Profs Featured in National News
October 07, 2010 - In the News
A column by Prof. Mark Fenske about the negative impacts of road rage on the brain appears in today's Globe and Mail.
The psychology professor and author of The Winner's Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success will be writing a new biweekly column on brain-related topics for the "Life" section of the national newspaper.
His first column published today discusses the stress people experience when trapped in traffic and how these feelings of anxiety can be intensified by the fact that drivers often have little control over the situation.
Fenske explains that this type of increased anxiety can have negative physical effects on the brain, including altering the shape of some areas of the brain, causing cell loss and interfering with memory and decision-making abilities.
In the column, he suggests that when drivers are stuck in traffic, they should listen to music or let their mind wander to help reduce stress.
Prof. Gary Ellis is also featured in today's Globe and Mail commenting on a story about the recent addition of cells to six prisons in Canada.
Ellis is the head of the justice studies program at the University of Guelph-Humber and also served 30 years with Toronto police and taught police foundations at Georgian College.
The article notes that funding the additional cells has received criticism because the overall crime rate is reportedly decreasing. But Ellis argues that crime is underreported because police are taking longer to clear some incidents and response times have lengthened, which is discouraging crime victims from reporting incidents.
Research by two University of Guelph graduate students and a psychology professor that found Facebook creates jealousy and suspicion in romantic and sexual relationships was featured in the Toronto Star Oct. 6.
The study by psychology PhD students Amy Muise and Emily Christofides and Prof. Serge Desmarais is the first to provide evidence of a link between Facebook use and jealousy.
In the article, the writer discusses how the Internet, and specifically Facebook, has created a new realm for fostering jealousy between couples by allowing open access to the private lives of our lovers.
Quoted in the article, Muise says Facebook exposes people to many common triggers of jealousy. There's just enough information on a typical Facebook page to incite curiosity, but not enough to tell the entire story, she says.
U of G research on educational gaps among immigrants was also featured in today's Toronto Star.
The research report issued by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario was compiled by five professors from across Ontario, including sociology and anthropology professor David Walters, using the latest demographic studies.
The article highlights how the researchers found that children of new Canadians are more likely to stay in school than those whose parents were born here. It also discusses the current educational gap among newcomers, with youth from the Caribbean and Latin America most likely to drop out and Chinese students least likely to quit.
The aim of the report is to determine what barriers are keeping some groups from participating in post-secondary education.
