Agricultural research at the heart of new collaboration between ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and county partners

caroline.zentner — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 17:17:51 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge has partnered with Lethbridge County, the St. Mary River Irrigation District (SMRID) and the Lethbridge Northern Irrigation District (LNID) to conduct research into local agricultural priorities.

The funding, $50,000 per year, will support five ULethbridge researchers over four years.

“This research partnership, thanks in large part to the efforts of Professor Emeritus Dr. Jim Byrne, will provide information and results that are extremely relevant to our area,” says Dr. Dena McMartin, vice-president of research. “By helping to identify opportunities to improve efficiency in agricultural operations, evaluating and advising on the viability of new crops and improving soil health, these projects will contribute to a more robust and sustainable agriculture sector.”

Lethbridge County contains more than 297,000 irrigated acres, allowing local farmers to produce a multitude of crops. The County is also home to rich pasture and grazing lands which serve livestock industries such as feedlots, dairies, and meatpacking and poultry processing facilities.

“As the most productive ag community in Alberta, we recognize that collaboration and sustainability are critical to success,” says Cole Beck, Lethbridge County CAO. “We’re proud to partner with the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, LNID and SMRID to support research projects that will move the ag industry forward by seeking innovative solutions to challenges. We also appreciate the willingness of local producers to participate in research that will impact the future of agriculture in southern Alberta.”

“The St. Mary River Irrigation District is happy to collaborate with the Lethbridge Northern Irrigation District and Lethbridge County to support innovative research from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge that will benefit farmers and livestock producers in southern Alberta,” says David Westwood, SMRID general manager.

“LNID shares an interest in supporting local researchers who can answer local questions applicable to stewardship of water within irrigated southern Alberta,” says Chris Gallagher, LNID general manager. “LNID recognized the value of partnering with Lethbridge County and SMRID to support ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge research projects that target our mutual interests and that of our constituents/irrigators. Having input into the selection of project areas of study, and some of the research questions to be answered, gives us a vested interest in the outcomes. The LNID Board is pleased to demonstrate a financial commitment to finding solutions to our mutual challenges as we continue to strive toward sustainable growth of irrigated agriculture in Lethbridge County.”

Dr. Neha Vaid, an assistant professor in the biology department, will study the potential for millets as a sustainable crop for marginal lands and as an aid in carbon sequestration and prevention of soil erosion in southern Alberta. She will test 11 millet varieties to analyze their potential as livestock feed, their impact on soil health, and seed and biomass yield.

Dr. Michele Konschuh, an associate professor in biology, will evaluate soil health in newly irrigated land parcels and compare it to land irrigated for longer periods. By comparing newly irrigated land, previously irrigated land and never irrigated land, Konschuh hopes to learn about the changes that occur when irrigation is introduced and what parameters need to be maintained to preserve soil health.

Dr. Dan Johnson, a professor in the geography and environment department, hopes to improve the forecasting of drought-related insect pests like grasshoppers. Johnson will conduct a spring survey of the grasshopper population to update the breeding survey usually conducted in late July and early August of the previous year. Johnson aims to develop better methods of forecasting grasshopper population growth, especially during droughts.

Dr. Hardeep Ryait, a professor at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience, will work on a project to improve sustainability and reduce the environmental impacts of livestock operations. Ryait wants to create a proof-of-concept livestock feedlot operation that incorporates solar panels for animal welfare, both for shade and electrical production. Cattle health would be monitored through an AI-powered video imaging system and radio-frequency identification (RFID) would be used to monitor feeding and watering behaviour to improve growth.

Dr. Paul Hazendonk, a professor in the chemistry & biochemistry department, will explore the production of biofuels from algae using hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL).

Artificial intelligence can help diagnose and monitor patients with neurological disorders

caroline.zentner — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 18:09:12 +0000

For someone with a neurological disorder that impairs their movement, such as stroke or Parkinson’s disease, getting to the doctor’s office for a checkup can be difficult. What if a patient could just take a video clip of their movements with a smartphone app that interprets the video and sends the results to their doctor?

Drs. Hardeep Ryait, Ian Whishaw and Artur Luczak, together with their colleagues from the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, propose just that in their paper, Data-driven analyses of motor impairments in animal models of neurological disorders, published today in the prestigious journal, PLOS Biology.

These researchers, from left to right, Drs. Artur Luczak, Hardeep Ryait and Ian Whishaw, have shown deep learning can analyse complex behaviour.

First, they asked people with special training to score the quality of reaches for food made by rats that had suffered a stroke that impaired their movements. They then provided this information to a state-of-the-art deep neural network, a type of machine learning that simulates the brain’s neural network, so that it could learn to score the rats’ reaching movements with human-expert accuracy.

“When the network was subsequently given video from a new group of rats reaching for food, it scored their impairments with human accuracy,” says Ryait, a post-doctoral fellow in Luczak’s lab at that time.

The same program proved able to score other tests given to rats and mice, including tests of their ability to walk across a narrow beam and pull a string to obtain a food reward.

“Intelligent neural networks are being implemented to drive cars, interpret video surveillance and monitor and regulate traffic,” says Luczak. “This revolution in the use of neural networks has encouraged behavioural neuroscientists to use networks to evaluate movement disorders.”

The study shows the potential for neurological disorders to also be assessed automatically and behaviour quantified as part of a checkup or to assess the effects of a drug treatment.

“The delay in the assessments of neurological diseases is often a major roadblock in patient treatment,” says Whishaw. “This research indicates the network can provide a reliable score for neurological assessment and this breakthrough can assist in designing behavioural indexes to diagnose and monitor neurological disorders.”

Interestingly, the results also revealed the network can use a wider range of information than that included by trained humans in a behavioural scoring system. The network was able to identify features of a behaviour that are the most indicative of motor impairments, which, in turn, can improve monitoring of rehabilitation. This method would help standardize diagnosis and monitoring of neurological disorders and could be used by patients at home to monitor daily symptoms.

The application could be used with any disorder that affects movement and would significantly reduce the costs of doing clinical trials for new drugs for disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Beyond the health field, the application could be used in sports to help players perfect their golf swing or score a basket.

“Now, we are looking for funding to create a smartphone app,” says Luczak. “Here we have showed that it works in principle in a big computer cluster. It requires more work to adapt it to a smartphone but it is completely doable and we are interested in pursuing it.”

UNews - Hardeep Ryait

Agricultural research at the heart of new collaboration between ��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and county partners

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Artificial intelligence can help diagnose and monitor patients with neurological disorders

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Agricultural research at the heart of new collaboration between ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and county partners