Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

We recently had failures of our essential gas analyzer systems. This proposal is to secure funding to obtain replacement components that are absolutely essential to our continued research programs that have recently established a new frontier in understanding human metabolic adaptations in exercise transitions during activities of daily living, and provide a sensitive index of changes in fitness and health status. We will replace a mass spectrometer system that was the backbone of laboratory-based studies and a portable analyzer that has been critical to novel measurements and predictive algorithm development that enabled us to be the first group to monitor gas exchange dynamics in unsupervised activities of daily living. These two units together will restore our capability to produce world-class research. A Tri-Gas Analyzer is the most cost effective way of replacing the mass spectrometer for in-laboratory research. This unit has fast response O2 and CO2 analyzers that have been matched to provide N2 by subtraction enabling it to be inserted into our breath-by-breath gas exchange analysis system. The new portable gas analysis system is essential for linking the laboratory studies to research in the real world and providing ground-truth referencing during continued development of technology to quantify complex cardiorespiratory adaptations to challenges of daily living. These ground-truth data represent an essential component required for development of machine learning algorithms that process large quantities of data generated by a wearable sensor technology developed by a Canadian company. Research will extend our recent success into heavy exercise domains that are characterized by nonlinear dynamics. Algorithms developed in Waterloo will be applied in our research of astronauts living on the International Space Station in our study Vascular Aging when we collect wearable sensor data on Earth and inflight that will be matched to pre- and post-flight data from the portable system. The Tri-Gas Analyzer also takes the place of the mass spectrometer in our computer controlled gas mixing device for controlling end-tidal O2 and CO2 concentration for studies of respiratory control and cerebral blood flow regulation. This application of the equipment will enable sensitive regulation of arterial PCO2 permitting investigations of how blood gases, arterial blood pressure and neurovascular coupling interact causing an increase in cerebral blood flow with exercise. Our research programs have extensive histories of training outstanding graduate students. This new equipment will be used daily by post-doctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students training in the physiology and engineering programs to extract novel information on the complex dynamics of cardiorespiratory and cerebrovascular control with applications to maintenance of fitness in our daily lives, athletes and astronauts.