Living Drugs: The Therapeutic Potential of Stem Cells
As they age, most Canadians will suffer from chronic degenerative diseases. In 2010, the Public Health Agency of Canada estimated that the cost to Canadians of treating chronic and degenerative diseases is $190 billion per year, taking into account both the direct costs of hospitals, doctors and drugs, as well as the indirect socio-economic costs of disability and early death. These skyrocketing costs to the national health care system underscore an urgent need to develop new and efficient technologies and approaches to dramatically improve the outlook for patients, their families, communities across Canada, and the health care system.
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Personal Assistance Robots: Will they improve our quality of life?
While robots have worked in factories for many years, and have starred in recent animated movies, they have yet to make an impact on our personal lives. The only exception is the over 7 million robotic vacuums, such as the Roomba, that are now helping people keep dust at bay. Are they only the beginning of a personal robot revolution? Based on large investments in robotics by companies such as Google and Amazon, and the thousands of people developing robots all over the world, many people think the answer is “Yes!”. Even with that positive assessment, the future of personal
Taming the Future: How Science and Technology Can Reduce the Risk of Catastrophic Climate Change
We’ve heard the dire predictions: Greater threats to population and infrastructure from extreme storms. Communities displaced due to rising sea levels. Devastating droughts and deadly heat waves. Crop failures and food scarcity. The spread of disease.
Based on these wide-ranging impacts on our current way of life, climate change is now considered to be the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced.
There is hope for the future, though.
Through science, we have identified the source of the problem, specifically the extra heat trapped in the atmosphere due to excess greenhouse gases emitted by human activities.
Inside the World of 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing
“It’s hard to imagine someone who hasn’t heard of 3D Printing but with all the hype and attention comes a lot of confusion and misinformation regarding what it is all about. In this presentation, we are going to take a look at the technology and clear the air –
3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Rapid Prototyping – what it is, what it isn’t, where it is going and why it matters.”
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Power in the Future: Alternative Sources of Energy
Find out how communities around the world are already powering, heating, cooling and moving themselves with sustainable energy creating good jobs, resilient communities and healthy environments for themselves and future generations. Learn the 101s of sustainable energy, the importance of community empowerment and opportunities for prosperity in the energy transition.
Black Death! Ancient DNA, the benefits of time travel and unmasking the pathogen behind the pandemic.
Dr. Poinar’s current interests lie at the interstitial spaces of research streams which integrate history, evolutionary genetics, biochemistry and mathematical modelling into a more consilient approach to disease origins and the tempo and mode of disease dynamics.
Dr. Poinar is interested in understanding how pathogens emerge and evolve in new hosts as this is central to their control. A pressing question currently bothering him is how a new pathogen will evolve if it cannot be immediately eradicated? Will it evolve to become more or less harmful? To understand this fundamental evolutionary process, he likes to track pathogen evolution
Nanotechnology Engineering: Transforming the Way We Live
Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness in Ontario, and is currently treated using eye drops through a complicated medication schedule (2-3 times daily) that is difficult to follow, particularly by the elderly population. A major part of Frank Gu’s Lab research focuses on developing long-lasting eye drops with tunable release profiles that could significantly reduce dosing requirements. This research could lead to a novel glaucoma medication that could lower the burden on Canadian healthcare cost by reducing the number of preventable cases of blindness due to noncompliance, and bring social benefits and improve the health and quality of life
Our Plastic Brain
The Human Brain – the most complex structure ever studied – can store thousands of terabytes of memory and has the unique ability to ‘re-wire itself’. Award-winning motivational speaker and entrepreneurial scientist Dr. Sheldon will talk about Neuroplasticity – an exploration of our amazing plastic, ever-changing brain. Neuroplasticity is the newest frontier in the neurosciences and, as more and more tools become available, the arena has the potential to bring about delays, treatments, and recovery for a myriad of brain dysfunctions, ranging from pain, to dementias, to addictions, strokes, and even obesity. These are just a few of the