Diabetes is a serious, common and chronic health problem. In Canada, more than 2 million Canadians are living with diabetes today. Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes that accounts for approximately 90% of diabetes cases. The cost of diabetes care is almost 4 times as much as for someone without diabetes. […]

Influenza is associated with thousands of hospitalizations and deaths annually in Canada. The cornerstone of influenza control is the annual trivalent influenza vaccine administered prior to the start of the flu season. The annual vaccine does not provide perfect protection for all recipients and it is difficult to measure the vaccine’s efficacy at the start […]

Global climate change threatens to drastically alter the behaviour and fitness of many species, and the ability to predict how Canadian wildlife will respond to these changes is imperative in planning management strategies. In this study, we will examine long-term changes in bill colouration, diet, and abundance of the Atlantic Puffin. We will collect feathers […]

In this research we will determine how the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) moves through cells of an infected host. The FIV is very similar to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and like all retroviruses moves from the cell membrane through the cytoplasm and then into the nucleus of infected cells. Once in the nucleus, the […]

Insulin controls blood sugar and is required for the entry of sugar (glucose) into blood cells from blood. Excess body fat in obesity or high fat diet makes body resistant to insulin. Due to this insulin resistance, sugar accumulates in the blood and over time this leads to an increase in blood sugar and development […]

Nowadays, most of cell biomechanics studies based on cell stretching have focused on small stretching magnitude, without the ability to visualize cell behavior and morphology during stretch. We therefor decided to build a cell stretcher/incubator providing the physiological conditions of cell culture (37°C, 5% CO2) while also allowing the application of a wide range of […]

Breast cancer (BC) accounts for 15% of all cancer cases in Ontario, affecting 8,700 women in 2009.  Thus, there is a great need for the development of new anti-cancer agents and the identification of patients who are best suited for tailored treatment.  The drug metformin has emerged as a potential therapy for BC.  Metformin is […]

Thrombolytic therapy is the mainstay of stroke treatment. However, this treatment can be potentially harmful. A patient-specific model of expected outcome would greatly facilitate the treatment decision making process both for clinicians and patients. We propose to develop a clinical tool by incorporating the imaging and clinical dataset to predict the fate of tissue in […]

  Testing of in-stream tidal power devices in Minas Passage, NS began November 12, 2009 when the first of three prototype units was installed on the seabed. The Upper Bay of Fundy, including Minas Passage, is recognized as an area of high ecological importance, and is home to a diverse assemblage of fish, which includes […]

We propose to identify HA fragments sizes that are useful for promoting wound repair using an assay funnel of 2 D culture screens to identify relevant reagents and then characterize their effects on wound repair using an animal model of excisional skin wounds and human 3D co-culture of skin cells.

  The Semantic Web offers a tantalizing new opportunity to share knowledge that is formally represented. While general visualization strategies for linked data are the subject of many current investigations, certain relations have a well understood meaning which could lead to custom visualization strategies. Our research proposal consists of three parts: (1) surveying the kinds […]

  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 […]