Microbial diversity around natural hydrocarbon seeps in relation to petroleum bioprospecting and oil spill bioremediation Year 1

Oil reservoir souring is the production of toxic hydrogen sulfide by sulfate-reducing microorganisms (SRM) through naerobic respiration supported by organic electron donors present in oil fields. In recent years, nitrate injection has merged as a promising green biotechnology that has been proven effective in controlling sulfide production in oil fields. This strategy relies on inducing […]

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Engaging stakeholders to evaluate alternatives in energy system planning through agentbased automated negotiation Year Two

The objective of this project is to improve long-term planning of Alberta’s electricity system infrastructure in collaboration with an industry sponsor, Alberta Electricity System Operator (AESO). The project aims at engaging stakeholders in a regional planning exercise in southern Alberta by a detailed exploration of their perspectives when evaluating energy system alternatives. This was identified […]

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A New Adaptive Antenna for RF Heating of Hydrocarbon Reservoirs

Canada owns the largest heavy oil and bitumen reserves in the world. Unfortunately, extracting these hydrocarbons is difficult due to their high viscosity. Currently, the most popular strategy is to heat the bitumen using steam, but steam injection can be inefficient and is not suitable for all reservoirs. Radio frequency heating offers a flexible and […]

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The design, development and testing of a collaborative and adaptive root-cause analysis (CARCA) tool in a professional health, safety, environment, and regulatory department

This project aims to test and fully develop a collaborative and adaptive root-cause analysis (CARCA) tool. Designed as an educational technology, the goal of this tool is to enhance learning and retention of knowledge and skills of Health, Safety, Environment, and Regulatory professionals in their incident/accident investigations. The project will extensively test the tool for […]

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Bulk Data Transfer among Cloud Data Centers: Online Algorithms and SDN Implementation

This project studies efficient online optimization algorithms for large-scale data transfer among data centers in a geographically-distributed cloud system, as well as their SDN (Software Defined Networking)-facilitated implementation. Big data analytics, content distribution, and various web applications (social networking, search engine) have become dominating applications on today’s cloud platforms. Moving bulk volumes of data from […]

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Stepping Out. The impact of exercise on young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The overall research project undertaken by the University of Calgary graduate students will examine the effects of exercise on young adults 18-35 years of age with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Areas of investigation include cerebral blood flow changes, as well as sleep behavioral improvements. By doing research such as this, we will justify the use […]

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Methods to improve high-resolution airborne thermal infrared (TIR) imagery in support of urban waste heat mapping, monitoring and metrics

This proposal builds on 5 years of research in the award winning HEAT (Heat Energy Assessment Technologies) project. Every year, billions of GJ of wasted heat leave millions of buildings in thousands of cities world-wide. In an effort to support urban energy efficiency, this research proposes four novel image post-processing techniques to improve/verify the geometry, […]

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CommuterVis: Visually Understanding Commuter Behaviour in Canada

Too many people drive cars for commuting to work. If people used more active and sustainable transportation options this would reduce the impact on the environment and likely increase people’s physical activity and well-being. Our project partner Sustainable Alberta Association (SAA) is a not for profit organization that organize a Canadian annual wide competition called […]

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Data Mining of Urban Mobility Pattern Using Taxi Trajectory Data

Urban mobility results from human movements from one region to another for interaction such as working, trading goods and other social events. Urban mobility has caused not only urban prosperity, but also some problems in the urban system, such as congestion, air pollution, energy consumption, public health and disease transmission. Therefore, understanding urban mobility is […]

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Catalytic low cost carbon resources pyrolysis under natural gas for upgraded oil production

Fast pyrolysis followed by hydrodeoxygenation upgrading is the most popular way to produce bio-oil from biomass. A two-step process can be combined together as hydropyrolysis treatment. This approach usually involves continuous hydrogen flow and high operation pressure (15~100 atm), resulting in significantly increased capital and operational costs. Compared to hydrogen, which is not naturally available […]

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Source apportionment of black carbon in Calgary, Canada

Black carbon (BC), generated from incomplete combustion of carbonaceous fuels, is one of the two major airborne pollutants that drive climate change and degrade regional air quality. With a warming potential second to CO2, BC contributes the most uncertainty to climate modeling due to its short retention time in the atmosphere and poorly understood mixing, […]

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