Multimedia experiments often use short texts because readers seem unlikely to tolerate long passages of type in a video or interactive environment. "Maybe the chunk is not the chapter; maybe the chunk is the paragraph, and one paragraph can lead to more, different paragraphs," says Caitlin Fisher, Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Fine Arts], who used that approach in her 2001 multimedia novella These Waves of Girls. "People have been figuring out how to get their message onto a single screen. It makes some writing better and some writing worse."

91��ɫ's Fisher agrees that the issue is how to draw the reader through the text. "It's interesting to say maybe people would navigate your novel like a game environment," she says. "People find a game environment compelling. [But] does it always have to be a puzzle or maze? Could great writing draw you through it?... We don't have serious writers experimenting with it."

Fisher also notes how seductive video is, hoping books will not simply be replaced by some version of interactive film or augmented reality. "We have this push that all literature can become movies. Everyone can cheaply make and edit moving pictures. It is pushing out interesting experiments in writing."

"I'd be happy to purchase an $80 electronic novel that promised to take me places I hadn't been before, but it's a hard sell," says Fisher, who wants to see writers making technology work for them rather than technology shaping the form. "It is crucial writers be there asking what kind of tools might be useful...and not just accept what computer science hands them."

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

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The conference is the first of many large events planned for 2011, declared the Year of India in Canada.

Q: What's the conference about for you?

What I really like is that it's not totally about only diaspora issues. It's about the issues of the day: youth issues, gender issues, which are not the issues of one diaspora or another. Our country should be looked at not only as isolated communities. We should have a say in policy-making. People doing jobs they're over-qualified for is not an Indian issue, it's an issue for all of Canada. If not, we lose the sense of Canada as a whole.

Q: How would you describe the Indian diaspora in Canada?

In Canada, we have representation from all over India, with the dominant group being the Punjabi community. In the last few years I've seen more of an effort to have a pan-Indian presence. We do tend to have more engagement with the mainstream, partly because of our prominence in the professions and our facility with English. We had the right colonizers.

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

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Anyone transmitting the results of a poll has to include the name of the sponsor and the company that did the poll, which will help readers determine if the poll is objective.

Readers should also have access to the date when the poll was conducted and the size of the sample that was consulted to test reliability.

Finally, organizations have to disclose the margin of error, one of the most important pieces of information, according to Robert MacDermid, a political science professor at 91��ɫ.

If a poll says Jack Layton has 20 per cent of Canadians supporting him, but there is a margin of error of +/- 3 per cent, that means the support is actually between 23 and 17 per cent, he explained.

. . .

Polls aren’t the only way to gauge progress, according to MacDermid, who uses Layton’s recent rise in Quebec as an example.

“There are all sorts of evidence that people, especially in Quebec, are considering voting for Jack,” he said. “You’d report these other things; that he is spending all his time there; that 1000 people showed up at a rally; and that other political parties are attacking him.”

And polls aren’t the only way to determine how you want to vote, MacDermid says. Voters should consider the party platforms and what the leaders say about the issues that matter to the individual voter.

MacDermid was also in the media concerning his research on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's election fundraising drives and the upcoming sale of the City of Toronto's waterfront assets; the :

Mayor Rob Ford’s administration is preparing to hang a huge for-sale sign on the city’s waterfront real estate assets and is now in the process of auctioning off the first parcel – the new Corus Entertainment building, as well as the land it sits on at the foot of Jarvis Street, just south of Queen’s Quay East.

. . .

An influential Vaughan developer, who donated generously to Mayor Rob Ford's pre- and post-election fundraising drives, controls a long-term lease on the Port Lands' Hearn Generating Station, which has been proposed as a site for an NFL stadium by the mayor's brother Doug.

Developer Mario Cortellucci, together with various relatives and individuals who listed his company's premises on their donor forms, contributed $30,000 to the mayor's campaign, about half of which was raised following the election as part of a multi-candidate effort to eliminate campaign deficits. He also secured a private meeting with Rob Ford, according to scheduling documents released under access to information laws.

The figures, based on election contribution filings, were compiled by 91��ɫ political scientist Robert MacDermid [Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies].

"The important point here is that when a councillor or mayor runs a deficit and wins, every person seeking influence crowds into the subsequent fundraising events," [said MacDermid].

While Cortellucci's development companies in the past have pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to right-of-centre municipal and provincial candidates, MacDermid's analysis shows the 2010 race was his first serious foray into Toronto politics. In 2006, Cortellucci and another relative gave just $2,500 to Jane Pitfield's mayoral campaign. In 2010, he donated $4,000 and $2,000 to George Smitherman and Joe Pantalone respectively.

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

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When Christine Jonas-Simpson’s son Ethan was born, there was an eerie quiet in the delivery room, and then a piercing wail, wrote .

“The only cry I heard was my own,” she said somberly.

Ethan was dead, “born still” in the language of grieving parents; “stillborn” in the medical vernacular. The umbilical cord was constricted, essentially suffocating the baby in the womb, a condition impossible to detect with an ultrasound.

Jonas-Simpson, who was almost 38 weeks pregnant, knew her son was dead before she went into labour. When he was born, she held Ethan in her arms, stroking his shock of curly red hair. So did her husband.

The nurses were wonderfully supportive, even explaining to Ethan’s young siblings how his air tube was broken, something that could happen to an astronaut. The family was able to mourn on their terms.

(Jonas-Simpson, a professor of nursing at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Health], published a children’s book, , and produced a series of research papers and documentaries on stillbirth, the latest of which, Enduring Love: Transforming Loss, will .)

[You can also watch the channel.]

Unlike Ethan, most babies born still are quickly “disposed of” without being held, named or given a funeral. In much of the world, reproduction is central to a woman’s purpose, so there is profound stigma, and no small measure of blame falls on the mother when childbirth fails to produce a living child.

Newly published data show there are more than 2.6 million stillbirths worldwide each year. The deaths remain largely uncounted, the mothers unsupported and preventive measures understudied.

It is an epidemic – one that claims more lives each year than HIV-AIDS and malaria combined – that quietly unfolds far from the public eye.

The Lancet, in its Thursday edition, has published that aim to shatter the silence by examining the staggering toll of stillbirth – emotional, physical and economic – and proposing practical solutions.

A stillbirth, as defined by the World Health Organization, is one in which a baby dies after reaching at least 28 weeks gestation and weighing at least 1,000 grams. In a country like Canada with advanced medical care, it is 22 weeks at 500 grams. (Loss of a fetus before that time is considered a miscarriage or, if the pregnancy is terminated, an abortion.)

There is a common belief that babies who die in utero were never meant to live. Stillbirths have been seen as a form of natural selection, bad luck, the result of witchcraft – lame 17th-century explanations for a lingering 21st-century scourge.

The other myth is that most stillbirths occur early in the pregnancy. In fact, the opposite is true: The longer the gestation, the higher the risk.

The vast majority of stillbirths are preventable.

In wealthy countries like Canada, where high-tech obstetrics are the norm, stillbirths are linked to smoking, obesity, advanced maternal age, and abnormalities in the placenta and umbilical cord.

J0nas-Simpson's research was also covered by in a story about the prevalence and impact of stillbirths among Inuit communities.

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

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Researchers analyzed 130 studies to compare the energy use and global warming potential of organic versus conventional farming. They concluded that organic farms were more energy efficient on both a per-hectare and per-product basis, with the exception of fruit farming and poultry production, where data��is limited.

“These findings shake up the concept that ‘bigger’ is always better. Higher crop yields, bigger equipment, less genetic diversity, and more fertilizer and pesticides do not equal a more energy-efficient operation,” says Rod MacRae (left),��a professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental Studies.

Critics of organic farming commonly argue that lower yields make it unsustainable in the long term. “As population increases and land availability decreases, it’s assumed that an ‘assembly line’ approach to agriculture is the only way to keep up with our food needs. While this is the dominant way of thinking, this logic is also deeply flawed,” MacRae says. “For example, many regions in the global south show better yield performance with organic farming. Even in North America, organic yields are not far behind conventional ones.”

MacRae points out that there is an enormous amount of waste in conventional systems. Significant amounts of edible food are lost at harvest, during processing and distribution, at retail and in consumers’ homes. “By some accounts, up to��40 per cent of what gets farmed never makes it to our mouths, and this adds enormously to energy waste. This can result in the perception that we’re not producing enough food,” he says.

Studies of conventional and organic grain growers in the prairie region showed significant benefits for organic methods, including 50 per cent lower energy use in a 12-year study of forage and grain crop rotations. The absence of nitrogen fertilizer was a main contributor to reduced energy inputs and greater efficiency. Modelling studies of a Canada-wide conversion to organic canola, wheat, soybean and corn concluded we would consume 39 per cent less energy and generate only 77 per cent of the global warming emissions and 17 per cent of ozone-depleting emissions of conventional wheat farming.

Above: Organic cultivation of mixed vegetables

In terms of dairy farming, a study in Atlantic Canada found that an organic, seasonal grazing system was 64 per cent more energy efficient and emitted 29 per cent less greenhouse gases compared with the average of conventional systems.��Cows consuming an organic diet may also have a longer lifespan, increasing efficiency and reducing methane emissions when calculated over time.

Where livestock is concerned, fewer studies exist and comparisons are more difficult because of dramatic differences in operations from farm to farm, particularly for hogs and poultry. Conventionally raised beef is widely accepted as the least environmentally friendly meat, requiring seven times as many inputs for an equivalent output of calories. Organic beef production is considered to be more efficient because the animals consume more grass and less grain than humans can consume.

The study, “The Carbon and Global Warming Potential Impacts of Organic Farming: Does It Have a Significant Role in an Energy Constrained World?” was published in the journal Sustainability. Its lead author is Professor Derek��Lynch, Department of Plant��& Animal Sciences, Nova Scotia Agricultural College.

MacRae was also interviewed in�� about the lack of attention politicians are paying to food policy during the current federal election campaigns.

“None of them really link the food story to health care that well, or to social-policy reform,” said Rod MacRae, a professor at 91��ɫ who is one of Canada’s foremost experts on the subject. “What they’ve done is pick the low-hanging fruit – the things that are more part of the public consciousness right now.”

Still, strong federal leadership in the national food policy process is critical, he said. “The federal role is to act as the animator, the facilitator, and to use its usual package of sticks and carrots to try and get everybody on board.”

By Melissa Hughes, media relations officer.

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

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"I'm optimistic about the explosion that's happened in Wisconsin," says Leo Panitch, a political science professor at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies]. "For the first time in a long time, the Canadian left is looking south, rather than the other way."

But he's loath to make too many claims for a new dawn rising: "The craziness and mindlessness of so much of what is going on in the American right may – and I'm very cautious about this – it may lead to the same kind of sensibilities that produced a radical new left in the sixties."

Says Panitch, "It's much more complicated now. It's not easy to organize these days when you don't have masses of workers brought together in a big factory and they aren't living in the same part of the city. A lot of people now who are exploited and poorly paid are working in funky areas like producing software or advertising."

Two years ago, he wrote a piece for Foreign Policy magazine titled “Thoroughly Modern Marx” about how the post-crash world might possibly (though by no means inevitably) see a rebirth in radical thinking. That, of course, has not happened – in fact, the political left has suffered setbacks and since 2008, centre-right parties have gained power in Europe.

Panitch is the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science.

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

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Unlike medical publications that require paid subscriptions, free journals get most or all of their funding from pharmaceutical advertising.

A group of researchers keen to discover what effect industry ties have on the content of published medical journals conducted a detailed comparison of journals that are free, those that have some pharmaceutical advertising and subscription fees, and those that are subscription-only.

Their findings, published on Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, show that free journals are much more likely than other publications to display ads for new drugs that are more expensive than older, generic versions as well as drugs that are linked to some concerns over effectiveness.

But the researchers also discovered that free journals frequently print editorial content that directly recommends the drugs that are advertised in the journal.

“It’s pretty well drug company advertising,” said Joel Lexchin, a professor in the School of Health Policy & Management [Faculty of Health] at 91��ɫ in Toronto and one of the study’s authors. “These journals probably have a role in influencing prescribing behaviour.”

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

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While Internet technology and social media such as Twitter and Facebook allow businesses to manage contacts and nurture important professional relationships, it’s the initial “handshake” that makes a lasting impression with retailers and consumers.

. . .

In fact, in-person interactions are the “single most powerful marketing medium,” says , marketing professor and executive director of 91��ɫ’s Schulich Executive Education Centre (SEEC). “Research in the business-to-business world suggests the No. 1 reason for selection of a supplier is the personality of the sales team or seller. This is above the technical specs, marketing form, anything else,” Middleton says.

Deliver on your promises, or risk tarnishing a business relationship built on trust. Enter your new contacts into a customer relationship management system, such as Salesforce, suggests Middleton, and follow up with e-newsletters, blogs, updates or even webinars.

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

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Health Canada and Paladin Labs Inc. announced a recall Wednesday of Darvon-N, the brand name of dextropropoxyphene, also known as propoxyphene, after new research showed the drug is linked to serious abnormal heart rhythms. The announcement came less than two weeks after the US Food and Drug Administration decided the drug should be removed from the market.

But widespread safety concerns about the drug have actually been around for decades, and prompted Britain and the European Union to ban Darvon-N amid fears it was linked to suicide and accidental overdose.

Joel Lexchin, a professor in 91��ɫ’s School of Health Policy & Management, said should have taken an active role with respect to Darvon-N, as well as other drugs. The department's follow-the-leader behaviour exposes major shortcomings and weaknesses in its drug monitoring capabilities, he said.

"This drug should have been off the market 30 years ago," Lexchin said in an interview Thursday. "Unfortunately, it took this long to get it off the market."

Health Canada should beef up its system for monitoring the safety of drugs as well as tracking the number of patients who experience serious side effects, he said.

Lexchin is a co-author of , which calls for sweeping improvements to drug safety in Canada.

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

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Individuals who wrote themselves a compassionate or optimistic letter every day for a week were less depressed up to three months later and reported an overall increase in happiness after six months.

More than 200 people logged onto a website for seven consecutive nights to complete the exercise, then filled out questionnaires measuring their progress at intervals of one, three and six months. Participants were assigned one of three conditions: self-compassion, optimism or a neutral control condition.

“Interestingly, we noted significant improvements in mood for all participants, except those who exhibited extreme neediness,” says study co-author (right), a psychology professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health.

In the self-compassion exercise, participants were directed to address an upsetting event, attempting to comfort themselves as they would a friend in a similar situation.

“The idea was to try and be good to yourself, to realize your distress makes sense and provide the words you would need to hear to feel nurtured and soothed,” Mongrain says. The exercise was adapted by Leah Shapira, the study’s lead author and a graduate student in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology.

Those assigned an optimistic task were instructed to visualize a future in which current issues were resolved and give themselves advice on paper on how to get there. In the control condition, participants wrote freely about an early memory.

Researchers then looked at the effect of compassion versus optimism for individuals prone to depression. Numerous studies, including Mongrain’s own, have established that dependent and self-critical personality types are at high risk for depression. Self critics feel guilty for not living up to the demanding standards they set for themselves, generating feelings of worthlessness. Dependent personalities are characterized by fear of abandonment and the dissolution of interpersonal relationships.

“Immature dependents experience intense fear of rejection and a sense of helplessness,” Mongrain says. “Mature dependents, on the other hand, thrive on connectedness; they are people pleasers who experience anxiety but can have positive and trusting interactions with others.”

Researchers found that self critics experienced the greatest benefits from optimism exercises, whereas those with more connected personalities profited most from self-compassion. “Connected individuals are able to nurture others, meaning that this compassion can theoretically be extended to the self,” Mongrain says.

The study, “The Benefits of Self-Compassion and Optimism Exercises for Individuals Vulnerable to Depression”, was published in The Journal of Positive Psychology. Those with access can view the study through .

This study was funded by a grant from the .

Mongrain's study was covered by in an article that included fictional satirical letters to themselves by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff:

Anyone can write a love note to himself to help create lasting happiness. The only caveat is that it doesn't work as well if you're too self-critical, needy and oversensitive to potential abandonment. That's the finding of a research paper out of 91��ɫ, published recently in The Journal of Positive Psychology.

"It was an effort to create a tool for when things don't go as well as you wanted," says Myriam Mongrain, professor of psychology in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Hedicine, who worked as project leader on the study along with lead author and 91��ɫ graduate student Leah Shapira (MA '09).

Mongrain acknowledges that in Western society such Buddhist-style loving kindness directed toward the self is not encouraged or even acceptable. "Many believe that you won't get anywhere by being kind to yourself; letting yourself off the hook is a recipe for failure or disaster," she says. "They've begun to believe that they need to be tough on themselves to reach their high standards.... For them, they might think it meant they were lazy or self-indulgent. But it offers another world view, another prescription in how to relate to oneself. ... The public needs to know that this will not interfere with their work ethic."

The approach might also lead to greater harmony among people, she adds. "If you interpret events as signs that you're incompetent, that you're a failure, that you're inadequate, all of those judgments toward yourself will lead to an unhealthy approach – overcompensating for example...and you become angry as a way to defend yourself, to retaliate."

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

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