Toronto Star Archives | Research & Innovation

Toronto Star covers inaugural 3D film conference led by 91��ɫ researchers

fmaquito — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 08:00:00 +0000

And as the film world continues its rapid transition from traditional 2 D celluloid film to 3 D digital, a weekend conference at the TIFF Bell Lightbox is aimed at boosting the Toronto film community’s chances of capitalizing on the next wave in film – 3-D, wrote the :

The [] conference is co-sponsored by 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Fine Arts and the 3-D Film Innovation Consortium (3D FLIC), a group of GTA-based film companies.

Ali Kazimi, professor in the University’s film department, said the three-day event will bring together an “eclectic mix” of filmmakers, artists, academics and theorists. “It’s a truly interdisciplinary event. We believe it’s not just a first in Canada, we believe it’s the first time anywhere in the world that these...fairly disparate groups of people have been brought together to discuss the future of 3-D cinema,” Kazimi said.

“I think this is going to be a very special event for the city. Our project has really put Toronto on the map because with this incredible sharing of knowledge,” he added.

Until the debut of Avatar in December, 2009, there was little interest in 3-D as a new frontier in film, Kazimi said. “Now everybody is jumping on the bandwagon. As a filmmaker, I feel it’s a very exciting time because when used properly, 3-D offers a whole new language for filmmakers,” Kazimi said.

The conference and 3D FLIC also involve psychology and computer science researchers within the . The centre's conference on runs June 15-18, allowing researchers to attend both events.

For more background on the Toronto International Stereoscopic 3D Conference, see its or this .

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

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Schulich Professor Robert Kozinets on Oprah's marketing legacy

fmaquito — Tue, 24 May 2011 08:00:00 +0000

With The Oprah Winfrey Show poised to air its final segment on Wednesday, the Toronto Star examines the :

[One of them is] Marketing Maven: Authors, small business owners and President Barack Obama can attest to "The Oprah Effect". The term was coined to describe how sales of everything, from pyjamas to the classic novel Anna Karenina, skyrocket after her endorsement. Winfrey’s imprimatur is credited both with helping to sell 30 million books since the launch of her in 1996 and electing the first black president.Conversely, she was sued by the cattle ranchers because they claimed that her comments about never eating another burger during a segment about mad cow disease lost them $11 million in business.

“There’s never been a product placement or a PR phenomenon like Oprah before and we may not see her kind again,” said , professor of marketing at the Schulich School of Business.

“But the most remarkable part of her legacy is not the economic impact, which everyone knows; it’s the fact that she’s managed to maintain the public trust and have a widespread image of integrity. Considering the amount of product placement on her show, she didn’t ever give the impression that she was a sellout. She managed her image extremely well.”

. . .

With Winfrey only committed to appearing in about 70 hours of programming on [her new network] OWN in 2011, it remains to seen if a behind-the-scenes-role will be the best use of her expertise and energy.

Kozinets remembers Winfrey from his stint at Chicago’s Kellogg School of Management, where she taught a Dynamics of Leadership course with beau Stedman Graham in the late ’90s.

“It was a very popular class,” he recalled. “She brought in Henry Kissinger, Coretta Scott King and Jeff Bezos as guests. But she got tired of it, because she didn’t want to do her own grading and the dean insisted she grade her own papers.”

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

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Osgoode Professor Lisa Philipps: Fiscal favours are eroding Canada's tax system

fmaquito — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

With Tuesday’s budget, the federal government continued its love affair with tax expenditures, those special breaks that target tax relief to select causes or groups, wrote , professor in 91��ɫ’s Osgoode Hall Law School, in the :

Like many Liberal budgets before them, every one of the Conservative budgets since 2006 has announced an array of new subsidies to be delivered through the tax system. Though their individual price tags may seem modest, they add up to a major drain on revenues. This budget alone would reduce federal revenues by almost $300 million per year once the new personal tax credits are fully phased in.

Who will evaluate the impact of these new tax expenditures to see if they are encouraging more Canadians to pursue postsecondary education or volunteer firefighting, or have other salutary effects that help to justify their costs? Most likely no one, ever. Once enacted into law, these special rules will sit in the tax code indefinitely with no need to be examined or reapproved the way a direct spending program would be.

It is easy to add tax expenditures and almost impossible to remove them. This is why many tax policy experts call for “sunsetting” these rules, which gives them a limited lifespan subject to evaluation and reapproval.

It’s time for Canadian politicians and voters alike to grow up about tax expenditures. Little breaks may seem nice if you happen to be part of a favoured group, but ultimately they destroy simplicity and fairness for all of us.

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

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Judge blasts ruling by refugee board member with zero acceptance rate

fmaquito — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

The day the Toronto Star broke the story on a wide variation of acceptance rates by refugee board members, a Federal Court judge issued a decision chastising an adjudicator who had not granted asylum to anyone in three years, wrote :

In an order issued Friday on an appeal by failed refugee claimant Bingrou Xu, the judge eight times repeated that the credibility findings by Immigration and Refugee Board member David McBean were "unreasonable".

McBean rejected Xu’s refugee claim last summer, stating 14 times that the claimant’s story was unsatisfactory and lacked credibility. Xu fled Belize in 2007 with his two children, claiming his wife was shot to death in a botched robbery of their convenience store and his family continued to be threatened.

“The (refugee) board’s conclusion . . . appears to have been based on the cumulative effect of the ‘discrepancies, contradictions and other problems’ that the board identified,” Justice Paul Crampton ruled.

. . .

Data analysis by Osgoode Hall Law School Professor revealed last week that McBean granted asylum to none of the 169 cases assigned to him since his 2007 appointment, with most of his rejections citing claimants' credibility as an issue. The data also showed several board members had extremely high acceptance rates.

Rehaag's and reveals startling differences in the acceptance rates of individual adjudicators. His findings were later .

Rehaag is also a member of the .

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

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Refugee board disputes Professor Sean Rehaag's study on bias and refugee boards

fmaquito — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Asylum rejection rates have no bearing in the quality and consistency of decisions made by adjudicators, says Canada’s refugee board, reported the :

In fact, the board insists that each decision must be examined on a case-by-case basis.

“Statistics on the acceptance and rejection rates of individual IRB members who determine refugee claims made in Canada require context,” Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) spokesperson Anna Pape said Friday. “Each refugee protection claim referred to the IRB is reviewed on the evidence presented in that individual case and decided on its merits. Each case is unique.”

The IRB was responding to a by Osgoode Hall [Law School] Professor that found a wide range of rejection rates among its members, even when dealing with claims from the same country.

The findings have already cast doubt on IRB member David McBean’s ability to judge fairly. McBean rejected all his asylum cases since his 2007 appointment – 62 in 2010, 72 in 2009 and 35 in 2008.

Rehaag also discussed the study, which examines the practices of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board and reveals startling differences in the acceptance rates of individual adjudicators, on CBC’s “As It Happens”, “Au Dela De La 401” and “Le Telejournal Ontario” March 4.

Rehaag is also a member of the .

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

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Professor Sheila Cavanagh on Toronto's unisex washroom trend

fmaquito — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Sheila Cavanagh, professor of sociology at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies], called Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination, in which transgendered and other queer interviewees discuss the difficulties that divided bathrooms present, wrote the

The evolution of bathroom-stall signage — from line drawings to hens-versus-roosters shtick to ambiguously arty pin-ups — has left a growing number of Toronto restaurants with no sign at all. In Ottawa, meanwhile, the so-called “bathroom bill” recently passed in the House of Commons by a narrow margin. Among other things, the controversial legislation reinforces the rights of transgendered people to use whatever bathroom they see fit.

. . .

Cavanagh loves seeing bathroom signs that are victims of their own cleverness, the ones that make it difficult to figure out which door means what, said the Star. “That moment of confusion gives people a moment to pause and wonder, ‘Does that sign fit me or not?’. . . (and to) wonder what it might be like for those whose gender identity isn’t so clear,” she says. “What do you do when you need to use the bathroom but you’re not sure which door to go into?”

At the book launch for Queering Bathrooms at the Gladstone Hotel in November, a 91��ɫ graduate student named Teresa Jewell made washroom signs with a variety of different gender-signifying images – bras, ties, high-heels, pads – and pinned them over the usual male-female signage.

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

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Osgoode Professor Sean Rehaag's study raises concerns about bias on refugee board

fmaquito — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:00:00 +0000

If you were a refugee seeking protection in Canada, you wouldn’t want to cross the path of David McBean, wrote the , in a story about a new 91��ɫ study that shows evidence of bias among different adjudicators on the Immigration & Refugee Board (IRB) of Canada:

According to an analysis of IRB data obtained through an access-to-information request, McBean was one of a handful of board members who granted asylum in fewer than 10 per cent of cases last year, said the Star. The others were Anna Brychcy (6.45 per cent), Pasquale A. Fiorino (6.93 per cent), Michele Pettinella (6.67 per cent), Edward Robinson (4.29 per cent), Carolyne Wedgbury (9.66 per cent), Andrea Wojtak (2.94 per cent) and Colleen Zuk (9.46 per cent).

“There is a concern of bias,” said Osgoode Hall Law School Professor , who obtained and analyzed the data. “It is an issue if the case outcome hinges on who made the decision. You’re lucky if you had Cathryn Forbes (who granted asylum in 35 out of 35 cases). If you had David McBean, you would have no chance.”

Individual claimants may vary in their personal profiles and circumstances of persecution even if they are from the same country. However, the discrepancies remain when Rehaag controlled the variables such as the country of origin of the claimants.

Rehaag said his data also showed that those claimants who had legal representation at the asylum hearing tended to have a much higher success rate (48.58 per cent) than those who were unrepresented (11.79 per cent). Refugee board members are appointed by the government from a pool of qualified applicants who must pass an exam to prove their knowledge of immigration and refugee issues. The terms are between one and three years. They are paid in the range of $102,300 and $120,400 a year.

Rehaag is also a member of the .

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

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CRC Leo Panitch: Toronto needs objective analysis of garbage privatization proposal

fmaquito — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Now that the garbage has hit the fan again in Toronto, so to speak, it would have been nice to have seen some serious investigative journalism before an editorial rushing to endorse privatization, wrote , Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, in a :

At the very least, it would be good to have been reassured that the bad old days when the business of garbage was so commonly associated with organized crime in many North American cities – not for nothing was Tony Soprano’s calling card that of a “waste management consultant” – is truly a thing of the past.

But even assuming that is so, just as there are questions properly being raised today, everywhere from Washington to Cairo, about the cozy relationships between businessmen and politicians, I am sure your readers would be grateful for a careful, balanced and objective analysis of just who owns the companies that are already profiting from the taxes people pay to have their garbage collected, and whether they have any personal, financial and political relationships with politicians, here or elsewhere.

We could use some investigation of the ecological implications too. As Heather Rodgers showed in her widely acclaimed important book Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (New Press) an alignment of manufacturing and marketing forces have used environmental laws to help the US mega-“waste management” corporations make mega-profits, while often using Third World countries, or poorer regions of our own society, as our garbage dump. Will privatizing Toronto’s garbage collection further contribute to this?

Finally, dare I suggest that some interviews with the workers of these companies would be worth doing to see what they have to say about their conditions and whether they consider themselves exploited or fairly treated?

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

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Nature of Things documentary on Toronto's raccoons features 91��ɫ researchers

fmaquito — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

We all know they’re out there, prying open garbage cans, scurrying across fences and maybe even bunking under your deck, wrote the:

But urban raccoons – who look just like their country cousins but live very different lives – are rarely studied, leaving humans in the dark about what the nocturnal animals get up to while we’re sleeping.

A new CBC documentary will change that. “Raccoon Nation”, airing Feb. 24 at 8pm on “The Nature of Things”, was filmed largely in Toronto, the apparent “raccoon capital of the world”.

The film offers a glimpse into the secret lives of city raccoons, street-smart garbage-eaters who have more in common with people than you would think.

. . .

The documentary follows two researchers from 91��ɫ who embark on a study that produces fascinating portraits of the lives of five raccoons that live in Toronto.

Psychology and biology Professor Suzanne MacDonald and PhD student 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.

For a sneak peak of what's involved in tracking raccoons in urban wildlife, visit . More information about the documentary is available on .

MacDonald is chair of the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health.

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

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Professor Stephen Fleming: Children shouldn't be excluded from funerals

fmaquito — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:00:00 +0000

What should families consider when involving young children in a parent’s funeral? asked the , in a story about the funeral of Toronto Police officer Ryan Russell, which his two-year-old son Nolan attended:

Opinions on the subject have shifted from the days when children weren’t expected to attend funerals at all. “A large part of it was trying to protect them,” says Stephen Fleming, professor of psychology in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health and a consultant to Bereaved Families of Ontario – Toronto, “and I don’t think that’s necessarily the best way to proceed.”

A two-year-old like Nolan will understand very little at a funeral, but attending one may help in the grief process down the road. “The chance of the child being traumatized in the worst case scenario, or being able to recall a whole lot, is very slim,” says Fleming.

To make the day easier, children should be allowed to interact with the proceedings in an age-appropriate way, Fleming says. They may want to write a letter, or place something inside the coffin.

Kids should also be free to be kids. At an open-casket visitation, children should be allowed to touch the body if they are curious, and free to play during the funeral, Fleming says. “They don’t know what mourning behaviour is” – and that’s okay.

Once children are eight or nine years old, their understanding of death deepens. Younger children don’t comprehend that death can’t be reversed, or that it happens to everyone. “As children age, they grapple with and eventually get these types of concepts,” he says.

Above all, says Fleming, keep open lines of communication. When kids are left in the dark about important but scary events like the death of a loved one, they tend to “fill the gaps in their understanding, usually with things that are much more threatening.”

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

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