news

Science, Health & Technology Alex Walls UBC graduate students trained computers to "read" news articles about landslides on Reddit to bolster a NASA database, which could improve predictions of when and where these natural disasters will occur. For their Master of Data Science in Computational Linguistics capstone project, Badr Jaidi and his team, the Social Landslides group, trained computers to automatically extract useful information from relevant news articles about landslides that were posted to Reddit.

Canadians think they know a lot about snow. It is practically a national pastime to discuss winter weather. But a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo is taking the Canadian obsession with weather to a whole new level. Fraser King is studying the ways machine learning can be applied to predicting patterns of precipitation, and especially annual snowfall and snowmelt in the context of climate change.

A next-generation diabetes monitor that analyses breath might soon mean no more needle pricks to check blood sugar levels. The device uses gas sensors to measure breath instantly, then links via Bluetooth with a program on a mobile device to give a readout. Distinct biomarkers in exhaled breath carry a subtle signature that the device picks up before the app uses a deep learning algorithm to produce rapid individual results.

An UdeM computer scientist and his PhD candidate have developed a tool for animators to use bitmap sketches to control how a character stands and moves in three dimensions. What's the best way to get 3D characters in videogames to look real and expressive? Two computer scientists at Université de Montréal have come up with answer: use simple bitmap sketches to make their poses more lifelike.

Researchers at Simon Fraser University have made a crucial breakthrough in the development of quantum technology. Their research, published in Nature today, describes their observations of silicon -T centre- photon-spin qubits, an important milestone that unlocks immediate opportunities to construct massively scalable quantum computers and the quantum internet that will connect them.

As the world fights climate change, will the increasingly widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) be a help or a hindrance? In a paper published this week in Nature Climate Change , a team of experts in AI, climate change, and public policy present a framework for understanding the complex and multifaceted relationship of AI with greenhouse gas emissions, and suggest ways to better align AI with climate change goals.

A team of researchers led by University of Toronto Professor  Tim Barfoot  is using a new strategy that allows robots to avoid colliding with people by predicting the future locations of dynamic obstacles in their path. The project, which is supported by Apple Machine Learning, will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Philadelphia at the end of May.

New artificial intelligence (AI) models can help doctors prioritize care by predicting which COVID-19 patients are most at risk of dying or developing kidney injuries during hospitalization. The sophisticated computer software, developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo, identifies vulnerable patients by learning from previous COVID-19 patient cases with known clinical outcomes.

Last January, as 55 centimetres of snow blanketed Toronto over a period of just 15 hours, the city's snow-clearing fleet appeared to struggle to keep up. But was it actually different than other storms, or did it just seem that way? For three students in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering who were taking "Data Science for Engineers," a graduate-level course taught by  Sebastian Goodfellow , an assistant professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering, it was the perfect case study to test out their new number-crunching skills.

Microplastics are all around us - in the water we drink, the food we eat and the air we breathe. But before researchers can understand the real impact of these particles on health, they need faster and more effective ways to quantify what is there. Two recent studies by researchers at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have proposed new methods that use machine learning to make the process of counting and classifying microplastics easier, faster and more affordable.

UdeM physicist William Witczak-Krempa studies unusual states of matter in the quantum realm. William Witczak-Krempa, a professor in UdeM's Department of Physics since 2016, is a quantum physicist who studies highly entangled quantum states of matter. Quantum entanglement enables the encoding and sharing of information at great distances, a property that is harnessed in quantum computing.

News Release - Queen's Researchers develop algorithm to identify pulmonary hypertension from available Ontario healthcare data KINGSTON, ON- Pulmonary hypertension is an often under-recognized chronic disease that involves a congestion of blood supply in the lungs and heart, and is associated with other life-threatening diseases like heart failure.

Sustainability of ice roads at risk due to climate change By A new study found that measuring the time it takes for a radar pulse to travel from a satellite to the sea surface and back again can reveal the thickness of river ice and dates when it is safe to travel on ice roads and bridges in arctic regions.

Preparing for an online start to the winter term: for more information. Researcher Christine Muschik thinks outside the box with quantum computing innovations  Computing revolutions of the past few decades have already taken us from floppy discs to an era of almost instantaneous communication in an internet-connected world.

Preparing for an online start to the winter term: for more information. Trailblazing research is transforming the field of rehabilitation medicine by developing robotic exoskeleton legs capable of autonomous control and decision making  Brokoslaw Laschowski is using his interdisciplinary education - spanning four academic degrees - as a toolkit to integrate robotics technology with rehabilitation medicine.

Preparing for an online start to the winter term: for more information. New program recognizes users' hands beside or near the keyboard and prompts operations based on different hand positions Researchers are developing a new technology that uses hand gestures to carry out commands on computers. The prototype, called "Typealike," works through a regular laptop webcam with a simple affixed mirror.

Researchers take step towards more complex quantum simulations  A team of researchers led by an Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) faculty member performed the first-ever simulation of baryons-fundamental quantum particles-on a quantum computer. With their results, the team has taken a step towards more complex quantum simulations that will allow scientists to study neutron stars, learn more about the earliest moments of the universe, and realize the revolutionary potential of quantum computers.

New AI model enables computers to analyze text in African languages for many useful tasks Researchers have developed an AI model to help computers work more efficiently with a wider variety of languages. African languages have received little attention from computer scientists, so few natural language processing capabilities have been available to large swaths of the continent.

A team of computer scientists, including Claude Crépeau of McGill University and physicist colleagues from the University of Geneva, have developed an extremely secure identity verification method based on the fundamental principle that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. The breakthrough has the potential to greatly improve the security of financial transactions and other applications requiring proof of identity online.

Scientists and medical practitioners now have a greater chance of discovering possible diseases through tissue sample analysis Researchers are developing a deep learning network capable of detecting disease biomarkers with a much higher degree of accuracy. Experts at the University of Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science have created a deep neural network that achieves 98 per cent detection of peptide features in a dataset.