Prof. Elizabeth Stone, dean of the Ontario Veterinary College, is featured in the New York Times today. The article focuses on a book Stone wrote with Hilde Weisert, poet and co-founder of the Society for Veterinary Medicine and Literature.
Their book, Animal Companions, Animal Doctors, Animal People, celebrates the relationships people have with animals. It’s an anthology of poems, stories and essays that explores such topics as the bond between veterinarians and animals, the “jobs” of the animals in our lives, and the role of animals in our imagination.
Stone says that the goal is to help students and vets “grasp the nonmedical aspects of their chosen profession,” and retain their sense of joy about becoming/being a veterinarian.
Environmental Biology Prof. Mike Dixon and PhD student Cody Thompson, along with Guelph’s Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility (CESRF), are featured in the latest issue of Scientific American.
The article focuses on a “greenhouse” experiment being considered by NASA that would send plants into space on the 2020 Mars rover. Work being done at CESRF by Dixon, Thompson and others is highlighted as other innovations that would help plants thrive in the solar system, and are proving useful on Earth.
CESRF researchers have created automated food-growing boxes with sensors that can determine which minerals the plants have absorbed. They’re now developing a lighting system that works on the same logic. Using LEDs would reduce the costs of growing food on other planets, notably Mars and the moon.
The technology will also enable plant growth in extreme environments on Earth. Canada currently leads the world in this niche of space exploration, and U of G has the expertise and equipment to approach this complex problem because of CESRF’s customized sealed environment chambers, Dixon says.
Jason Wilson, a sessional lecturer at the University of Guelph-Humber, was on the CBC Radio show Metro Morning and CBC TV’s flagship news program The National Aug. 1, and was featured in the Globe and Mail Aug. 2 for his research on Canadian reggae music. Wilson, who graduated from U of G with a PhD in history in 2013, did his dissertation on the history of reggae music and its role in creating bridges among races in Toronto. An award-winning musician and author, Wilson grew up in Toronto’s Keele and Finch district and says the multicultural urban environment fostered his music style.
Wilson’s first solo album, The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur, was up for Reggae Recording of the Year at the 2009 Juno Awards. He and his band, Tabarruk, were nominated in the same category in 2002. He has performed with some of the biggest reggae acts and has also collaborated with performers from outside the genre, including Alanis Morissette, Amanda Marshall, Percy Sledge and Ron Sexsmith.
Wilson is also the author of four books; won a Canadian Reggae Music Award; and received a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
History professor Kevin James will be interviewed on CTV News Channel Monday at 7:05 p.m. as part of a live interview examining World War I. Aug. 4 marks the 100th anniversary of when war was officially declared in the United Kingdom. James will be discussing the importance of knowing if your ancestors participated in the war, how to find them on Ancestry.ca and WWI trends from before, during and after the war.
James has researched European history, specifically focusing on the United Kingdom and Ireland. He has previously been featured on the History Television’s Ancestors in the Attic show as the on-air genealogist, with his work on the show including tracking down the stories of people who fought in past world wars.
Prof. Christian Giroux of the School of Fine Art and Music was featured in a story in the Toronto Star Wednesday. The article highlights a new art installation Giroux created with his longtime collaborator Daniel Young that is set to be unveiled in Toronto next week. The sculpture, Nyctophilia, consists of about a dozen concrete light stands with multiple street lamps that use sodium vapor, metal halide and LED lamps to create a composition of colour.
Giroux and Young won the prestigious Sobey Award for contemporary art, which highlights contemporary art and the country’s best young artists, in 2011. They use consumer goods and industrial components to create sculpture and installation pieces. The pair also designed a sculpture and printmaking course allowing students to create 3D artworks.
Giroux, a U of G professor since 2004, has exhibited nationally and internationally. He received funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to create Ontario’s first digital haptic lab in the School of Engineering.
Prof. Sylvain Charlebois, associate dean in College of Business and Economics, was featured in two Globe and Mail video stories Wednesday about rising food prices and was interviewed by CBC Radio Windsor Wednesday about the controversy about selling milk in 3-litre plastic jugs.
Charlebois studies food pricing and is lead author of the Food Price Index, an annual examination and discussion of Canadian retail food prices. The author of two books and numerous articles, he is now writing a book on global food safety systems. He belongs to the national expert advisory committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Clinical studies Prof. Adronie Verbrugghe was featured on CTV Southwestern Ontario Tuesday night for her research on cats with obesity-related problems, which is increasingly becoming a problem for pets and pet owners.
Verbrugghe is looking at how macronutrients — proteins, carbs and fats — and dietary supplements can stimulate a cat’s metabolism to help burn fat. She’s also examining the link between a cat’s metabolism and the microorganisms living inside its gastrointestinal tract. Her work involves using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA), a tool normally used to measure bone density in humans, to look at the whole body composition (lean body mass and fat mass) of overweight animals.
Verbrugghe holds the Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Endowed Chair in Canine and Feline Clinical Nutrition at the Ontario Veterinary College.