Innovative Projects Realized

Ecological and Cultural Restoration of an iconic Plant Food (Fritillaria camschatcensis) in the Squamish River Estuary, British Columbia

I am a member of the Squamish Nation and my research focuses on restoring an important traditional plant food into the Squamish estuary. The title of my research is "Ecological and Cultural Restoration of an iconic Plant Food (Fritillaria camschatcensis) in the Squamish River Estuary, British Columbia." I will be working with Dr. Nancy Turner and Dr. Trevor Lantz as my co-supervisors at the University of Victoria to undertake this research as part of a larger research project led by Dr. Turner called "Bringing the Foods Home" that focuses on renewing traditional foods in Indigenous communities. My research will focus on conducting an ecological survey of the Squamish estuary to characterize successful riceroot habitat and then to construct an experimental garden where this plant can be tended to and used for educational purposes. I will incorporate community involvement throughout this research and emphasize the link between traditional foods and health.

Organizational Risk Appetite/Tolerances

Organizations face increasing pressure to articulate organizational risk appetite/tolerances but are not adequately equipped to do so. To remedy this problem, this project addresses how an organization should determine and express its risk appetite and tolerances. It employs qualitative research methods to integrate diverse theory, practice and policy literatures with the partner organization serving as a case study. The project’s three primary deliverables are an integrated organizational risk appetite/tolerances framework for the partner organization, a practitioner report for The Conference Board of Canada, and an academic manuscript for the intern and his co-researchers. These outcomes should provide direct governance benefits for the partner organization as well as indirect learning benefits for the practitioner, policymaker and academic communities more broadly. This will be the second and most intensive phase of this research project, which started in November 2010 after receiving approval from the University of Calgary Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board.

Physiological monitoring and field verification of exposure limits in older miners exposed to high heat stress conditions

Underground miners traditionally work in harsh environments containing dust and noxious gases. Recently, there is concern that the increasing risk of heat exposure may compound the deleterious effects of these conditions and further subject the workers to increased risk of heat stress. A new and growing challenge to the industry is that the Ontario mining workforce is rapidly aging. Older workers are at a greater risk of developing a heat related injury, which is further exacerbated by poor physical fitness and disease states. Research focused on optimizing safety for an aging workforce is of paramount interest to the industry. This research will focus on examining the effects of aging on thermoregulatory responses associated with physical work performed in adverse environments. A key objective of this work is to establish appropriate exposure limits based upon typical mining work conditions that can protect miners of all ages working in hot and hostile conditions.

The effect of head injury on cardiovascular and postural controls

Approximately 1.7 million people sustain a head injury each year in the United States alone, and the associated costs exceed $60 billion annually. 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, recent head injury, and post-concussion syndrome) and respond to a sit-to-stand test. The results from this study will be used at NeuroKinetics Health Services Inc. to improve assessment and treatment methods for head-injured patients and disseminated throughout the healthcare community.

Visual Histories of Decision Processes for Business Intelligence: Part 2

In contemporary professional work, particularly group work, knowing what has been done, and why it was done, is often crucial to a project’s success. Further, people naturally wish to remain in the “flow” of their work – they are reluctant to pause to record work and decisions. Yet most work and project management software require significant effort to use and provide only minimal tools for supporting review, reflection and reporting of such histories. The goal of this research project is to devise, prototype and test efficient work recording and dynamic visual histories and linked repositories for collaborative decision making. The partner company’s core enterprise is software tools for complex tasks in organizations. The company will benefit through new concepts for managing group work and its histories. This will yield new insights into their current and future products.

Oxidation of Oil Sand Process Water (OSPW) by Ozone combined with Ultrasonic irradiations

The aim of this project is to develop a treatment system for the oxidation of naphthenic acids from the oil sand process water. The organic acids, chlorides and aromatic compounds are released into water during extraction of bitumen and heavy oil from the oils sands. Bioremediation is a cost effective and natural w ay, but high concentration and complex structure of these pollutants makes renders this treatment ineffective. Although number of studies have been published in the literature for the degradation of napthenic acids, but lower removal of TOC suggest an incomplete removal of these pollutants. The proposed research w ill involve the use of ozone and ultrasonication for the complete mineralization or conversion into smaller molecules suitable for biodegradation. EnviroWay R&D has been involved in the remediation of environmental pollutants, developed technology w ill enhance their understanding of removal of petroleum pollutants, scale up and commercialization of this technology.

Immunohistochemistry Protocol Improvement and Development

This internship will aim to develop a particular technique of functional quality control testing, called immunohistochemistry, to Cedarlane Laboratories by developing product specific protocols and strategically testing them on individual reagents. 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 and existing products for immunohistochemistry, thereby expanding their market to laboratories that utilize this method.

Growing Canadian Cleantech: Improving Seaforth Energy’s access to the Indian small scale wind turbine market

Re-thinking hydro dam management: A conservation tool for preserving of Nova Scotia’s important freshwater habitats.

User-Side Analyses of the Effect of Laser Data Uncertainties on Mapping Applications

Manufacturers’ specifications for laser data acquisition have been used since the inception of the technology over a decade ago [Habib et. al., 2008; Ussyshkin et. al, 2006]. However, unbiased geostatistical analysis would be valuable in determining – in a pre-analysis stage – whether or not user-demanded specifications for project-specific mapping applications can be met or exceeded by the manufacturer’s standards. The partnering organization’s knowledge of false accuracies, if any, can assess the uncertainty of marrying airborne laser data budgets with the total uncertainty propagation model [Hare, 2001] – used for hydrographic data error budgeting – in CARIS HIPS as of now. Ultimately, CARIS seeks to integrate these two error sources and provide a total uncertainty budget model suitable for both terrain and hydrographic objects.  Finally, assessing the accuracy of LiDAR measurements within a controlled test field will determine whether or not the actual uncertainties lie within predicted tolerances.

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. By employing the proposed framework, the IBM can extend and customize their products to better support the creation and management of Virtual Organization in a dynamic global world .

Evaluation of appearance, corrosion properties and leach resistance of modified micronized copper preservative treated wood

Recently introduced micronized copper wood preservative system has successfully captured most of the treated wood market in the USA; however, it cannot be acceptable in Canada because the wood surface is mottled and streaky in appearance when it is applied to Canadian wood species (spruce-pine fir). This problem may be solved by partially solubilizing copper with MEA to provide an even color to wood surface. If this modification does not compromise the excellent Cu leach resistance, corrosion resistance and expected mould resistance of the micronized copper system, the partner organization will be able to get this improved treatment accepted in the Canadian market. The intern will evaluate the modified system focusing on optimizing the formulation to address the above issues over a four month research period.