Innovative Projects Realized

Protesting Poverty: Mediated Global Protest and Images of Poverty

This position supports a research project concerning the representation of poverty in Western consumer society. Despite worldwide news attention reporting on the growing social unrest and protests facilitated by the unequal distribution of wealth and resources in countries such as Canada, the United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Iceland, Russia, Mexico and India, media attention consistently overlooks the intrinsic socioeconomic and political issues embedded in the issue of Western poverty in favour of focusing on the extreme conditions plaguing those of the peripheral countries. Through a content and critical discourse analysis of news reports, this project will critique the mediation of poverty and its place in Western cultural politics. The analysis of the news reports will be enriched through a visual deconstruction of representations of poverty in other media, with a particular focus on specific advertising campaigns, film, television, and music examples, both historical and present. In critiquing the visualization of poverty in popular culture and its construction in the news media, the issue will be connected back to the broader context of political economy and cultural studies, employing marketing techniques in addition to the larger theoretical background. The project also considers the influence of social media and other networking technologies.

Global Innovators: Broadcasting to Digital Technologies

This position supports a research project on the changes in the communication technologies from broadcasting to digital technologies by examining the global innovators. This work will investigate the core elements of the people who were at the centre of the last century of communication technologies’ transformation. This research will focus on the catalysts of conversion from one medium to the next from broadcasting to the various visual technologies to the modern-day users of the all-encompassing digital technologies. Starting with archived interviews with the men and women of the early days of broadcasting who pioneered radio in to the contemporary users and innovators of digital technologies, student research interns will examine the role of these innovators on a global level starting with Canada and moving on to countries such as India, China, U.S.A., United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Vietnam. These commercial and public broadcasters were, in those early days, the founders and adopters of new technologies, playing a role in introducing the world’s audiences to awe-inspiring technologies that had not existed prior. As early trendsetters in broadcasting, they were often professionally trained in radio and wireless communication as well as entertainers, skilled in the art of showmanship and entertainment in order to generate and maintain audiences. They were not only the visionaries giving voice to new technologies but acted as the medium that connected people through the technology, instilling an essence that allows people to connect through the technology still existing today. Today, many of these technologies and techniques from the past generations are still being used by contemporary broadcasters.
The early years of the project’s focus is supported by the interviews conducted with broadcasting pioneers collected and archived in the Canadian Communication Foundation Fonds and the Kenneth Bambrick Fonds in the Library and Archives Canada. Having a range of interviews from different time periods and regions allows for a content and critical discourse analysis of the various regional and temporal perspectives. The student research interns will focus on various aspects of this research such as discovering archival sources available worldwide. These sources will allow for an examination of the many media including radio, television, and digital media. Students will be able to conduct interviews with contemporary innovators to compare this groundbreaking sense that continues to pervade this industry. The student research intern will have the flexibility to choose between conducting interviews with the contemporary broadcasters or technological innovators from all over the world so a language in addition to English would be an asset, working with the archived materials to document and track the different perspectives, and analyzing the content of the contemporary interviews and placing them with a historical, contemporary, technological and global context.

Self-Centering Concrete Structures

Recent major seismic events, including the 2011 New Zealand Earthquake and the 2010 Chile Earthquake, have demonstrated similar trends to previous earthquakes; that current state-of-the-art seismic design codes ensure, for the most part, that loss of life is avoided. It is accepted in the engineering community that significant damage can be expected for major earthquakes. However, building officials and owners are not aware that many structures will not be serviceable after a major earthquake, resulting in significant economic consequences. This has led to the development of self-centering structural methodologies that result in a structure that is serviceable after an earthquake and, furthermore, reduces permanent damage. The recent emergence of Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) for structural engineering applications has provided new opportunities for developing novel self-centering structural systems. Superelastic SMAs are characterized by significant strength, strain, ductility and energy dissipation capacities. However, the most appealing feature is the capacity to restore to its original shape.

The objective of this research program is to investigate and develop new self-centering technologies for concrete structures by exploiting the salient features of superelastic SMAs. This program includes numerical modelling and experimental testing. The Globalink student will contribute to numerical studies and small-scale experimental tests.

Currently, a long-term experimental program is ongoing which focuses on old construction, in particular non-ductile structural components, such as poorly detailed reinforced concrete shear walls and frames. The structural components are detailed according to pre-1970s design standards, such as the American Concrete Institute Standard ACI 318-63; a representative benchmark standard for structural concrete design practice prior to the enactment of seismic design provisions. Retrofit strategies will be investigated including using SMAs as external diagonal bracing. For optimization, a system will be developed where a short SMA link will be coupled with rigid steel elements in an X-bracing retrofit. The Globalink student

Variation in Hospital Resource Use: Systemic Predictors and Implications on Quality and Value

Research Project Vision: To promote attention to quality, appropriateness and accountability in hospital resource use.
This vision is underpinned by the following four strategies:
1. Establish resource use variation reports specific to departments and individual providers.
2. Associate resource use with quality outcomes that measure accessible, effective, safe, efficient and appropriate care.
3. Use system dynamics methodology to analyze the drivers of variation and improve our understanding of ways in which health care system policy and hospital structure are related to hospital resource use.
4. Guide the design and evaluation of initiatives to control ineffective or unnecessary use of hospital resources.

With rising health care costs, governments nationally and internationally are looking to reform the health care system to ensure sustainability. In Ontario, to ensure that future investments get results and improve patient health, the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care is now moving towards a more patient-centred payment policy to fund hospitals. Under the new payment system, more volume and funding will be allocated to hospitals that deliver evidence-based care and preferred outcomes. Therefore, there is pressing need to conduct research that demonstrates the value of hospital resource use in the care of patients and to identify quality measures that can be used in policies to promote appropriate, value-added use of resources.
A starting point to assess health services appropriateness is to measure variation in its use. It has been suggested that where large variation exists, there tends to be inappropriate use. Only after valid and reliable measures of variation of hospital resource use are produced can focus turn to appropriateness. The proposed research will also shed light on whether higher rates of hospital services produce better patient management and outcomes. It will also provide useful information for hospital administrators and policy makers aiming to promote accountability and increased value of hospital and health care resources.
Diagnostic imaging is a promising candidate for variation reporting. Diagnostic imaging helps triage illness severity and assesses the need for urgent intervention. Imaging also enhances diagnosis, guides medical treatment and helps determine whether a patient is clinically suitable for discharge. However, the decision to use a certain type of imaging, if any at all, is not always clear. Lack of clarity is partly due to the rapid advance in imaging technologies, leading to multiple modalities capable of use in a wide range of clinical situations. Despite the uncertainty of some testing patterns, diagnostic imaging is one of the fastest growing health care expenses in Canada and the U.S. In fact, rates have outstripped changes in demographics, disease prevalence and indications for use. This has prompted concerns of appropriateness and made it an increasingly visible target for efforts to control health care costs. The ability to reward only those imaging services that bring value to the care of patients would improve the effectiveness, efficiency and appropriateness of hospital care.

Smart Applications on Cloud

Cloud computing is a new deployment and operational model in which high level computation services and storage are provided by Internet (“cloud”). In this project we investigate how applications can become smarter and take advantage of many features that clouds provide. The project addresses the challenges in automating the cloud management and provides services for cloud federation, brokerage of resources, optimization and performance prediction.
The project has two main themes: adaptive cloud and smart applications.
In adaptive cloud, theme we look into how to make clouds self-managing, that is self-healing, self-organizing, self-protecting and self-optimizing. In the smart applications theme, we look at new types of Internet applications, applications that have large number of users, are real time and multimedia and are geographically distributed across the globe. This project has an interdisciplinary research team, with expertise in computer networks, software engineering, data base and web technologies specialist. It is a multi-universities and multi-companies project.

Campus Public Health Emergency Simulations

School closure during an infectious disease outbreak has always been a public health mitigation option, with substantial social and economic cost and uncertain effects on outbreak control. The meaning of school closure differs from region to region and from country to country, for example, during the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic, very strict interventions including Fengxiao (restrictions on the movements of university personnel) were taken in mainland China to slow down the initial spread of the disease from the university network to a wider
Community, but Fengxiao means complete opposite to school closure in Canada.

The decision for implementation and/or relaxation of school closure or Fengxiao certainly depends on the setting and the assessment of the level of infection within the university network in comparison with the level of community infection and of the degree of interruption of the normal academic activities and the social/economic costs, but the most important factor impacting the decision is whether the initiation and termination of school closure/Fengxiao can alter the disease spread pattern in the entire community for an effective prevention and control of the emerging disease. In [S. Tang, Y. Xiao, L. Yuan, R. Cheke & J. Wu, J. Theoretical Biology, 295:21, 47-58(2012), a dynamic model to evaluate the effectiveness of Fengxiao as a social distance measure for curbing the outbreak in major cities of China was developed and analyzed. The Centre for Disease Modelling also launched a modelling study (unpublished) with a typical school in Ontario for model parametrization. The intern project will base on these two studies and an intensive literature review to identify two comparative schools in two different settings to see under which condition school closure/Fengxiao is feasible and useful.

Characterization of the type IV pilin from Coxicella burnetii

The gram negative bacteria Coxicella burnetii and Francisella tularensis are the causative agents of Q fever and tularaemia, respectively. Infection by either organism can result in high mortality rates, especially in immuno-compromised individuals; in addition, there are very limited options for detection of both C. burnetii and F. tularensis. Recent evidence shows that both bacteria have functional type II secretion system (T2SS) and type IV pilus (T4P), and that functional T4P affect virulence. Sequence analysis indicates that proteins cbu0156 and ftn0389 are the major pilins of C. burnetii and F. tularensis, respectively; several other proteins, including cbu0155, cbu1891, ftn0116, and ftn1137 have been identified as T2SS effector proteins. Sequence-based modelling of cbu0156 identifies this protein as a PilA homolog and predicts a structure similar to that of the P. aeruginosa pilins. Despite these advances, little is understood of these proteins at the structural level, how they affect virulence, or how they can be used for detection of C. burnetii or F. tularensis infection. The aims of this research are (1) the structural and biophysical analysis of the Coxicella and Francisella pilins and T2SS effector proteins, and (2) evaluation of these pilins for protein nanotube (PNT) assembly and biosensor development. These studies will provide detailed structural information into the pilins and multiple T2SS effector proteins, leading to novel therapeutics, and provide a framework for the development of protein-specific biosensors for C. burnetii and F. tularensis. We are targeting the determination of the high resolution structures of C. burnetii and F. tularensis pilins (cbu0156, cbu0412, ftn0389) and T2SS effector proteins (i.e. cbu0155, cbu1891, ftn0116, ftn1137). Proteins will be initially purified as His-tagged constructs and crystallized using standard procedures; fusion protein (MBP, GST, etc.) constructs will be utilized if solubility issues are encountered. X-ray data will be collected in-house and/or at an appropriate synchrotron facility as appropriate for structure solution. Where possible, we will use molecular replacement (MR) for the structure solution using the known structures of type IV pilins, homology-based models or structures of a fusion-protein partner (i.e. MBP, GST etc.) as search models. Proteins will also be crystallized as Se-Met proteins, in addition to heavy atom soaking, for experimental phasing as required. Structure solution and refinement will use available software packages, for example the CCP4 and Phenix suites of programs. All refined models and diffraction data will be made available through deposition in the Protein Data Bank.

Crosstalk between the two visual streams

We will vary the strength of a feature in one stream and measure perception (discrimination task), processing time, and action (eye movements) of a feature in the other stream.
Prior relevant research:
Tchernikov & Fallah (2010)
Perry & Fallah (2012) Awaiting more information from the professor. Please check back soon. Do not contact Globalink Research Internships.

Attentional Mechanisms

Using psychophysics, we will investigate how selection mechanisms overcome the limited capacity in visual processing. Awaiting more information from the professor. Please check back soon. Do not contact Globalink Research Internships.

Electronic System Design of 2-D Imaging Spectrometer for Balloon Flight Test

The applicant recently was awarded a grant by the Canadian Space Agency to develop a 2-D image spectrometer together with a local company. This spectrometer will be validated through a high-altitude balloon flight within 3 years. In order to make this project successful, high-performance electronic circuits will have to be designed to acquire imaging, control mechanism, act as power supply and amplifiers, etc. FPGA technologies will be used. The successful interns will work with my graduate students to design, build and test electronic circuits.

Dynamics and Control of Smart Structures for Space Application

Satellites on orbit experience many internal and external disturbances, which make high-resolution observation on orbit difficulty. One solution is to isolate the payload from the disturbances by means of isolation platforms. This project is to develop a smart actuator-based micro-vibration isolation platform for high-resolution space applications such as mapping. The platform is required to be light-weight, less power-consumption and high-resolution. We will conduct dynamics modeling and control system design for the platform. Different controllers will be tested on this platform and the performance will be compared. The objective of this project is to provide an effective way for micro-vibration isolation for future spacecraft.

Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia Partnership

The project objective is to enhance the economic and social resiliency of cities in Southeast Asia, recognizing the important connections between urbanization, the effects of climate change, public awareness, and societal well-being. The Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia Partnership, involving Canadian and Southeast Asia-based researchers, supports dialogue to create greater social justice and enhance opportunities for economic growth in the context of climate uncertainties. Due both to geography and limited planning capacity, the countries of Southeast Asia’s Mekong region are highly vulnerable to climate change, whose economic and human implications are severe. The effects of natural disasters are magnified by the weak governance of many cities in terms of basic services provision, management of public funds, and public participation in decision-making processes (Tanner et al. 2009). Urban residents are thus doubly vulnerable to both physical consequences as well as the wider societal decisions that determine who will bear the brunt of the social and economic costs of climate change.
Urbanization and a rapidly changing climate present enormous economic and political challenges to cities everywhere. This is particularly true in countries in the midst of social and political transitions. The nations of Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, which are the focus of this project, face imminent consequences of climate change (UNDP 2012; World Bank 2010; ADB 2009). Concomitantly, each of these countries has different capacities for representative governance, yet all face significant inequality and have poor records of inclusive growth (World Bank 2010). Implementing climate change planning under these conditions is problematic at best. The region’s rapidly growing cities are very likely to experience floods, sea level rise, and even droughts as global environmental change occurs in the next decade (Lian and Bhullar 2011; Marks 2011). Urban residents, in particular, are extremely vulnerable to economic, social and physical risks because they are concentrated in geographic locations subject to disasters, and in municipalities that often lack the capacity to implement effective climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. Climate risks in cities are compounded by environmental changes created by urbanization, notably urban heat and pollution. At the same time, urban areas, their municipal governments, and citizens, increasing in influence vis-à-vis the nation-state, have the greatest potential for addressing such global challenges.
The project’s main questions are motivated by the patterns of rapid urban growth, weak governance, and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change in the Mekong region. The questions are not mutually exclusive and build upon each other in a sequential manner:. 1. How will climate change impact the poverty and vulnerability of urban residents in Southeast Asia? 2. What does knowledge, from both academic literature and action research, tell us about creating climate resilient urban governance that is both inclusive and equitable? 3. How can we strengthen the agency of individuals, groups and institutions to improve economic, physical and social well-being in urban areas, particularly in response to climate change?