INNOVATION July-August 2016

2015 ❖ 2016 Project Highlights

SNOLAB’s DEAP-3600Watches for Dark Matter A pressing issue in physics today involves a hypothetical particle predicted to interact only rarely with ordinary matter. The hunt for dark matter requires scientists and engineers to develop innovative methods to study these elusive particles. Two kilometres underground at SNOLAB, near Sudbury, Ontario, the DEAP-3600 detector features a suspended acrylic vessel filled with 3600 kilograms of liquid argon and is surrounded by photomultiplier tubes attached to acrylic light guides. If dark matter scatters an argon nucleus in DEAP-3600, the detector will sense the emitted light and allow researchers to probe the dark matter particle’s properties. TRIUMF is a leading contributor in DEAP-3600’s construction, including the manufacture of 255 acrylic light guides. TRIUMF provided the electronics system for reading out over 300 single-photon sensitive photomultiplier tubes for deciding if a flash of light warrants recording and for handling various external systems characterising the detector.

Closed-Loop, Personalised Anaesthesia Administration Improves Patient Safety

With the goal of personalising anaesthetic drug dosing, the University of British Columbia Electrical and Computer Engineering in Medicine research group, led by Guy Dumont, P.Eng. , and anaesthesiologist Dr. Mark Ansermino, developed  iControl . The provably safe, certifiable, closed-loop system automatically adjusts in real time the administration rate of anaesthesia drugs based on feedback from a measure of the patient’s brain activity. Anesthaesiologists are responsible for giving sufficient drug to facilitate the surgical procedure, while maintaining the patient’s vital functions. Currently, drug administration is controlled manually and guided by feedback from physiological measures. Inadequate dosing can compromise patient safety and negatively affect post-operative outcomes. Closed-loop feedback control will reduce variability in desired clinical effects, facilitate research to establish optimal care, and free anaesthesiologists to focus on higher-level tasks, such as responding to unexpected clinical changes. By introducing closed-loop control to personalise anaesthesia, iControl will improve patient safety in the operating room. 

Connected Snow-Removal Camera Solution Traditionally, snow removal firms have relied on weather reports to manage their operations.Weather reports typically cover a large geographic area, with snowfall in one neighborhood generally varying greatly with that in another. Businesses depend on ploughing services. With plough trucks arriving too early, too late, or too infrequently, this leads to unhappy customers and a loss of business. Houle Electric, in partnership with TELUS and Mobotix, developed a connected snow-removal camera solution to address these concerns. A cloud-based algorithm processor uses the cameras’ sensing technology to calculate temperature drops of greater than 2° Celsius within a 60-minute interval. Once detected, the camera takes a snapshot with a temperature/ date/time text overlay and sends that information back to Global Roadway Maintenance for operational decision making. Hourly snapshots are also captured, eliminating need to manually keep records of when snow removal services were completed for each location.

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