research and innovation : In The News

The Hospital For Sick Children is set to officially open its new collaborative research centre on September 17 after 10 years of planning and construction.

A report that ran on Global News states the $400-million tower is "intended to be an incubarot or innovative ideas," according to the hospital's head of research, Dr. Janet Rossant.
 

The 21-story Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning will "bring together the venerable hospitals’ 2,000-plus scientists under one roof after decades of being scattered in five different locations," Global News reports. 

Architects worked with the hospital to design a space that prevented researchers from working in silos, instead favouring an approach that inspires collaboration. The hospital features "neighbourhood gathering spots" that are accessible from several floors and encourage meeting and mingling. 

"[The architects] have built these mini atria in which people can come out of the lab, come into this space, sit down, have a coffee, talk to friends, have a small meeting," Dr. Rossant told Global on a tour of the new facility. "This is not just the most beautiful part of the building, but it really exemplifies what we wanted to achieve in the building."

The building will feature "state-of-the-art research labs for seven broad disciplines – among them genetics/genome biology and neurosciences/mental health," Global reports. 

"We do it, research in the hospital, because we want to implement change. We want to see change that impacts on health," Rossant says.

Read the full story here. 

Original Source: Global News

Thumbnail photo by dhammza via photopin cc

 

University of Toronto professor and CEO of digital makeover platform ModiFace, Parham Aarabi, will head down to San Francisco next month to speak at the MobileBeat conference on the mobile user experience and the future of mobile keyboards. 
 

In an article he wrote for VentureBeat explaining the basis of his talk, Aarabi looks at intelligent touch screen devices and dynamic keyboards, which change based on probable letters. But what he's most fascinated by is the world "beyond keyboards," which makes up the backbone of his current research at the University of Toronto. 

 

Extended Touch is a technology that turns any surface into a keyboard just by placing a mobile device on it. 

 

"…A user can tap a location on any surface that a mobile device is placed on, and based on the unique vibrations and sounds, we detect the exact location tapped," Aarabi explains. "Although the core tap detection technology works reasonably well, there are several important challenges that will need to be overcome. However, it is possible in the future that such an interface (i.e. typing on any surface) combined with a probabilistic keyboard will make a viable method for text entry."

 

Aarabi is developing this technology alongside a team at the University of Toronto's Mobile Applications Lab (APL). He believes this technology will influence everything from presentations to the creation of novel musical instruments and game interfaces.

 

Check out the full article here and learn more about APL here.

Original Source: VentureBeat

Arts and culture festival Luminato kicks off in two weeks and with it comes the opportunity to participate in the world's first "human heat map logo," an augmented reality exhibition that will turn a virtual gallery into a heat map recreation of cosmetics company Lancôme's rose logo.

 

The virtual gallery is made visible through an app created by San Francisco company CrowdOptic. The app works when attendees point "their phones at different places around David Pecaut Square to see a 'virtual gallery' not visible to the human eye. Augmented reality works by displaying layers of computer-generated information on top of a view of the physical world," an article in Venture Beat reports. 

 

"As people explore the virtual art pieces, a heat-map will be created displaying where they are and what they are looking at it. When the event is over and people are done using the app, what they will leave behind is an entirely new type of digital art: a giant, crowdsourced version of the iconic Lancôme rose spanning the length of an entire city square. It will be an enormous, virtual mural of sorts that each person has individually contributed to, just by participating."

 

The apps unique analytics-based approach allows it to "track and object as it moves," which turns people into "personal jumbotrons," according to CrowdOptic's Jon Fisher.

 

The experiment is part of "20 Bloggers for a Rose: The Lancôme Virtual Gallery," an extension of the Lancôme-sponsored photography exhibit "Roses By." It will run from June 14-20 at David Pecaut Square located in front of Metro Hall. 

 

 

Read the full story here.

Original source: Venture Beat

Toronto's Wattpad wants to be the Pinterest of stories, according to the vision of founder and CEO Allen Lau. He tells Venture Beat that Wattpad, the online e-reading platform that features work from indie and well-known writers alike, gets more monthly activity than popular platform Kindle. Last month's numbers included 15 million unique visitors, 1.5 million story uploads, and three billion user minutes spent on Wattpad. 

 

The Ontario ministry of economic development invited Venture Beat to Toronto this week to checkout the city's startup scene. Wattpad is at the top of their list, alongside Hubba, Fixmo, Extreme Startups, the University of Waterloo, Google's Waterloo facility and about as many visits with venture capitalists and angel investors as the online tech publication can handle. But reporter John Koetsier, the VB representative visiting Toronto this week, says the reporting on Wattpad is his own. 

 

Venture Beat praises Wattpad for its method, which to date does not include a monetization model; something Lau says is intentional.

 

"Where he wants to be is similar in size to a Facebook or a Twitter: hundreds of millions, or even billions. And how he plans to get there is by doing more of what Wattpad has done to date: via indie authors and, increasingly, branded books and name-brand authors," Koetsier writes. 

 

Lau tells Koetsier that Wattpad has taken a very episodic approach to its platform to emulate the television format, presenting larger works in pieces over time. “Attention spans are getting shorter and short, so to make long-form writing work, we break it up," Lau says. 

 

Koetsier will be reporting throughout his Toronto visit. Read his articles here. 

Original source: Venture Beat 

A new report ranks Toronto as the sixth most globally competitive city among 23 Canadian and international cities. 

 

The report, titled Toronto as a Global City: Scorecard on Prosperity and issued by the Toronto Region Board of Trade and the Certified Management Accountants of Ontario, explores "human capital" and how it effects productivity and economic success. It is the fifth time a Scorecard on Prosperity has been issued. 

 

Toronto placed sixth overall, with Paris, Calgary, London, Oslo and Madrid above it. Other cities included San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, Tokyo, Boston, Stockholm, Dallas, Vancouver, New York, Barcelona, Montreal, Halifax, Hong Kong, Milan, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Shanghai, which placed last. 

 

The report measured Gross Domestic Product  (GPD) per capita and GDP growth, productivity and productivity growth, income per capita and income growth, employment growth and unemployment rates. It identifies strengths and weaknesses with city cores. 

 

"In our comparison of human capital, Toronto ranks fourth out of 12 North American competitors. Through our analysis of 13 related indicators, we conclude that human capital cannot be viewed as the main cause of Toronto’s relatively low productivity performance. Nevertheless, the excellent overall score hides some troubling underlying weaknesses that leave no room for complacency," the report says.

 

"The Toronto Region needs to attract more skilled immigrants, more university and college graduates, and it needs to make better use of the employment potential of its female population. Considering the continuing economic uncertainty, business, educators, and all levels of government have a role to play in addressing this and other underlying economic challenges."

 

Toronto measured fifth overall last year, but this is the first time it has ranked above all American cities. Much can be attributed to the city's labour attractiveness, which continues to be the driving force behind Toronto's high ranking. 

 

Read the full report here. 

Original Source: Toronto Board of Trade

 

The new Humber River Hospital won't open its doors to patients until 2015, but it's already being touted as a potential global leader in innovation and technology. 

 

Healthcare Global reports that patients will be able to, control lighting, alter room temperature, video chat with nurses and use a bedside monitor to read medical records. These technologies are designed to cut down on the time it takes for nurses and doctors to walk to various parts of the hospital, something further research by CBC News indicates will make the hospital the latest digital hospital in the world. 

Both sources report that though Canada has made efforts to digitize its health-care system, it lags behind other countries. This is about to change. 

 

"The new Humber River Hospital sets the benchmark for hospitals in the future and will change the way patient care is delivered in Canada," Healthcare Global reports. 
 

The Humber River Hospital will become Humber's main acute care centre.  

 

Read the full story here. 

Original source: Healthcare Global

 

No one has won the "Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition," but a Toronto team is getting close. 

 

The competition challenges teams to make a human powered, lightweight helicopter that must hover for 60 seconds and reach an altitude of three metres, staying within a 33-metre parameter. A handful of teams from around the world have given it their best shot since American Helicopter Society launched the international competition in 1980, but the $250,000 prize pledged by the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation is still up for grabs.
 

Not if 31-year-old Todd Reichart has his way. The University of Toronto doctoral candidate in aeronautical engineering "built and piloted the world's first continuously flying human-powered ornithopter, an aircraft that propels itself by flapping its wings," according to an article in Popular Mechanics that explores the famed Sikorsky prize and the various attempts that have been made. 
 

"The following year he broke the college land speed record by hitting 72.6 mph in an enclosed bicycle he designed and built. Now the newly minted Ph.D. and his 26-year-old partner, structural engineer Cameron Robertson, are hoping that the Sikorsky Prize will help finance projects for their fledgling engineering company, AeroVelo." 
 

Reichart and his team of four student volunteers have been working on a pedal-powered "120-pound flying machine, dubbed Atlas, contains just enough structure to lift Reichert's 165 pounds and scarcely an ounce more." Any wrong move and the thing could fall apart. ?
 

Reichart's has tough competition down in Maryland, D.C, Popular Mechanics reports. "William Staruk, student team leader for the University of Maryland, is putting his group through similar preparations in an indoor athletic facility—this one a wood-floored gymnasium with a rubberized track around its perimeter." Staruk's Gamera is said to be lighter and "much better tested." It's flown 50 second to Reichart's 15.

With an open deadline it's only a matter of time before someone claims the prize. But as the article points out, "in the 32 years since the prize was established, only five human-powered helicopters have even left the earth." This includes Atlas and Gamera. 

 

Read the full story here. 

Original source: Popular Mechanics

 

In an effort to "boost its voice and image search technology," Google has acquired Toronto startup DNNresearch, a small company founded by University of Toronto professor Geoffrey Hinton and two of his grad students, Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever. 

 

The financial details were not disclosed, but the news comes following the $600,000 gift provided through Google's Focused Research Awards Programs last year, TechCrunch reports. Much of the discussion is based not just on DNNresearch's research into voice recognition technology and deep neural networks, but also on Google's desire to acquire the talent. Krizhevsky and Sutskever developed a system that "dramatically improved the state of the art of object recognition" and will move to Google. Hinton will "divide his time between his university research and his work at Google," continuing to work part time at UoT and partially out of Google's Toronto office, as well as the company's headquarters in Mountain View, CA. 

 

TechCrunch summarizes Hinton's many accomplishments, noting he "is the founding director of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College in London, holds a Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and is the director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research-funded program on 'Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception.' Also a fellow of The Royal Society, Professor Hinton has become renowned for his work on neural nets and his research into “unsupervised learning procedures for neural networks with rich sensory input," the article says.

 

It also notes that the University of Toronto said the team's research "has profound implications for areas such as speech recognition, computer vision and language understanding." Professor Hinton predicted in a Google+ post that "Google’s team to be the epicenter of future breakthroughs."

 

Read the full story here.

Original Source: TechCrunch

 

Toronto's Evergreen Brick Works, a community environment centre located along the Don Valley, received media attention this week when a reporter from journalism incubator Student Reporter spoke with EBW's co-founder Geoff Cape. In a piece that explored the role of environmental preservation in the concrete jungle, Cape is quoted as saying, "Cities need natural spaces. Not just manicured parks, but ecosystems." 

 

What makes EBW so alluring is not only its copious ravines, local markets, and community-based programs, but also its innovation. The article reports that the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management is writing a case study to further examine how EBW is "bringing nature to the city" in part by connecting environmentalists and businesses. Not to mention the non-profit's commitment to preservation. 

 

"EBW also strives to affect change at the macro level by testing innovative design principles, and sharing lessons learned through their implementation. The revitalized space is itself a showcase of green design, as Evergreen is headquartered in a LEED Platinum addition constructed on the industrial heritage site," the article says. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification is the standard for how Canada measures a building's efficiency. Platinum is the highest certification a building can receive. 

 

Evergreen Brick Works has several revenue streams that don't rely on government grants, sponsorships or donations. This previous method of operation preventing the non-profit from reaching its full potential as it was required to operate on a project-to-project basis. They turned instead to hosting events and renting space to like-minded organizations, developing local markets, and offering paid parking to subsidize a significant portion of their operational budget. 

 

"The social enterprise model," Cape says in the article, "has allowed us to nearly double in size and feed cross cutting support functions like technology, human resources, finance, and marketing. It's given us a degree of confidence and control over our operations, and has introduced us to a range of other networks and relationships." 

 

Read the full story here. 

Original Source: The Huffington Post

The Canadian Press is reporting that a microscope "capable of diagnosing intestinal parasites in Tanzanian children" has been concocted successfully from an iPhone, double-sided tape, a cheap ball lens, and a flashlight.

 

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a Toronto General Hospital physician, told the Canadian Press that the microscope is "portable, it's relatively cheap, it's very easy to use. And it could be very useful in resource-poor settings that are remote or rural."

 

The article states that "Bogoch and colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute at the University of Basel, and the Pemba Public Health Laboratory in Tanzania field tested the device and reported their findings Monday in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene."

 

They found that the microscopes could be modified to pick up about 80 per cent of infections found in children in developing countries. The microscopes allow physicians to detect the eggs that develop into the parasites responsible for infections. The usual apparatus used to detect these eggs costs $200 and requires electricity, making it hard to access in rural areas, the article reports. 

 

The scientists in this study used an $8 ball lens and attached it to the camera of an iPhone with double-sided tape. They expect a slightly more expensive ball lens to generate better results. 

 

"Our goal really was to use the simplest and cheapest options available," says Bogoch in the article. "We really wanted to be as pragmatic as possible. Because ultimately, the goal is to use these products and use these devices in real world settings."

 

Read the full report here.

Original Source: Global News 

The second annual International Space Apps Challenge has expanded to include Toronto. The two-day technology development "codeathon" that allows people around the world to work together "to address current challenges relevant to both space exploration and social need." 

 

Orchestrated by NASA, last year's event featured 26 locations, two of which were Canadian (Montreal and Vancouver) and one that took place on the International Space Station, and more than 2000 participants. Together, people created solutions to challenges that ranged from enhancing scientific understanding of organisms in space to constellation databases, webcams, and travel apps. Thirty-five solutions were nominated for global testing. Categories included software, open hardware, citizen science and data visualization. 

 

The site says, "Our goal is to provide a platform for people interested in space exploration to get together to work on amazing projects together."

 

This year's event will take place internationally and simultaneously on April 20-21. It has grown to include 50 locations. Interested participants can sign up to be notified when registration opens, which should be any day considering the site says this will be announced in early 2013. 

 

Read more about the contest here. 

Original Source: NASA

Self-proclaimed cyborg Steve Mann is concerned about the Google Glass project. Known as the "father of wearable computing" for his pioneering role in advanced existential technologies, Mann has been experimenting with what he calls "computer-mediated reality" systems since the 1970's and he has been designing and wearing computerized eyewear for decades. 

 

The tenured University of Toronto professor wrote an extensive piece entitled "My Augmediated Life" for IEEE Spectrum, a technology and science magazine where he is both an editor and a chairman. In the piece he details his findings after 35 years of wearing computerized eyewear. 

 

The article outlines various examples of times the glasses, which he wears permanently, have played a key role in one of his life's developments. But his main argument centres around Google's Project Glass, the augmented reality glasses that have become media babes since Google began prototyping developer versions in 2011. These glasses are designed to enhance reality by providing additional information to the wearer's surroundings. 

 

Mann calls Google's Project Glass a "much less ambitious" version than the systems he's developed, but elicits excitement writing, "If Google’s vigorous media campaign for its Project Glass is any indication of the company’s commitment, wearable computers with head-mounted cameras and displays are poised finally to become more than a geek-chic novelty." 

 

He worries Google may be neglecting important lessons, that the company's design decisions could "make it hard for many folks to use the systems. Worse, poorly configured products might even damage some people's eyesight and set the movement back years." 

 

The article goes on to explore darker themes surrounding Big Brother versus Little Brother, potential problems glasses like this could cause for citizens and governments alike, most of which stems from walking around with cameras mounted on our heads. He'll be exploring these notions along with other speakers further in at the Augmented World conference in Toronto in June.

 

Read the full story here. 

Original source: IEEE Spectrum

A new app developed by Toronto company Bionym puts heartbeats at the centre of identification. In response to increased security protection concerns, tech security experts are looking to new and advanced ways of using biometric features in identification recognition technologies.  With technology usually reserved for military and government buildings, these companies hope biometric features will eventually be infiltrated into online security measures such as account passwords. 

 

Bionym's new product HeartID contains a security feature that is almost impossible to replicate, writes the International Business Times, and "definitely could not be hacked…unlike traditional passwords and pins."

 

The article explains: "The app analyses the pattern of a person's heartbeat, picks out the variation in the waves that create a biometric template distinct to that individual. The template remains distinct even if a person exercises or is stressed which causes the wave to compress but the shape remains the same."

 

"That means the system could recognize a person regardless of his heart rate, said Karl Martin, the president and chief executive officer of Bionym. He said the company is licensing the software to other companies and working to have the app placed directly in smartcards, tablets and smartphones."
 

These apps work by holding the devices near your heart where an embedded sensor then reads your heartbeat. 
 

Read the full article here.
?Original Source: International Business Times

 

Ontario is quickly becoming leaders in transforming our bodies into remote controls. On Monday, Kitchener-based startup Thalmic Labs announced its gesture-controlled armband Myo (yes that is a Star Wars reference) is available for pre-order. The armband is the company's experiment in seeing how it can "integrate technology into our daily lives and give people superpowers," Thalmic Labs co-founder Stephen Lake says in an interview with New Scientist.
 

The armband works by reading "electrical activity in a user's muscles as they contract or relax to make gestures with their hand and arm," an article in New Scientist writes. Signals are submitted wirelessly to software that "interprets the movements into commands."
 

"we really have this belief that technology can be used to enhance our abilities," Lake says. "This is a way of using natural actions that we've evolved to intuitively control the digital world."
 

A video demoing Myo's capabilities shows gamers using their bodies as first-person devices, corporate types and professors shifting through slides with the wave of an arm, and chefs scrolling through cooking instructions on their iPads, their chicken fingers far away from the screen. The armband will ship later this year and is expected to cost $149. The software is compatible with Apple and Windows platforms. 
 

The software builds on pre-existing technology, the most common example being Kinect. However, Myo does not use camera sensor technology. Thalmic Labs also announced a developer's API, allowing use of the hardware to build additional applications. New Scientist writes the team is already imaging ways to integrate its technology with Google's Project Glass, something computer scientist Shahzad Malik, co-founder of Toronto's CognoVision, said would be huge.

"Something like Thalmic's technology is super useful since you can do interactions in a subtle way, which is important in a public venue," he says. 
 

Read the full story here.
Original Source: New Scientist

Toronto researchers have teamed up with four American medical centres in hopes of testing out a new treatment that could potentially reverse or reduce the effects of Alzheimer's disease in patients.

 

The treatment consists of stimulating the brain through electrodes that are implanted through tiny holes drilled into the skull. Called "brain pacemakers," the electrodes are thought to increase stimulation to the brain. Canadian researchers accidentally discovered the treatment back in 2003 when they, "switched on the electrical jolts in the brain of an obese man and unlocked a flood of old memories." They began to wonder what impact this could have on someone with dementia. 

 

"A healthy brain is a connected brain. One circuit signals another to switch on and retrieve the memories needed to, say, drive a car or cook a meal," the article says. 
 

"At least early in the disease, Alzheimer's kills only certain spots. But the disease's hallmark gunky plaques act as a roadblock, stopping the 'on' switch so that healthy circuits farther away are deactivated, explained Dr. Andres Lozano, a neurosurgeon at Toronto Western Hospital whose research sparked the interest."
 

The Toronto researches have teamed up with John Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Florida, and Arizona's Banner Health System to test the treatment in 40 patients. "Half will have their electrodes turned on two weeks after the operation and the rest in a year, an attempt to spot any placebo effect from surgery."

 

In the article, patient Kathy Stanford describes how she felt good after the surgery. She attributes occasional tingling to the electrodes, which are triggered by a batter-powered generator near her collarbone. 

 

Her father Joe Jester, 78, explained the reality of the situation bluntly. "What's our choice? To participate in a program or sit here and watch her slowly deteriorate?" 

 

Read the full story here.

Original Source: Herald Sun