CBC's The Current featured the documentary :

With flood waters wreaking havoc across communities in Canada and the U.S., the immediate concern is to make sure people are safe and to limit damage. Communities typically know how to respond quickly to the physical clean-up, but are unprepared for the consequences. The toll the destruction takes on mental health includes spikes in depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.

Gulliver, who studies disaster resiliency and recovery in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, volunteers in New Orleans providing mental health support to volunteers and victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.

You can listen to the documentary on . Gulliver's comments begin at the 16:39 mark.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Above: Members of the 91��ɫ Rover Team pose for a group photo in the cool of the evening at the Mars Research Station, Hanksville, Utah

91��ɫ first entered the challenge, sponsored by TASC (The Analytic Sciences Corporation) Inc., four years ago and has finished in the top three every year, including a first-place finish in 2009. The challenge: "Design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside human explorers in the field."

Above: EVE travels the hostile clime of the Utah desert

The closest race came between the second and third place teams, and Oregon State University, who were separated by only 16 points.  All together, the top three teams of 2011 were the same top three from 2010, but with different results.

“The level of sophistication shown by these teams was overwhelming,” remarked URC director Kevin Sloan.  “These teams poured themselves into their rover projects over the past year, and it clearly showed.  The level of competition was taken to an entirely new level this year.”

Above: EVE (Enhanced Vehicle Explorer)

The 91��ɫ team left Toronto with its EVE (Enhanced Vehicle Explorer) on May 27 and drove for three days to Hanksville, Utah, arriving early to ensure they could put in some field test time in the environment.

“The past few days have been intense with emotional highs and lows,” said team member Shailja Sahani. “Every team member has been putting in at least 20-hour days to make the competition a success, with some sleeping only five hours in the last three days.

“Everyone came together as a team with no prodding from the leadership; they simply picked up tools and got to work. Although we were well prepared before the competition, the desert environment and harsh operating conditions required many last-minute repairs and alterations.

"Our success came from our ability to fix the rover in situ and get back to the task, while other teams were left stranded,” said team member Jordan Bailey.

Bailey, one of two students responsible for the team's finances and marketing, told CBC News he thinks the current rover is the team's "best one yet." Last year, the team faced multiple equipment failures as a result of the record temperatures, which soared to 38 C in the shade. This year's model has a more robust suspension, a finer control system and better temperature regulation than its predecessor, Bailey said.

Above: Jordan Bailey & Isaac DeSouza work into the night to get EVE ready

The rover cost about $13,000 to build, slightly below the $15,000 maximum allowed. The YURT is sponsored by 91��ɫ, and . The faculty advisers from 91��ɫ’s Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Engineering were Professor Michael Daly and Professor . The engineering adviser was graduate student Mark Post.

The participants included three teams from Poland, three from the United States and two from Canada. By the end of the competition, one team from each country had placed in the top three.  The Magma2 team from the Bialystok University of Technology in Poland pulled away from the other two teams to an impressive victory.

Magma2 was the first European team to win URC.  They also were the first team to ever deploy an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as part of the competition.

For more information, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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is available on CBC's website and begins at the 11:15 mark. It runs to the 30:11 mark.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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A memorial service will be held today in the A.W. Miles Chapel at the Humphrey Funeral Home, 1403 Bayview Ave., at 11am. 91��ɫ has lowered the flag today in his memory.

Born in Toronto in 1929, Prof. Davidson graduated from the University of Toronto in 1952 and began work as a stagehand in live CBC television dramas. His career moved into film editing at the National Film Board (NFB) in Ottawa, where he co-founded the NFB Film Guild and helped organize a comprehensive survey of international documentary filmmaking. Later, he returned to the CBC and Toronto, where he was also active – sometimes as a programmer – in the Toronto Film Society.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he produced and directed children’s programs for the CBC, including “The Friendly Giant”, “Mr. Dress-Up”, “Junior Roundup”, “Maggie Muggins” and “Nursery School Time”. He also produced the after-school series “Passport to Adventure”, featuring Elwy Yost as host of serialized feature films chosen to fire the imaginations of young viewers, a precursor to Yost’s later TVO series “Magic Shadows”. The two men would team up again in 1977 when Prof. Davidson produced a season of TVO’s “Saturday Night at the Movies” and produced his own series, “Aspects of Cinema”, exploring all aspects of the art of cinema.

Prof. Davidson’s teaching career began in 1970, in the second year of 91��ɫ’s pioneering film program with founding chair James Beveridge. For three decades, he taught film editing, with rigorous attention to detail and meaning, as well as film history and theory, conveying a profound respect for the art of cinema. He loved the work of François Truffaut, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, but came alive when sharing the art of film dance or talking about the poetry of film.

He had a broad and eclectic interest in all films, from the silent films of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Lillian Gish and D.W. Griffith to the comedies of Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch, from the Hollywood musical to the documentary art of Leni Riefenstahl, from Norman McLaren shorts to Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Robert Altman’s Nashville.

As a film-programming consultant, he was often invited to speak about educational television, the design, choreography and production of Hollywood musicals, the practice of musical "quoting" in Hollywood musical scores and other related topics.

In an obituary, his family described him as a gentleman and humanitarian, a man of integrity and kindness, and a gentle soul who developed many friendships.

At 91��ɫ, he was particularly close to 91��ɫ film Professor Tereza Barta and Ryerson University film instructor Laurinda Hartt-Fournier, who wrote in a note published on the funeral home website: “Doug, you were my best friend for 40 years and affected my life profoundly as a teacher, director, film editor, film admirer (much more than a film fan) and a wonderfully supportive friend. You are missed, but all the students I have taught in the past 20 years have been the recipients of your love of film and your joy in it through how I teach and what I teach.”

Prof. Davidson is predeceased by his wife Catherine and survived by his brother Ronald, stepdaughter Christine Thomson and her son Jeremy, as well as his nieces Robin Tonna (Vincent), Kelly Davidson and nephew Cameron Davidson. In latter years, longtime friend Catherine Lawson and her sons, Thomas and David, welcomed Professor Davidson into their lives.

Donations may be made to the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario, 2300 Yonge St., Suite 1300, PO Box 2414, Toronto, ON, M4P 1E4 or charity of your choice.

Condolences and memories may be forwarded through .

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Orangutans are generally not fond of water, but Dr. Anne Russon, a professor of psychology at the 91��ɫ, and an orangutan researcher, has discovered that some of them have conquered their aversion in order to take up a new avocation: fishing.  She and her colleagues have observed apes at the sanctuary she's worked at scooping fish from shallow ponds, and even using sticks to move the fish to where they can be more easily captured.  They then enjoy a little fresh sushi.  This group of orangutans are rescued animals that grew up in captivity, and this behaviour hasn't been seen in their wild cousins.

You can , which runs for nine minutes.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Non-violent revolutions don't happen overnight. It is only in the last stage – as we saw in Egypt, or in the peaceful overthrow of many governments in Eastern Europe – that they seem spontaneous – maybe even inevitable.

One place where the revolution is still very much in the making is along the fault lines between Israelis and Palestinians, where many individuals and groups, in their own way, are committed to non-violence in many different forms.

It includes a very quiet initiative by a group of Canadians. CISEPO, founded by Mount Sinai's Dr. Arnie Noyek, is now headed by Dr. Harvey Skinner, dean of health at 91��ɫ. Call them the Quiet Canadians.

The (CISEPO) doesn't hold rallies, or put up posters. Instead the group holds academic meetings and publishes papers in academic journals, like The Lancet. They've built cooperation between these very different groups through projects with universal appeal, like an infant heath screening program.

"A lot of cooperation occurs," says Skinner. "But it occurs very quietly. If we can, as Canadians, create an umbrella for (Israeli and Palestinian) colleagues to meet and then do this again and again, it's doing a little a lot. If you sit across a table, you find out we have more in common, especially those of us who are in health, and it can build over time, respect, trust, co-operation. And we keep doing this again and again."

"We're building what we call a network of co-operation. Doing it quietly. Not front page in the media. Nothing's bleeding here, right? You get a terrorist attack in the region, instantly you get press. We hold a meeting like this – quite remarkable. Not even that much interest in the press."

�ճ���� of the full report runs 6 minutes 27 seconds.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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The researchers tagged the raccoons with GPS collars to log their travels throughout the city, recording them at up to 1,500 points over six weeks. They found that the raccoons live in small territories and avoid crossing major streets – which, given the risk of becoming road kill, is a key survival strategy.

The documentary includes detailed graphics of raccoon activity drawn from their research data, which was gathered in Toronto (the raccoon capital of the world). You can watch the full film on .

Prior to airing, the documentary was covered in England's ; The Canadian Press's story on the film was featured in and radio stations in Canada.

Raccoon Nation repeats on CBC News Network March 3 and will air on PBS Nature later this year.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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The clip runs over six minutes and is available on .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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�ٳܲԱ��DZ�’s Home, Roses, Hauntings and Smith-McGregor’s The Infinity Pool are both vying for top spot in the non-fiction category, along with 24 other finalists. In the poetry category, Smith-McGregor’s Body Temperature is competing against 23 others. The third category in the contest is for short stories.

Right: Kilby Smith-McGregor. Photo by Laura Jane Petelko

Last year, Smith-McGregor won the Writers’ Trust of Canada (see YFile, July 23, 2010), for writers under 35 who have yet to be published in book form. Her work has appeared in Brick, A Literary Journal, the Dublin Quarterly International Literary Review and The Cyclops Review.

She won the Tarragon Theatre’s inaugural , and while at 91��ɫ, the President’s Creative Writing Award for Poetry and the Sylvia Ellen Hersch Memorial Award, both in 2009, and the Sorbara Award in Creative Writing in 2008.

Left: Rishma Dunlop

A finalist for the CBC Literary Awards in 1998 and again in 2009, and winner of the Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry in 2003, is a poet, playwright, translator and essayist. She has several poetry collections, including Metropolis (Mansfield Press, 2005), Reading Like A Girl (Black Moss Press, 2004) and The Body of My Garden (Mansfield Press, 2002). White Album (Inanna Publications, 2008) combines �ٳܲԱ��DZ�’s poems with paintings by Suzanne Northcott. Her radio play, The Raj Kumari's Lullaby, was commissioned by CBC Radio in 2005.

Coordinator of 91��ɫ's Creative Writing Program, Dunlop was also the 2009-2010 Canada-U.S. Fulbright Research Chair in Creative Writing at the Virginia Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

The CBC Literary Awards short list of finalists in each category will be announced next Monday, Feb. 28, with the final winners announced by Shelagh Rogers March 24, on CBC Radio One’s "Q", hosted by Jian Ghomeshi.

The first place winner in each of the three categories will come away $6,000 richer, while the second place winner will take home $4,000, courtesy of the Canada Council for the Arts.

To view the complete list of finalists, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The radio series, and its companion , features commentary from Professor Debra Pepler. Pepler is distinguished professor in the Faculty of Health's Department of Psychology, senior associate scientist at the , and a member of 91��ɫ's LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence and Conflict Resolution.

Pepler is an expert on bullying behaviour among teens and children; Part 1 of the radio series sites groundbreaking research she conducted with Professor Wendy Craig of Queen's University into children's bullying activity on schoolyards. Craig and Pepler currently co-lead (Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence Network), which provides anti-bullying resources for educators, parents and children.

Part 3 airs on January 21, 2011 at 9 pm on CBC Radio 1. Parts 1 and 2 are currently available for download on the . A connected to both the audio and film documentaries is also available with additional resources.

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