inkjet printing of conductive nanocellulose inks for flexible electronics

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are rod-shaped nanoparticles extracted from renewable cellulose sources that possess impressive mechanical and rheological properties, are non-toxic and biodegradable, and have potential applications in coatings, adhesives, biomedicine and energy storage devices, to name just a few. In combination with conductive nanoparticles, CNCs can be used in inks for printing conductive circuits for electronics. The role of CNCs is to stabilize the conductive nanoparticles and improve the “printability” of the inks. This project aims to produce and characterize CNC-based inks, and to use them to print transparent conductive patterns. CNCs will be prepared through sulfuric acid hydrolysis of cotton. Three inks will be tested: (1) CNCs mixed with silver nanoparticles, (2) CNCs with silver nanoparticles synthesized in situ (commercially available as PolyBioSilver), and (3) CNCs mixed with carbon nanotubes. TO BE CONT’D

Stage de recherche en biologie synthétique

Le projet consiste en un stage de recherche en biologie synthétique, un domaine scientifique émergeant reliant biologie et ingénierie afin de construire ou modifier des systèmes biologiques dans le but de répondre à certaines problématiques. Les maladies infectieuses sont des causes de pertes économiques majeures à l’échelle du globe, entre autres dans l’industrie agroalimentaire. Le projet sur lequel l’étudiante va travailler s’intéresse à la prévention de la pleuropneumonie contagieuse caprine, une maladie ayant un fort impact économique, entres autres en Asie et en Afrique. Son rôle sera d’assister un chercheur post-doctoral de l’Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) dans le développement d’une souche bactérienne pour développer un vaccin contre cette maladie. Le projet sera réalisé dans l’équipe de Carole Lartigue, chargée de recherche à l’INRA Bordeaux-Aquitaine. TO BE CONT’D

Pilot-Scale Mycoremediation of Petroleum Hydrocarbon Impacted Soil

Mycoremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon (PHC) impacted soil utilizes mushroom to decontaminate polluted soil. Specific mushrooms including shiitake, oyster and other white rot fungus have been successfully degraded a wide range of recalcitrant soil contaminants. However, this process is quite slow and is sometimes limiting. It is hypothesized that insufficient bioavailable phosphorus supply likely limits the mycoremediation performance. To increase nutrient bioavailability to fungi, conventional mycoremediation will be modified by applying gaseous form of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and triethyl phosphate (TEP).
PHC impacted soil will be mixed with the compost inoculated with fungi. Vapour mixture containing NO2 and TEP will be pumped into the bioreactors. Microbial communities will be characterized using molecular analyses. Understanding mechanisms behind uptake of PHCs and phosphorus by fungi will shed more light on optimization of the mycoremediation process.
Stimulated fungal growth and activity resulting from increased nutrient bioavailability is expected to result in significant soil cleanup.

Scalable User Interface Designs for Scheduling Software

Coconut Calendar provides an appointment scheduling software platform to customize the on-line customer booking experience for small home-based services-provider businesses, such as massage therapists, hair stylists, or home cleaners with only a few locations. Coconut Calendar is now expanding their business to larger clients with dozens or even thousands (e.g., IBM) of customers. The challenge is to bring that same intimate booking experience to business with thousands of customers in hundreds of locations; however, the interface designs that were successful on a small scale (e.g., drop-down menus to represent a list of items) are not effective when there are hundreds of items. However, transitioning the entire system to a large-scale interface solution (e.g., searchable list) sacrifices the user experience for Coconut’s core market of small home-based business owners.TO BE CONT’D