Innovative Projects Realized

Climate change and meltwater supply from debris covered Himalayan glaciers

With the benefit of three months supervision from Dr Argha Banerjee at the Indian Institute for Science Education and Research, my research on glacier dynamics and hydrology in High Mountain Asia (HMA) will make an important contribution to understanding the likely impacts of climate change, understanding that will improve people’s resilience. HMA is the most glacierized region in the world after the Poles and glacial meltwater is vital to hundreds of millions of people downstream. Research there has so far been limited and is now a high priority. There is evidence that extensive ice surface debris cover and avalanching significantly influences melt from glaciers in HMA and neither has been adequately quantified. My aim is to precisely and accurately measure these variables and model the annual and seasonal meltwater flux from glaciers in HMA over the coming century with cutting-edge methods at higher resolution than ever before.

Modeling the effect of pile diameter on response of pile groups under lateral loading

Deep foundations are sometimes single piles which transfer loads to a stronger and deeper soil layer, but they are generally used in groups. Available design guidelines for lateral response of pile groups are based on the limited experimental studies on “small” pile groups with pile diameters of up to “30-40 cm”. This limitation is due to the difficulty and cost of full-scale testiing particularly in larger pile groups. To cope with this limitation in development and evaluation of design guidelines, it would be reasonable to use representative three–dimensional numerical simulations. The proposed research aims for investigating the effect of pile diameter on the response of pile groups under lateral loading and evaluating related design guidelines. Golder Associates Ltd. is heavily involved in analysis and design of soil-pile interaction in various largescale engineering projects. The outcome of this research would be beneficial both the intern in terms of its research merits and to Golder Associates in terms of its applications in engineering practice.

Amélioration de capteurs à effet Hall pour la mesure précise du courant et du facteur de puissance

Les méthodes commerciales actuelles de supervision de l’énergie ne répondent pas aux besoins de l’industrie, car elles sont trop volumineuses, trop couteuses et elles demandent un temps d’installation important. Une approche prometteuse consiste à utiliser des capteurs à effet Hall afin de mesurer l’intensité du courant électrique d’un circuit à partir du champ magnétique produit par ce dernier. Bien qu’il permette la mesure du courant à faible coût, ce type de capteur présente une précision limitée en comparaison à d’autres technologies. Ce projet vise donc à améliorer la mesure de l’énergie à partir de capteurs à effet Hall et ainsi réduire les ressources matérielles et les coûts reliés à l’implantation d’un système de mesures de la consommation électrique en temps réel.

Investigating sediment transport in relation to the functionality of white sturgeon habitat in the Nechako River

Understanding how, when and where sediment is being transported through White Sturgeon spawning area in the Nechako River is important because fine sediment greatly reduces the quality of the habitat. Accumulation of fine sediment in the spawning areas has greatly decreased fish survival by preventing eggs from adhering to gravel on the river bed and infilling spaces between the gravel that larvae must use to hide in. Our research will address how reach-scale flow and sediment dynamics relate to sturgeon habitat and survival by quantifying the amount of sediment moving through the reach, characterizing the spatial and temporal pattern of transport and identifying how the channel is evolving through time. Results from this study will advance our understanding of reach dynamics, improve future habitat restoration by incorporating sediment transport and channel evolution into the design and ultimately contribute toward the conservation of this endangered species. The proposed research represents a mutually beneficial collaboration between the intern and NHC, whereby the intern will gain experience with techniques to be used in his thesis and NHC will be provided with data collection, post-processing and analysis.

Sensory Characteristics and Metabolomics for Flavour Selection in Pork

The hog industry in Manitoba is a very efficient means of converting grains and pulses into high quality protein. Fresh pork is a healthy and nutritious source of protein, yet demand remains static. One of the main reasons cited by consumers for not choosing
pork is the absence of good taste in modern pork. The objective of this project is to get fresh pork back on the dinner table by restoring its flavour. The process in which to achieve this goal will include the use of sensory analysis to test the flavour of 1,350 pork tenderloin samples from an array of breeds supplied by Maple Leaf. With the additional use of a metabolomics approach, we will correlate sensory results with metabolites to determine which samples result in the most naturally flavorful meat samples. Maple Leaf already owns or controls about 80,000 sows mainly in Manitoba, producing 1.8 million market hogs annually. Improving the pork flavour will further increase profitability for Maple Leaf and the hog industry, increase sales volume and revenue for the meat industry, and expand the choice of healthy protein for the consumer.

FREE Living HEMP Seed and Oil (FREEHEMP) Trial

This project will look at how eating hemp foods, specifically hemp oil and hulled hemp seeds, daily for four weeks will impact human health. The Mitacs interns will be involved in a human clinical trial which will measure the impact of hemp food consumption on blood fatty acid profiles and cardiovascular disease risk factors, in overweight and obese volunteers. The results from this project will help hemp food product producers, such as Manitoba Harvest, to expand their potential markets, which are currently limited by the lack of human trial data regarding the health impacts of hemp food product consumption. With a more establish scientific literature, hemp foods will be able to better compete with other foods and food ingredients.

Effects of Pulse Lighting Regimes on Microalgae Growth

Algae are microorganisms present in all aquatic environments with the ability to grow using sunlight as energy source. This ability can be harnessed to produce biomass for various purposes of industrial interests such as biofuel, animal feed, nutrients, etc. This project seeks to improve the productivity of an algal growth facility while reducing energy costs by exploring alternative illumination methods.

Optimisation de l’ordonnanceur dynamique de la plateforme Notixia

Dans la plupart des environnements industriels, les approches classiques d’ordonnancement sont rarement capables de prendre en considération l’information en temps réel, qui est de plus en plus présent dans différents systèmes de gestion d’entreprise. L’évolution d’une approche statique vers une approche dynamique permet d’améliorer la performance de l’ordonnancement. L’utilisation d’approches métaheuristiques pour résoudre le problème d’ordonnancement dynamique sera privilégiée dans ce projet. À travers ce projet, l’objectif est d’analyser en profondeur les fonctionnalités et les limites de l’ordonnanceur de la plateforme Notixia, et proposer des solutions de nature algorithmique, architecturale et/ou au niveau de l’implémentation, pour améliorer la performance de l’ordonnanceur. Le passage vers un ordonnancement dynamique pour la solution PLM/ERP Notixia permettra non
seulement de maintenir la confiance des clients existants et répondre à leurs besoins spécifiques, mais aussi de réponde à des nouveaux clients dont les aléas sont fréquents.

Gaining Insight from Crash Reports and Bug Reports

This project seeks to address the flood of bugreports and crashreports that software companies must address when they build consumerfacing software. Organizations can easily face 50,000 crash reports per day. Developers cannot manually sift through them all. The goal of this work is to exploit modern search engine technology and crash report representation to enable the fast and efficient querying, clustering, and reporting of crash reports so that developers do not have to group crash report manually. This enables an organization, such as our partner organization, to be aware of new issues arising as well as to efficiently address

issues that endusers are facing during deployment. The same is true of bug reports. Multiproduct bug reports are numerous and hard to address manually. Partner organizations benefit from increased software quality assurance efficiency, Canadian industry benefits from the release of powerful opensource tools, and interns benefit from industrially relevant training.

Optimization of Makeup Water in a Recirculating Aquaculture System

Fish grown in RAS require special water quality conditions to remain healthy and grow. New water is meant to be added to the system only to account for evaporation, splash out, cleaning and flush out of waste materials. However, the amount of makeup water used at the Oak Bay hatchery is excessive when biomass is at its peak; therefore, the main focus of this project is to discover the reasons for excessive water consumption and to determine whether the system can operate at a rate of 350 liters makeup water per kg of feed with the existing equipment. Otherwise, the point at which the target can no longer be met will be identified and based on the bottleneck of the process a modification will be proposed. The project will benefit Cooke Aquaculture Inc. by improving makeup water management and hence lowering water demand and reducing energy requirements.

Solutions intelligentes pour l’efficience et la fluidité urbaine

L’Université Laval, l’Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Thales Recherche et Technologie Canada, le Parc Technologique du Québec Métropolitain et la Ville de Québec ont créé une unité mixte de recherche en sciences urbaines (UMR-SU) visant à améliorer la qualité de vie de la population en milieu urbain. L’UMR-SU propose une vision intégrée de la gestion des différents services urbains comme les transports, l’environnement, la santé, l’éducation et la sécurité. Ce réseau de collaboration s’appuiera sur une infrastructure partagée à la fine pointe afin de fournir des solutions technologiques novatrices optimisant 1) la gouvernance et l’acceptabilité citoyenne, 2) l’efficience et la logistique, 3) le transport et la mobilité, 4) la gestion des eaux et l’environnement, et 5) la sécurité urbaine. Les investissements publiques et privés résulteront en la création d’emploi, et en un effort inégalé de recherche et développement qui générera, entre autres, une meilleure synergie des services urbains et une épargne sur les coûts énergétiques et la gestion sanitaire.

In Vitro Blood Vessel Formation/Immunohistochemistry Protocol Improvement and Development

This internship will involve licensing three smooth muscle cell lines. I will be working with the cell lines and growth factors to promote blood cell formation in vitro (not within a living organism). The company will then have the cell lines licensed, and we will then work to assemble a kit for commercial use. IThe partner company will benefit from the development of an in vitro commercial kit. Furthermore, the internship will aim to develop a particular technique of functional quality control testing, called immunohistochemistry, to Cedarlane Laboratories. The partner organization will benefit from this connection in that they will be able to expand on a particular method of testing, which will allow for the sale and distribution of new products, thereby expanding their market to laboratories that utilize this method.