Innovative Projects Realized

Determination of nutritional values of freeze-dried berry products

Berries are rich sources of nutrients that can offer health benefits to consumers. Short growing season and shelf life are limit factors and a large amount of fresh berries have to be processed. Freeze drying is a rapid and low-temperature technique that can maximally retain the nutritional values and flavors of berry products. The influence of freeze drying on nutritional values of berries is not fully characterized yet. The objective of this research is to investigate the correlation of manufacturing conditions with nutritional values of the finial berry products. Antioxidant capacity and contents of bioactive compounds, including polyphenols, flavonoids, anthocyanins and vitamins of freeze-dried berries will be determined. The outcome of this work aids in the optimization of industrial production of freeze-dried berry products

A Pilot Project to Assess the Pharmacoeconomic Feasibility ofSubcutaneous Immunoglobulin for Neuromuscular Diseases

For the management of neuromuscular disorders (NMD), subcutaneous immunoglobulin (SCIg) administration has become an alternate option, being a home-based alternative to conventional intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), with a comparable efficacy, minimum adverse effects and significant improvement to the quality of life. With the increased cost of healthcare management, it has become more challenging for clinicians and other healthcare decision makers to come up with a better alternative while considering economics factors, though as a secondary. There is not much knowledge about the cost of the management of NMDs with the alternative SCIg therapy along the side of IVIg. This study is aimed to assess the direct as well as indirect costs of the management of NMDs with SCIg while identifying healthcare resources utilization and considering the quality of
life as a major factor.

Modeling and optimisation of woven composite hydraulic tubes, to reduce in-service defects and failures

Sanexen Environmental Services Inc. is a Quebec-based industrial partner, specializing in the environmental management of contaminated site remediation and water main rehabilitation. Over the past 30 years, the company has developed a profound expertise, as well as technologies to meet the needs of private and public organizations facing various environmental issues. Currently, Sanexen in collaboration with Neidner Inc., is developing a strong supply chain to manufacture the next generation of woven composite tubing systems that can be deployed in any terrain, and used in a range of extreme operating conditions. However, potential in-situ failure modes of such composite systems, such as snaking and fibre-decoupling, can led to costly service deficiencies and significantly hamper the tasks of workers on-site. The present partnership between the University and Industry teams will allow to properly characterise the root of these failures and develop a design and manufacturing optimisation tool to mitigate the material defects.

Measuring Social Progress on Urban Aboriginal People: Construction and Application of a Composite Index of Quality of Life

As Aboriginal people increasingly migrate to urban areas, it has become imperative to promote their socioeconomic engagement in the destinations. While there has been increasing research focuses on Aboriginal peoples’ quality of life (QoL) few studies explicitly measure Aboriginal people’s QoL based on a shared understanding of what QoL really means to Indigenous peoples and the government. Consequently, a meaningful conversation between the parties has not occurred to make a substantial improvement to the current status quo. Therefore, there is a need for measures of QoL that are robust, inclusive, and comparable over time and space to bridge the knowledge gap. This research project proposes to examine urban Aboriginal population’s QoL in Saskatoon by developing a composite QoL index, which is primarily based on their traditional values and beliefs, to identify common trends across individual indicators while benchmarking the overall performance of Aboriginal people. The application of the QoL index helps municipal governments develop strategies to address Aboriginal peoples’ needs but also brings new market opportunities for the industrial partner to expand its business while contributing to the improvement of the lives of urban Aboriginal peoples.

Global ground stability mapping with radar satellites

3v Geomatics (3vG) processes tens of thousands of radar satellite images annually to measure ground stability over time. The image processing pipeline demands very high storage and computation resources. The goal of this project is to enhance this pipeline so it can deliver better results faster. First, the project will profile and identify efficiency bottlenecks of the pipeline. This will be followed by design and development of novel approaches to enhance pipeline efficiency. Opportunities can be found at various levels, including improving task scheduling to utilize resources more efficiently or accelerating individual graph-based algorithms employed in the pipeline.
This project and resulting improvements in pipeline throughput are very crucial to 3vG. As thousands of tasks are queued waiting for availability of resources, even minor optimization to the pipeline can yield a significant improvement to productivity of the entire process. TO BE CONT’D

Improving Productivity in Bioreactors through control of foaming and cell heterogeneity

Heterogeneity of cell populations is a common occurrence in bioreactor operations (Lara et al., 2006) and is typically caused by processing of cell cultures in vessels of varying sizes and process conditions and by deficient mixing. Most bioreactor research deals with average conditions of the cell population with respect to quantities such as dissolved oxygen and extracellular nutrient level, while these averages actually correspond to very different distributions of individual cell growth and productivity. Thus, in the production of vaccine, different cells in the culture may exhibit at any given time different growth and may produce different amount of antigen.

The main goal of this proposed study is to improve bioreactor productivity by controlling cell heterogeneity. We propose to manipulate the cell distribution at the beginning of the culture to improve productivity of the process. TO BE CONT’D

The effects of coated zinc oxide intake on growth performance, zincabsorption and gut health in weanling rats

Zinc deficiency during the post-weaning period is known to cause adverse health outcomes such as impairment of growth and diarrhea. Zinc supplement seems to critical in achieving positive growth responses, but a high dose of zinc is concerned to be toxic and cause a large amount of zinc excretion, resulting in environmental pollution. Thus, the purpose of this project is to investigate the effects of a lower dose of zinc supplement, coated zinc oxide, on growth performance and gut health in weanling animals. Successful completion of this research will provide information on the effects of coated zinc oxide on the health of weanling animals and its beneficial effects on reducing environmental pollution. This study will support IGY Inc in efficacy and safety evaluation of company’s new product lines.

Human factors in drilling automation

The efficient utilization of automation systems necessitates a clear understanding of the interaction of the human operator, the automation system and any automated routines being run. Precision Drilling is installing the newest generation of drilling automation control systems on their fleet of rigs and wishes to understand both the interaction of the human driller with the automation system by creating a monitoring application which will record all human inputs to the system as well as catalog the routine or operation the automation system executes during a normal drilling operation. By cataloging and analyzing this data, inefficiencies will be identified – specifically ones where the human interrupts automation routines.

Impact of feeding and vaccination strategies on carcass outcomes in beef cattle

In western Canada, increased nutrient demand associated with decreased temperatures and increased fetal growth may lead to nutrient deficiencies in pregnant cattle. Compromised maternal nutrition can impact fetal muscle development, body weight gain, hot carcass weight, back fat and marbling. Vaccination strategy may also impact carcass outcomes of the offspring. Carcass evaluation is necessary to determine if these reactions persist until slaughter. In this study we will compare the growth performance, muscle development and carcass outcomes in male offspring from cows supplemented or non-supplemented from day 109 of gestation to parturition. The impact of injection techniques using needle-free vs. needle syringe injections on carcass outcomes, including injection site reactions will also be studied. To conclude, we will potentially define novel management strategies to improve cow performance as well as growth and carcass outcomes of the progeny.

Monitoring cherry postharvest rot and predictive analysis

Postharvest rot of sweet cherry destined for export markets has caused significant economic losses to Okanagan growers. The major fungal pathogens causing rot have not been identified. This project will identify the two major pathogens responsible for postharvest rot in cherry during two growth seasons and characterize them with respect to temperature effects on growth and sensitivity to fungicides. Using DNA-based methods we will track the abundance of the pathogens in the orchard during the growth cycle of cherry, following major rain events and postharvest. Abundance in the orchard will be correlated with disease incidence postharvest and with weather data to begin to build an Okanagan-specific model to predict the risk of postharvest rot in sweet cherry under varying environmental conditions. This will assist growers in making efficient use of chemical controls, improve fruit quality and reduce postharvest losses.

Electric bus demonstration and integration trail

Electrification of transit vehicles is a part of Ontario’s long-term strategy to reduce transportation-related GHG emissions. However, transit agencies and utility/local distribution companies face significant technological and operational hurdles in integrating “off the shelf” electric bus technologies. This project aims to overcome the social and technical challenges associated with a lack of international standardization for overhead charging systems. Given the gaps of trail data and neutral demonstration settings regarding performance with real world application, this project will provide a cost comparative model for the lifecycle degradation of both electric and diesel bus options. Further research will address the impacts of carbon pricing on municipal transit agencies, a GHG score card methodology development, and normative consultation sessions based on expert insights to deploy the next generation technologies of integrated mobility systems for Canadian transit.

Creating moments for shoppers: Impact of time on effectiveness of notifications

Over the last recent years, internet usage through mobile devices has grown rapidly and today, majority of the online traffic is coming from mobiles. This means that most of the time, a user uses his/her mobile to view the retailer website, review items or finish a purchase. Accord ingly, reta ilers have come to the idea of building a platform that would engage and re-engage users through pushing notification. However, there are multiple factors such as time of a day that a retailer would takes into account to send out notific.ation. A retailer requires to carefully analyze its users to avoid sending out spammy notifications. In this project, we aim to design a model that would recommend an optimal time to reach out different users in order to most effectively engage them.