Gary Birch (electrical Engineer)
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Gary Birch (electrical Engineer)
Dr. Gary Birch, is a Canadian Paralympian, an expert in brain–computer interface (BCI) technology and executive director of the Neil Squire Society. In 1975, Dr. Birch was involved in an automobile accident which resulted in injuries to the C6 and C7 area of his spine making him a low-level quadriplegic. He was one of the original players of Murderball (wheelchair rugby), and won several medals in the 1980 Summer Paralympics in the Netherlands. In 2008, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. He continues to champion accessibility through his Research and Development work in assistive technologies at the University of British Columbia, the Rick Hansen Institute, and the Neil Squire Society. Early and academic life Born October 20, 1957, Gary Birch grew up in Calgary, Alberta. Dr. Birch was set to begin studying Engineering at the University of Calgary in 1975 when he was involved in a motor vehicle accident that made him a quadriplegic. It took 4 months of acute ...
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Electrical Engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the latter half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and electrical power generation, distribution, and use. Electrical engineering is now divided into a wide range of different fields, including computer engineering, systems engineering, power engineering, telecommunications, radio-frequency engineering, signal processing, instrumentation, photovoltaic cells, electronics, and optics and photonics. Many of these disciplines overlap with other engineering branches, spanning a huge number of specializations including hardware engineering, power electronics, electromagnetics and waves, microwave engineering, nanotechnology, electrochemistry, renewable energies, mechatronics/control, and electrical m ...
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Engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized List of engineering branches, fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application. See glossary of engineering. The term ''engineering'' is derived from the Latin ''ingenium'', meaning "cleverness" and ''ingeniare'', meaning "to contrive, devise". Definition The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, ABET) has defined "engineering" as: The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct o ...
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Rideau Hall
Rideau Hall (officially Government House) is the official residence in Ottawa of both the Canadian monarch and their representative, the governor general of Canada. It stands in Canada's capital on a estate at 1 Sussex Drive, with the main building consisting of approximately 175 rooms across , and 27 outbuildings around the grounds. Rideau Hall's site lies outside the centre of Ottawa. It is one of two official royal residences maintained by the federal Crown, the other being the Citadelle of Quebec. Most of Rideau Hall is used for state affairs, only of its area being dedicated to private living quarters, while additional areas serve as the offices of the Canadian Heraldic Authority and the principal workplace of the governor general and their staff; either the term ''Rideau Hall'', as a metonym, or the formal idiom ''Government House'' is employed to refer to this bureaucratic branch. Officially received at the palace are foreign heads of state, both incoming and outgoin ...
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Michaëlle Jean
Michaëlle Jean (; born September 6, 1957) is a Canadian stateswoman and former journalist who served from 2005 to 2010 as governor general of Canada, the 27th since Canadian Confederation. She is the first Haitian Canadian and black person to hold this office. Jean was the third secretary-general of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie from 2015 until 2019. She was the first woman to hold the position and held the position until the end of 2018. Jean was a refugee from Haiti—coming to Canada in 1968—and was raised in the town of Thetford Mines, Quebec. After receiving a number of university degrees, Jean worked as a journalist and broadcaster for Radio-Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), as well as also undertaking charity work, mostly in the field of assisting victims of domestic violence. In 2005, she was appointed governor general by Queen Elizabeth II, on the recommendation of Prime Minister Paul Martin, to replace Adrienne Clarks ...
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Governor General
Governor-general (plural ''governors-general''), or governor general (plural ''governors general''), is the title of an office-holder. In the context of governors-general and former British colonies, governors-general are appointed as viceroy to represent the monarch of a personal union in any sovereign state over which the monarch does not normally reign in person. Governors-general have also previously been appointed in respect of major colonial states or other territories held by either a monarchy or republic, such as Japan in Korea and France in Indochina. Current uses In modern usage, in the context of governor-generals and former British colonies, the term ''governor-general'' originated in those British colonies that became self-governing within the British Empire. Before World War I, the title was used only in federated colonies in which its constituents had had ''governors'' prior to federating, namely Canada, Australia, and the Union of South Africa. In these cases ...
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Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and comprises more than 30,000 students and 160,000 alumni. The university was created in an effort to expand higher education across Canada. SFU is a member of multiple national and international higher education associations, including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, International Association of Universities, and Universities Canada. SFU has also partnered with other universities and agencies to operate joint research facilities such as the TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, which houses the world's largest cyclotron, and Bamfield Marine Station, a major centre for teaching and research in marine biology. Undergraduate and graduate programs ...
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Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex and allocortex. It is typically non-invasive, with the EEG electrodes placed along the scalp (commonly called "scalp EEG") using the International 10-20 system, or variations of it. Electrocorticography, involving surgical placement of electrodes, is sometimes called " intracranial EEG". Clinical interpretation of EEG recordings is most often performed by visual inspection of the tracing or quantitative EEG analysis. Voltage fluctuations measured by the EEG bioamplifier and electrodes allow the evaluation of normal brain activity. As the electrical activity monitored by EEG originates in neurons in the underlying brain tissue, the recordings made by the electrodes on the surface of the scalp vary in accordance with their orientation and ...
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Sip-and-puff
Sip-and-puff or sip 'n' puff (SNP) is assistive technology used to send signals to a device using air pressure by "sipping" (inhaling) or "puffing" (exhaling) on a straw, tube or "wand." It is primarily used by people who do not have the use of their hands. It is commonly used to control a motorized wheelchair by quadriplegics with very high injury to their spinal cord or people with ALS.{{cite web, url=http://atwiki.assistivetech.net/index.php/Alternative_wheelchair_control , title=Alternative wheelchair control - ATWiki , publisher=Atwiki.assistivetech.net , date= , accessdate=2011-11-04 Calibration and setup Devices that use SNP technology require specific amounts of air pressure to be "sipped" or "puffed" by the user. These amounts of pressure are typically denoted as a hard sip/hard puff or soft sip/soft puff, however other terminologies might exist. Note that the words "hard" and "soft" are relative to the user and depend on their breathing abilities. Typically, air pre ...
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Morse Code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the inventors of the telegraph. International Morse code encodes the 26  basic Latin letters through , one accented Latin letter (), the Arabic numerals, and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals ( prosigns). There is no distinction between upper and lower case letters. Each Morse code symbol is formed by a sequence of ''dits'' and ''dahs''. The ''dit'' duration is the basic unit of time measurement in Morse code transmission. The duration of a ''dah'' is three times the duration of a ''dit''. Each ''dit'' or ''dah'' within an encoded character is followed by a period of signal absence, called a ''space'', equal to the ''dit'' duration. The letters of a word are separated by a space of duration equal to three ''dits'', ...
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Neil Squire
Neil Squire was an accounting student at the University of Victoria and a basketball player. After a car accident left him a high level tetraplegic, his efforts to learn a new form of communication became the inspiration for the creation of the Neil Squire Society. Throughout his childhood he had always been very involved in school, music and sports, and by the time he reached high school, he had won several awards for scholastics, service, band and sports. When he graduated, he was an accomplished basketball player, having been very successful at the provincial level. In December 1980 Squire, who had begun studying accounting at the University of Victoria, hit a patch of black ice only a short distance from his home. His car hit a tree and he sustained a C1/brainstem injury. This accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, unable to speak and reliant on a respirator. After many months of rehabilitation at the Shaughnessy Hospital Spinal Cord Unit, Squire began working with ...
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Bill Cameron (Founder, Neil Squire Society)
Bill Cameron, (October 11, 1924 – March 13, 1993) was a Canadian inventor, engineer and founder of the Neil Squire Society. He designed many devices to help people with disabilities including a Sip-and-puff communication system, and a robot arm called M.O.M (Manipulative Obedient Machine). In his life, Cameron was awarded many honors for his work with persons with disabilities. Born October 11, 1924 in California, Cameron moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada where he spent his childhood. When World War II broke out, he immediately signed up at CFB Petawawa. Unfortunately, once there he developed a sinus condition and it was decided that it would be too cold for him in Europe. He was given a medical discharge. Having dual citizenship, Cameron then joined the U.S. Marine Corps to fight in the Pacific. He served overseas during the war as well as in post-war Japan. Upon his return to Canada, Cameron enrolled in the engineering program at the University of Saskatchewan but engin ...
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Wheelchair Rugby
Wheelchair rugby (originally murderball, and known as quad rugby in the United States) is a team sport for athletes with a disability. It is practised in over twenty-five countries around the world and is a summer Paralympic sport. The US name is based on the requirement that all wheelchair rugby players need to have disabilities that include at least some loss of function in at least three limbs. Although most have spinal cord injuries, players may also qualify through multiple amputations, neurological disorders or other medical conditions. Players are assigned a functional level in points, and each team is limited to fielding a team with a total of eight points. Wheelchair rugby is played indoors on a hardwood court, and physical contact between wheelchairs is an integral part of the game. The rules include elements from wheelchair basketball, ice hockey, handball and rugby union. The sport is governed by the International Wheelchair Rugby Federation (IWRF) which was estab ...
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