Research

Nutrition apps that focus on calorie counts for weight loss have limited success and can lead to negative body image, but apps that take the form of a game can be much more effective in changing people’s purchasing habits for the better.

University of Waterloo researchers at the Games Institute developed their own game app called Pirate Bri’s Grocery Adventure (PBGA) to test if research participants’ healthy behaviour and motivation improved while using it over a three-week period.

Professor Lyndon Jones, Director of the Centre for Ocular Research & Education, talks about eye safety and COVID-19. To learn more visit: COVIDEyeFacts.org.

Can people still wear contacts right now?

Park Reilly, a long-time Waterloo chemical engineering professor, died in early May, just 12 days shy of turning 100.

Reilly, who joined the University of Waterloo in 1967, was a respected scholar engaged in research and teaching on the application of statistics in engineering.

He held cross appointments in engineering's management sciences department and math's statistics and actuarial sciences department.

What would our shelter-in-place COVID-19 experiences be like in Canada without engineering technology advancements such as smart phones, Zoom, Amazon or Netflix? What would the mortality outcomes of COVID-19 be without technology advances in health care that have allowed us to decode the novel Coronavirus genome in a month, access geospatial information systems to help pinpoint areas of infection and the use of ventilators to treat critical patients?

Professor Mikal Skuterud explains monthly labour statistics during the pandemic.

What is missing from the data that would be helpful for policymakers, and why is it important?

In the wake of COVID-19, many in our community are overwhelmed with fear and uncertainty. Being separated from our loved ones and unable to go about our lives in any normal way, is adding to this stress and causing increased anxiety for many people.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, pharmacists are reporting a spike in drug shortages.

Professor Kelly Grindrod, a pharmacist and professor at the School of Pharmacy, explains why drug shortages are occurring, which medications are affected, and how Canadians can access medications at this time.

A new artificial intelligence tool is being used to help medical researchers at a Toronto-area hospital to shave months off the time they need to identify clinical studies available to help physicians treat COVID-19 patients.

In building the AI-driven search tool, researchers at the University of Waterloo used a machine-learning approach originally developed to expedite the review of documents in high-stakes litigation, to help the researchers mine through thousands of new studies on COVID-19 quickly.

This week governments in Saskatchewan and Quebec announced timelines for the re-opening of their economies.  In Ontario and Alberta, a structure for what re-opening will look like was also outlined.

But what do these staged re-openings mean for economic recovery?

Professor Joel Blit answers our questions.