Innovative Projects Realized

Building Community Capacity on Local Energy: Extending the Community Energy Explorer Web-tool

(CEE) is a unique, interactive and visually compelling web-resource to build capacity of citizens, decision-makers, and local government staff on community energy and related land use issues. The objective of this 2-year project is to improve, expand and launch a public version of CEE in the Metro Vancouver region, and initiate a process to foster uptake and replication across BC. If successfully adopted by practitioners and NGOs, CEE should seed new conversations within communities, and embolden municipal staff & decision-makers, accelerating community action and decision-making for better land-use management and meet provincial energy/GHG reduction targets.

High-rate anaerobic digestion of ozonated waste activated sludge at low temperature

This project will investigate the challenging possibility of operating anaerobic digesters at 20 ºC without the supply of any external heat source by combining anaerobic digestion with sludge ozonation. The hypothesis is that such combination will enable the operation of anaerobic digesters at 20 °C, and achieve higher biosolids reduction, more biogas production, and increased energy gain, than the conventional standalone anaerobic digestion at 35 °C. This will be undertaken by operating anaerobic digesters under different configurations and monitoring their performance. Finally, an optimized version of the technology will be proposed to our industrial partners for possible upscaling. Air Liquide Canada currently commercializes the ASPALSludgeTM system using ozone to reduce excess sludge production from wastewater treatment facilities. The project will benefit both partners by proposing to them a novel technology that will solve the main problems associated with biosolids handling and disposal, and at the same time enhance energy production from anaerobic digesters. Hence, this new technology, if feasible, will provide a promising strategy for wastewater utilities to ensure environmental as well as economic sustainability.

Numerical simulations of global atmospheric composition for the purpose of improving air quality modelling

Where observations of air pollution are unavailable, e.g. from emissions of future facilities or in remote areas, air pollution is simulated with computer models. These models require input of emissions from nearby sources but also of
background concentrations that are caused by sources outside of the modelling domain, because the domain is limited
by computational power and the need to resolve air quality at a fine spatial resolution. The objective of this project is
to generate air quality output from a coarse global computer model to provide background concentrations for smaller
regions over historical (and potentially future) periods. This output would improve regulatory air quality modelling,
which is currently performed on the basis of crude assumptions of constant background concentrations. Improved regulatory modelling benefits regulators, industrial emitters, and the general public by providing improved guidance on
policy, emission control, and protection of human, animal, and ecosystem health.

A Framework for Creating and Managing Virtual Organizations in a Distributed Environment Using SOA Infrastructure

In this research, we propose a framework to create and manage virtual organizations (VO) in a distributed environment based on service oriented infrastructure. The proposed framework enables networks of organizations to form virtual workflows based on their software infrastructures, and share and monitor their performance metrics without the need for a central authority. An abstraction layer for services (service zone) will enable organizations to share their designated services with other partners while keeping their own core competency private to themselves. The proposed solution will be applied to a network of organizations in healthcare systems with interactions between hospitals, laboratories, insurance companies and government agencies.

As the IBM is one of the major providers of Service Oriented Architecture based solutions offering a wide range of B2B solutions to organizations, the proposed framework in this research will help IBM to extend their B2B solutions to handle automated agile virtual organizations.

L’impact de la gouvernance sur la réaction des actionnaires aux émissions obligataires

Ce projet de recherche permet d’évaluer le rôle joué par les structures de gouvernance lorsqu’une entreprise émet de la dette sur des marchés financiers. Premièrement, les grandes entreprises utilisent les marchés financiers pour s’endetter : elles émettent des obligations. S’endetter sur ces marchés présente des particularités : l’entreprise dispose d’importantes quantités de fonds. Or, au contraire des crédits bancaires, les prêteurs sont nombreux et ne peuvent pas contrôler l’emprunteur aussi efficacement qu’une banque. Il existe donc un risque que ces fonds soient mal utilisés et ne créent pas de la valeur pour les actionnaires de l’entreprise. Cependant, la bonne utilisation de ces fonds dépend avant tout des structures de gouvernance propres à chaque pays : application du droit, protection de la propriété, transparence, efficacité des sanctions, etc. Le but de cette étude est donc d’évaluer le rôle de ces structures de gouvernance. Et ainsi d’établir les structures les plus efficaces.

Optimisation d’un service d’autopartage de vehicules electriques

Dans les systemes d’autopartage dit «a un seul sens», les utilisateurs peuvent prendre une voiture dans une station et la laisser ensuite a une autre station. Ce comportement conduit generalement a une situation pour laquelle certiaines stations sont pleines et d’autres vides. Le systeme est d’autant plus contraint que les vehicules sont electriques et qu’un temps de recharge minimal est necessaire. Une maniere de remedier a la distribution desequilibree des voitures et de repondre au mieux aux demandes des clients est la relocalisation de voitures a partir des stations pleines vers les stations vides. Le but du projet est d’utiliser les methodes de la recherche operationnelle pour une gestion optimisee et efficace du service.

Determining Aboriginal and Treaty Right Impacts in Regulatory Processes

This project will consider how impacts on Aboriginal and Treaty rights have been addressed in Environmental Impact Assessments and other regulatory processes in BC and Alberta. The impacts being assessed include destruction of areas important for hunting, fishing, trapping, or spiritual purposes, as well as prohibitions to accessing these and other types of important areas. This research will address a gap wherein the methods for determining such impacts are not always explicitly defined. The research objectives are to 1) discover how often these regulatory documents include statements regarding Aboriginal and Treaty rights; and, 2) in those documents wherein such statements are included, discover whether there was an explicit methodology used in their determination; and 3) record, compare, and contrast these methodologies in a formal report. The expected results are that the majority of regulatory documents do not include explicit methodologies, and in those that do, these will vary considerable in scale and scope. This will be relevant to Kwusen (partner organization) because it will provide detailed, comparative data on how potential impacts to Aboriginal and Treaty rights are being assessed in BC and Alberta. TO BE CONT’D

Modeling and Analysis of access-control policies (SELinux and/or SMACK)

Access-control policy management is an increasingly hard problem from both the security point of view (is the policy “safe”?) and the functionality point of view (does the system still work as expected?). Even when a policy is considered both safe and functional, each addition, deletion or modification of the policy has the potential to break the baseline. Using existing tools and mechanisms to model and analyze policies to answer specific safety and functionality questions would be very useful to organizations using access-control policies. Identifying and highlighting current gaps in existing tools and technologies for policy analysis, could potentially lead to improvements and/or new tools and technologies.

Rôle de l’inhibition dans l’apprentissage des sciences chez l’enfant et l’adulte

Apprendre à tout âge les sciences est devenu indispensable. Une culture générale scientifique ouvre à la compréhension de grands enjeux sociétaux. L’esprit critique développé par la réflexion scientifique est un outil crucial à l’exercice raisonné de nos droits et devoirs citoyens. Mais d’après les derniers résultats des études PISA, seuls 8% des élèves de 15 ans sont très performants en sciences. Les enseignants nous informent qu’une des difficultés majeures de l’enseignement des sciences est la résistance de préconceptions erronées chez l’apprenant. Les chercheurs en psychologie, dont le prix Nobel Daniel Kahneman, expliquent cette résistance par la fréquence, la facilité d’utilisation et l’utilité des automatismes. A contrario, le raisonnement réflexif est plus coûteux et lent à mettre en oeuvre. Cette recherche vise à mettre en lumière le rôle et les caractéristiques de la résistance cognitive aux automatismes dans le dépassement des préconceptions en sciences.

The effect of head injury on cardiovascular and postural controls

Approximately 1.7 million people sustain head injuries each year in the United States alone with associated costs exceeding $60 billion. One of the most common symptoms of a head injury is decreased postural control that may be associated with changes in heart rate and blood pressure which may lead to syncope (fainting) , pre-syncope, or falls and re-injury. In order to minimize the risk of re-injury and facilitate healing, further study is required to understand how the cardiovascular and postural control systems interact and how this relationship is affected after a head injury. We will conduct a study to compare how the posture control and cardiovascular systems interact in three different groups (healthy individuals, concussion, post-concussion syndrome) and respond to a sit-to-stand test. The results from this study will be used at NeuroKinetics Health Services to improve assessment and treatment methods for head-injured patients and disseminated throughout the healthcare community.

Impacts sociaux du Réseau d’Investissement Social du Québec

La recherche vise à mesurer les impacts des activités du Réseau d’investissement social du Québec. Cette organisation a pour mission de fournir des prêts de capitalisation à des entreprises d’économie sociale. Ces prêts visent à renforcer la viabilité économique de coopératives ou d’associations à but non lucratif qui visent des objectifs sociaux et collectifs par le moyen d’entreprises. Celles-ci ont été mises sur pied suivant la volonté de communautés locales et elles sont dotées d’une gouvernance participative avec les usagers, les citoyens ou les travailleurs. Ainsi, le RISQ est-il un acteur unique au sein du circuit financier traditionnel. L’étude vise (1) à établir la contribution du RISQ dans l’écosystème de la finance responsable et solidaire du Québec, (2) à caractériser les innovations sociales portées par le RISQ, et (3) à décrire la contribution du RISQ à la dynamique économique.

Desvenlafaxine in Opioid-Dependent Patients

NATURE AND OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT
Patients who suffer from addiction to opioids often experience depression. Furthermore, data concerning the use of effective medication to treat depression in patients addicted to opioids is insufficient. Desvenlafaxine is an antidepressant that has been approved in Canada to treat depression within the general population. We hereby intend to conduct a research project to evaluate whether Desvenlafaxine is a tolerable and acceptable treatment for opioid-dependant patients undergoing methadone treatment at the CHUM addiction clinic and other methadone clinics in the Greater Montreal region. Presently, we are posting project research’s information at the CHUM addiction clinic, the Centre de recherche
et d’aide pour narcomanes (CRAN) and the CRD Le Virage. We will also assess the effects of this medication on depressive symptoms.
NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS AND DURATION OF PARTICIPATION
The study will include 20 patients undergoing methadone treatment and suffering from opioid addiction and depression. Your participation will last 8 weeks.