Innovative Projects Realized

Diabetes Self Management in Individuals from Modest Socieconomic Status (SES) Backgrounds

Participants diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) from lower income backgrounds will receive personalized health coaching to support engagement in vigorous regular exercise and healthy eating aimed at regulating blood glucose and reducing risks of costly diabetes-related complications. The health coaching makes use of a Blackberry smart phone preinstalled with health behaviour promoting – monitoring software designed and written in collaboration with NexJ Systems. Diabetes poses a serious economic burden to Ontario’s health care budget, but with optimal disease management, the probabilities of expensive complications and consequent treatment can be minimized. Personalized health coaching paired with eHealth monitoring provides a low-cost solution to Ontario’s escalating health care expenditures relevant to multiple chronic diseases by facilitating adherence to healthy behaviours. NexJ systems’ will directly benefit from this research since its software will be directly user-tested under controlled research protocols.

Mechanisms of cold tolerance in Miscanthus, a novel biofuel crop for Canadian climates

The proposed research projects for this internship will include both ongoing chilling/cold acclimation studies as well as establishing successful protocol for cryogenic pollen storage and inducing flowering in select varieties of Miscanthus. Leaf‐level gas exchange and fluorescence will be used to survey the photosynthetic apparatus before, throughout, and after the shortterm chilling experiments and throughout the long‐term acclimation experiments. Understanding the photosynthetic response of Miscanthus to chilling and long‐term cold acclimation will allow Pyramid Farms to select the most suitable varieties for climates across Canada. Establishing protocol for pollen storage and inducing flowering will greatly assist in breeding varieties that maximize the cold tolerance of and yield potential within the genus. Combined, these research projects will contribute synergistically toward a more focused breeding program that could incorporate molecular markers of cold tolerance in the selection of new varieties.

Power Flow Analysis for Smart Distribution system

Hydro One is changing Ontario’s power grid into a smarter grid. This change has many aspects, like the use of renewable energy, communication and electric vehicles. Private investors are encouraged to invest in renewable electricity production through Ontario Power Authority's Feed-In Tariff Program, which is a pricing structure for renewable electricity production. This program pays from 44.3 to 80.2 ¢/kWh for the electricity generated from solar Photovoltaic and from 13.5 to 19 ¢/kWh for electricity generated from wind energy. These incentives increased penetration of renewable electricity production in Ontario’s grid. Unfortunately, this increase imposed many challenges on the reliability and security of Hydro One networks. These challenges need to be addressed in order to have further increase in renewable energy penetration. This work will develop tools that will help Hydro One to address these challenges.

Improved Safety Equipment for the Mining Industry: a New Yielding Rock Bolt

This project is focused on improving mining safety through newly developed yielding rock bolts. Extensive testing work and mechanistic study will be carried out to optimize the design of the new product. Predictive models will be developed to describe the performance of the product during occurrence of rock bursts. The industrial partner will benefit significantly from the project with validated and improved product design. This project addresses an important safety issue in the mining industry and therefore will bring economic benefit to Ontario.

Biomechanical Assessment of the Emergency Medical Bag for Association of Municipal Emergency Services of Ontario

The purpose of the project is to perform a biomechanical evaluation of the bags, and lifting techniques that are preformed by paramedics on a daily basis. The intern will spend 1.5 months in Eastern Ontario, with approximately 2 weeks in the area surrounding Kingston interacting with and observing lifting techniques and conditions under which paramedics lift bags while on the job. These observations will direct a moked-up-in-lab investigation into the peak compressive, shear and cumulative forces played on the body while lifting medical bags. One of the test bags will be a medical backpack bag designed by Ostrom Outdoors Inc. Using different weights and lifting techniques, paramedics will be asked to complete a series of lifts which will allow a comparison of field results using 3DSSPP to a 3D hands-down inverse dynamic model. The results of this study will: provide insight into the actual task demands of medical bag lifting, determine if safe techniques and weights are used, and provide additional direction for selection criteria in the Physical Demands Evaluation. In addition to these tests, the Ostrom Outdoors medical bag will be modified based on objective and subjective comments and retested in an improved design. Additional time devoted to re-design and follow-up testing of the Ostrom Outdoors medical bag will require 1.5 months.

Geomorphic Principles used in Natural Channel Design: The State of River Restoraiton in Southern Ontario

The goal of this project is to describe the current state of river restoration practice, focusing on the application of geomorphic principles utilized in the design process, in the Toronto & Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) in Ontario, Canada.  The proposed research will review design drawings, supporting documentation and other relevant data.  In addition to providing an inventory of the geomorphic principles used in the design process project constraints, objectives and monitoring results will also be noted.  The inventory generated through this project will provide practitioners with an understanding of what approaches are used in the TRCA and a baseline from which improvements in the implementation of geomorphic principles in river restoration design can be made.

WindEEE (Wind Engineering, Energy and Environment) dome, Prototype design and validation

The Wind Engineering, Energy and Environment (WindEEE) Dome, the world’s first hexagonal wind tunnel, represents a technological breakthrough in the study of wind-related phenomena as it has the capability of physically simulating high intensity wind systems – including tornados, downbursts, gust fronts or low-level nocturnal currents – that cannot be created in any of the existing wind tunnels. A comprehensive experimental study will be performed on the 1/10 scale prototype of the WindEEE dome employing flow visualization, Hot wire and PIV measurements to confirm the CFD modeling results (provided by AIOLOS Engineering Corporation) and to help AIOLOS Engineering Corporation to optimize the design of the WindEEE dome.

Assessing Small Mammal Community Assemblages and Population Dynamics across Multiple Geographic Scales on the Canadian Prairies

Small mammals (mice and voles) are a vital component of most terrestrial ecosystems; however, their communities have not been studied on large geographic scales because of limits imposed by conventional sampling methods (ie. Trapping). This project will take advantage of great-horned and burrowing owls as efficient surveyors of small mammal communities. Specifically, small mammal community composition analyses will be based on 50,000 small mammals identified in owl pellets collected from sites spanning 380,000 km2 of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Data on such large scale would be completely unattainable through traditional trapping methods. The objectives of the project include (a) understanding how variation in habitat affects small mammal communities; (b) identifying relationships between small mammal species composition and human land use; (c) understanding changes in small mammal communities over time. This research will offer unprecedented insight into environmental factors affecting small mammal distribution and abundance. 

Designing Social Games to Maximize Engagement and Healthy Living

Ignite play is developing a social media package which will make healthier living more fun and easier. An important component of this package is social game and reward system that encourages users to make changes in their lifestyle. This project will involve the development of a game design (in terms of prototype or series of prototypes) which will help:
1. Attract and engage users,

2. promote virality (spread to other users),

3. promote stickiness (ability to sustain users),

4. provide incentives for people to engage in healthier behaviours, and

5. foster a sense of community.

This design will be validated through user feedback. The outcome will be a design document for the final production of the game that will be developed and published by IgnitePlay.

Interactive Image Matting on Mobile Devices

The project involves researching statistically-based image matting techniques and interfaces for mobile devices.  This would allow users to identify an object or other region in a photograph by indicating with a touchscreen parts of the image that are “inside” or “outside” the desired region.  Statistical computer visions techniques will use the human input to find the best matting to isolate the desired object.  As the user adds more information, the matting will automatically be updated.  As this is intended for mobile devices, research will be required to ensure that the matting will work efficiently on low-power mobile processors.  This work is related to the machine learning PhD work of the intern, and is valuable to the partner organization, as it is developing several photo-manipulation applications based on image matting, and improved techniques will ensure the applications are compelling on newer mobile devices.

Delivering Moderate-Income Rental through Mixed-Tenure Housing in Metro Vancouver: Market and Policy Challenges and Opportunities

There is currently a large and growing unmet demand for affordable moderate-income rental housing in Metro Vancouver. To address this issue, recent studies and programs have focused on increasing the supply of purpose-built rental apartments, and condo and secondary suite sublets, but another potential mechanism which has been little explored is mixed-tenure housing (projects which include both condo and purpose-built rental units). This internship will provide a local real estate developer, Concert Properties, with: information on the feasibility of using mixed-tenure housing to deliver moderate-income rental housing to the market; and recommendations for which policy and financial models can best support this type of development in Metro Vancouver. This internship will include: literature review; study of publicly available information; statistical market data analysis; interviews; and creation and analysis of development pro-formas. 

Implications of a whole genome scan in beef cattle

Traditional selection, based on phenotypes and pedigree, has gained success in genetic improvement of livestock. However, Genomic Selection (GS) is revolutionizing cattle breeding as genotyping cattle for 50,000 SNP is now feasible commercially. With GS, the values of markers discovered in a reference population are used as predictors in other populations, thus the persistence of linkage disequilibrium phase between populations is important. This proposal is designed to estimate the effects of markers across the genome, as well as patterns of linkage disequilibrium in beef cattle. It also explores methodologies to impute genotypes for related animals using a small number of markers on important animals. This will save genotyping costs, making the technology affordable for cattle producers. The outcomes of this proposal will have a direct impact on the genetic improvement of beef cattle, and thus production improvements capitalizing on new opportunities arising in the genomic era.