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Innovation now
July 2013, Vol. 2, No. 6
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At work for the economy |
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TECH TALK  Researchers at the University of Toronto have dramatically improved a computer’s ability to recognize speech as well as patterns in images. Google recently acquired a spin-off company created by the research team and it now uses the new technology for better image searching capability for its search engine and Android cellphone. Read more…
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REVOLUTIONIZING ORTHOPEDIC CARE  A company in Laval, Que., projects a worldwide market value of $230 million annually for a portable arthroscopic probe two visionary biomedical engineers developed at École Polytechnique de Montréal. The device will help detect the early signs of osteoarthritis, a disease that costs Canada more than $4 billion a year in health-care expenses and lost productivity. Read more…
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A HIGH-DEFINITION ACHIEVEMENT  The University of Victoria is now home to the world’s most powerful microscope, thanks to a partnership with Hitachi, the global leader in scanning electron microscopy. The microscope’s ability to magnify subjects over 1 million times will enable transformative research and its unique components will help Hitachi gain an edge in the global market for electron microscopy — valued at $4.3 billion in 2012 — by propagating the pioneering technology throughout its mass-market microscopes. Read more… |
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Spotlight on research |
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THE PEOPLE’S PLAYLIST  This summer, music lovers will descend on music festivals around the world to listen and dance to their favourite bands. And when they do, they’ll be participating in a practice as ancient as the percussion. “There’s no culture in recorded history that doesn’t engage in some form of music,” says Matthew Woolhouse, a researcher at the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, at McMaster University in Hamilton. “It’s a language that tells us something about who we are.” Music is so intimately connected to our identities that Woolhouse and a small team of researchers are poring over datasets of 180 million song downloads to answer complex questions about people. Last October, Woolhouse started a five-year project funded by telecommunications giant Nokia. Inside McMaster’s new Digital Music Lab, Woolhouse and his team peer into the company’s closely guarded data and study the music-downloading habits of its mobile-phone users. Nokia’s presence in North America is less dominant than it is in most of the rest of the world, where tens of millions of people freely download songs onto their phones every day from the company’s digital library. Read more…
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CFI-funded research in the news |
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HEALTH — University of Victoria researcher develops high-tech method to detect prostate cancer (University of Victoria, Metro News, July 11, 2013) TECHNOLOGIE — Création de jeux vidéo à portée sociale à l'Université Concordia, avec la professeure Lynn Hugues. (L'Université Concordia, Radio-Canada, le 29 juin 2013) |
BIODIVERSITY — Centre for Biodiversity Genomics headquarters for International Barcode of Life project (University of Guelph, Guelph Mercury, July 6, 2013)
HEALTH — Research in big data analytics working to save lives of premature babies (SickKids, Global News Toronto, July 5, 2013) |
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