A couple of unique events are happening in Milton this weekend.
Tonight, July 22, at 9 p.m. a giant bonfire is being held at Chudleigh’s Entertainment Farm, 9528 Regional Road 25 in Milton.
Participants are invited to sit back and sip cider with friends and neighbours. Enjoy a taste of cottage life, listen to live music and bask under the night sky.
For more information on the event or to register, visit here.
A Backyard Pollinator Garden Tour is being held tomorrow (Saturday, July 23) from 2 to 4 p.m.
Led by Margaret and John Beaudette, participants will learn how to build a garden with plants native to southern Ontario.
The free tour is being held at 11255 Guelph Lin in Campbellville. To register, visit the website.
Studies in mice have shown that the brain is able to register surprising events differently to those that are expected, so that we can learn from them and take action next time something unexpected happens.
The brain responds to surprise by releasing a compound called noradrenaline, which is a chemical that is also involved in the fight-or-flight response. Noradrenaline is known to increase alertness and arousal in the body, while also triggering the release of energy, quickening the heartbeat and increasing blood pressure. However, too much noradrenaline in humans can lead to anxiety problems.
Neuroscientists already knew that an unexpected event releases noradrenaline in the brain, but this new study is the first to link the compound to learning and change in behaviours.
To show the relationship, the team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology had to first train mice to expect a certain scenario. The mice were played two sounds and taught to push a lever depending on what they heard; a high-frequency tone signalled that they should push the lever to get a reward, and a low-frequency tone that meant pushing the lever would lead to a punishment: an unpleasant puff of air.
Once the rules of the trial were established, the researchers then began giving the mice surprise responses, where pushing the lever after a high-frequency sound would result in punishment, not reward. These surprises corresponded to higher amounts of noradrenaline being released and circulated around the brain, which the team said acted as a signal for learning.
As the trials continued, a mouse that had experienced a surprise punishment then became much more hesitant to push the lever in response to a high-frequency sound. It seemed as though the animal was adjusting its learned behaviour in response to the new information that false alarms were possible, said Prof Mriganka Sur, senior author on the study.
“We show that surprise – like a punishment when a reward was expected – is really a signal for learning,” said Sur.
Read more about the brain:
The mice were also treated on occasion to an unexpected reward. This positive result after a previously false alarm caused the release of a large burst of noradrenaline, which was then sent around the brain and detected in regions that control planning and higher cognitive functions. It seemed as though the mice learned from this surprise, as in following trials the mice were more likely to pull false alarms, hoping for a random reward.
When the team ran the same test but restricted the release of noradrenaline, the mice were less likely to take a chance on a false alarm, showing the link between the compound and the learning that followed its release.
In humans, noradrenaline makes us more alert and allows us to concentrate on a task. But understanding when and why noradrenaline is released can help us rectify the problems that come from too little or too much of the compound.
“Too little noradrenaline is associated with drowsiness, inattention and depression, while too much is associated with hyperarousal and anxiety,” said Sur. “Most attention-demanding tasks require an optimal level of noradrenaline. For example, when driving, we are constantly interacting with the car and the world. Most of these actions are rewarding but expected – the car does what we want it to do – and small amounts of noradrenaline are released to prime the brain.
“Unexpected events, such as a pedestrian jumping in front of the car, or another car running a red light and appearing suddenly in front, are unexpected and cause additional noradrenaline release. This sharpens our attention for some time, and we learn and remember things better. If the event was very hair-raising, we may have a large amount of noradrenaline release, and be anxious and fearful for a while.”
These events are part of normal life, but too many of them can lead to long-term fear and anxiety issues.
“Adverse childhood events are thought to alter the brain’s regulation of noradrenaline and cause dysfunction later in life,” said Sur. “PTSD is thought to be the memory of even a single highly adverse unexpected event, like a roadside bomb, created by a surge of noradrenaline, that is then later triggered by a benign stimulus, for example a loud car exhaust.”
There are trials ongoing for treatments for PTSD and anxiety disorders that seek to reduce the amount of noradrenaline in the brain. Potential drugs include those currently used to treat high blood pressure, as these work by lowering levels of noradrenaline among other things. Beta blockers, which are usually prescribed to people with heart problems, have also been shown to interrupt interactions between noradrenaline and the brain.
And, because low levels of noradrenaline are associated with depression, Sur said boosting amounts of noradrenaline is being considered for treating the condition.
Jane Jacobs’ fight to save Greenwich Village in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and her later fight to stop Toronto’s proposed Spadina Expressway, inspired a generation of urbanists. A woman who made waves in the male-dominated field of urban planning, Jacobs sought to protect city blocks from being turned into high-rises, to keep mom ‘n’ pop shops from being razed to build highways and to keep urban communities affordable. She “wrote eloquently about sidewalks, parks, retail design and self-organization,” as New York’s Center for the Living City puts it, and “encouraged people to familiarize themselves with the places where they live, work, and play.”
After the longtime writer and activist’s death in 2006, Toronto created Jane Jacobs Day in her name, and across the country a series of walks—Jane’s Walks—began in her honour. The Halifax version of Jane’s Walk was put on hold for two years due to the pandemic, but the event returns for 2022: It happens this weekend, Saturday and Sunday May 7 and 8.
“The walks help bring people together, creating strong and resourceful communities, cultivating belonging and encouraging civic leadership,” the Jane’s Walk Halifax website says. The event is actually 17 different free, volunteer-led walks happening around the city, each focused on a different topic or area of HRM.
Saturday features 11 walks. At Birch Cove Saturday morning, for example, a Learn To Bird walk will teach the basics of spotting and recognizing local wildlife. In Dartmouth, local historian David Jones will give a history lesson during a walk around Lake Banook.
Journalist Lezlie Lowe—famed for her writing at The Coast and other outlets—will lead a walk around Needham Park, giving details on local women’s war efforts from her new book The Volunteers. And former MLA Lisa Roberts will lead a walk through the north end while talking about affordable housing.
The event continues with six walks Sunday, including author and illustrator Emma Fitzgerald leading a sketching “walk” at Peace and Friendship Park, with a focus on capturing accessible transportation. Another art-focused walk, this one led by Argyle Fine Art, will take you on a tour of public installations and murals around downtown Halifax.
The downtown walk titled Gay Old Halifax will explore the nightclubs and queer community scene of the ‘70s and ‘80s. And don’t forget the vibrant streets across the harbour: an afternoon walk will put the art in Dartmouth.
There is no advance sign-up required and all walks are free, though some recommend bringing special supplies. View the full list of walks on the Jane’s Walk Halifax website.
Our local offices and private agency partners host recruitment events all year round to give information and support to families interested in caring for children in foster care.
If you’d rather speak with an experienced foster parent directly, contact our foster care navigators at
New findings on the effects of stress on memory suggest that people tend to recall information better when the information is related to the stressful event.
However, the factor of delay — that is, the time between a stressful event and learning information — does not appear to have as strong an influence on the relationship between stress and memory as previously thought.
“The effects of acute stress on memory encoding are complex,” said Grant Shields, lead author of a study published in Learning & Memory. “Our work shows that relevance of information to a stressor appears to play an important role in the effects of stress on encoding.”
Shields is assistant professor of psychological sciences in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the U of A. As a cognitive neuroscientist, he studies the effects of stress on cognitive processes.
Shields and co-authors Colton Hunter, doctoral student in psychological sciences at the U of A, and Andrew Yonelinas, psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, tested the recall of 130 young adults by manipulating acute stress, the delay between stress and memory encoding, and the relevance of information to the stressful event. Encoding is the initial learning of information.
The researchers divided participants into two groups. Both groups were asked to remember a list of words related to personality traits and other words not related to personality traits. Members of one group were required to give a speech on their personality to a panel of evaluators. Members of a control group also spoke on their personality, but only among themselves within a nonstressful environment.
The researchers found that stress during encoding led to greater recall of stress-relevant materials — in this case, a list of personality-related words. This was true compared to material not related to the stressor, non-personality words such as “muddy.” This effect was slightly greater for materials encoded during the stressor, rather than those encoded after a short delay, although the stress-relevance effect was not significantly different across the delay conditions.
Attention to the effect of stress on cognition has increased over the past two years, as more people are dealing with a multitude of stressors. Research has shown that chronic or repeated exposure to stress has a negative effect on attention span, sleep and memory, and that it can even damage the brain.
About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas’ flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas’ economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.
eMERGE says the reduction in your monthly water consumption and benefits to the environment can be well worth it
With spring showers approaching, a local environmental organization wants to teach residents how conserve the water.
eMERGE is inviting residents to register for an online event called Rain Water Harvesting: From summer rain barrels to 4 season system.
The online event takes place on Thursday, March 24 at 7 p.m. To register, click here.
A release from eMERGE says participants will learn how they can buy a rain barrel from the City of Guelph and access rebates up to $2,000 for whole home rain water harvesting systems.
While a daunting topic, the release said the reduction in your monthly water consumption and benefits to the environment can be well worth it.
The event will also discuss how residents can get a rebate for providing proof of reduced water consumption to the City of Guelph program, Blue Built Home.
This is a pay-what-you-can event. Tickets for this event are $5, but residents can also make a donation instead.
USA’s Redmond Gerard competes in the snowboard men’s slopestyle final run during the Beijing 2022 … [+] Winter Olympic Games at the Genting Snow Park H & S Stadium in Zhangjiakou on February 7, 2022. (Photo by Marco BERTORELLO / AFP) (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
On a recent episode of Fallon Tonight, Ben Stiller described his experience catching some of the men’s snowboard slopestyle final from the 2022 Winter Olympics. As he admitted, he had no institutional knowledge of the sport going in, but by the end of the contest, he was invested in the outcome—namely, the judging.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, Red Gerard just nailed his 1620 switch backside, and then McMorris does the same trick and the judge gives McMorris a higher score!’” Stiller recalled as Fallon laughed. “When is the IOC going to clamp down on the International Ski Federation and police the judging protocols so we can have fair and balanced judging?!”
It was a funny, offhand anecdote from a comedian, made for late-night TV…and yet it encapsulated perfectly the pervasive feeling hanging over the snowboarding community since the Olympics wrapped.
Those in the industry don’t need it rehashed. But for those who may have missed it, there were two major snowboarding judging controversies at the Beijing Games—in men’s slopestyle and men’s halfpipe—and a more general sense of confusion and frustration from riders across many of the events.
In the men’s slopestyle final, Canadian Max Parrot took gold with a score of 90.96 on his best run. The silver and bronze medalists, China’s Su Yiming and Canada’s Mark McMorris, scored an 88.70 and 88.53, respectively, on their best runs—within striking distance of Parrot.
But on his golden run, Parrot grabbed his knee instead of the front of his board, which could have docked him enough points for execution that the podium would have been shuffled.
BEIJING, CHINA – FEBRUARY 7 : Yiming Su of Team China wins the silver medal, Max Parrot of Team … [+] Canada wins the gold medal, Mark Mcmorris of Team Canada wins the bronze medal during the Olympic Games 2022, Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle on February 7, 2022 in Zhangjiakou China. (Photo by Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Getty Images)
Getty Images
At the time, Iztok Sumatic, the head judge for Olympic Snowboarding, told Whitelines magazine that Parrot’s run and grab looked clean on the camera angle they were provided from the program feed.
The judges can request a replay if they think something went wrong, but the feed they are provided is a straight program feed with no individual cameras and no replays. Because the run looked clean, the judges did not request a replay.
“Whoever watched it from that angle, almost every single person—if he or she was being honest—would have said that’s a good execution,” Sumatic told Whitelines.
“There were six incredibly skilled judges that were watching the main issue, and not a single one of them questioned what they saw until the replays came and by that point, it’s too late—the scores are already in, basically,” Sandy Macdonald told me. Macdonald was not on the judging panel for the Beijing Games, but he has judged X Games and the Olympics and is currently the head judge for the Natural Selection Tour, a big-mountain snowboarding contest created by Travis Rice.
Riders can also appeal an Olympic podium outcome for up to 15 minutes following a contest, but that didn’t happen at these Games.
The other potential judging controversy at the Games was, in the end, avoided. With Todd Richards on the call for NBC in the men’s halfpipe final, audiences watched as 23-year-old Ayumu Hirano attempted to land the first-ever triple cork (three off-axis flips) at the Olympics.
He did it on his second run, which saw him go frontside triple 1440 (four full rotations), Cab (switch frontside) double 1440, frontside double 1260, backside double 1260 and frontside double 1440.
The run earned Hirano a score of 91.75…which was 1.25 points lower than Australia’s Scotty James at the top of the leaderboard. James hadn’t done a triple—no one but Hirano would—but the judges liked his highly technical and difficult run that saw him do a switch backside 1260, Cab double 1440, frontside 900, backside 1260 and frontside double 1440.
“That was the most difficult halfpipe run in the history of halfpipe that has ever been done,” Richards said on the broadcast of Hirano’s run. Apoplectic, Richards said that the judges had “grenaded” their credibility by scoring Hirano’s run so low. Viewers who don’t regularly watch snowboarding responded positively to Richards’ passion, and for a time, the subject was trending on Twitter.
It’s a divisive issue, to be sure. James’ run was, technically, more difficult—he spun all four directions (frontside, backside, Cab and switch backside) and his switch backside 1260 Weddle grab, in particular, is one of the hardest tricks being done in the pipe.
On the third and final runs, Hirano did the triple again—in fact, he did the same run and cleaned it up—and the judges gave him a score of 96 to win it all, avoiding further controversy.
But the irony of the whole situation is that, four years ago in Pyeongchang, James suggested that the judges weren’t valuing the difficulty of switch frontside tricks and spinning all four directions, generally, high enough. This time around, they clearly tried to do that…and it blew up in their faces.
The men’s slopestyle final featured six section judges—two per feature—and three overall impression judges, as well as Sumatic as head judge. The same six judges were also on the halfpipe final.
Much of the ire following Parrot’s missed grab was directed at the judges, but in truth, this was a bigger, administrative problem rooted in process.
More broadly—and more apparent to those outside the snowboarding community—the Olympics production crew, not specializing in filming live snowboarding events, struggled with camera angles and framing—including capturing the angles judges needed to definitively grade runs.
There was a chuckle-worthy moment during a run in the men’s big air final—in which landing, along with difficulty, execution and amplitude, is a crucial judging criteria—where pro snowboarder and commentator Kelly Clark said, “Let’s get another look at that landing.” The broadcast never showed that angle, and Clark had to shift into a new line of commentary.
Now, to be clear, what Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has been doing in every Winter Games since Vancouver 2010—providing live radio and television coverage of every sport from every venue and using some 1,000 cameras and a production crew of 7,000-plus—is no small feat, and very few agencies in the world could do it successfully.
The fact remains, however, that snowboarding and other action sports events are particularly challenging to film, and there are production teams that are dedicated exclusively to those sports.
“We all understand in the Olympics it’s hard to just focus on one sport,” said Jordan Velarde, the founder and CEO of Uncle Toad’s Media Group, a video production house specializing in action sports live broadcasts. After producing the Vans Park Series and Volcom Pipe Pro skate and surf events for years, for the last two years the company has led the entire production of the Natural Selection Tour.
“They have to do so much coverage; they bring all the bells and whistles,” Velarde continued. “The Olympic way of covering these sports is a specialty in itself…. You want to have a concise vision when you watch it.”
That being said, Velarde and Uncle Toad’s creative director Chris Steblay both agree that authenticity and understanding of a sport’s culture are the most important aspects of producing a live broadcast. The criticism of the way snowboarding was broadcast at the Beijing Games, they said, stemmed from the inauthentic production of the sport.
“What happened in the Olympics was something that would be devastating for us as a production company,” Velarde said. “We make sure we are talking with judges, having the right camerapeople, making sure what we’re providing is the proper coverage.”
Velarde was brought in by NBC for the Tokyo 2020 Games to work on its first-ever skateboarding broadcast, using his production expertise to advise on everything from where the cameras need to be and how to set them up properly to how to give the audience the best coverage of the sport.
In “stick-and-ball sports,” Velarde explains, you always know where to put the camera. For sports like snowboarding and freestyle skiing, capturing the action could involve getting thousands of pounds of equipment and hundreds of cameras up the top of a mountain.
In producing Natural Selection, a first-of-its-kind snowboarding contest that follows riders as they weave through trees and hit jumps and other features in remote mountain terrain, Uncle Toad’s had to innovate to create a broadcast that would honor the spirit of the contest.
In 2021, the team developed and implemented a novel camera angle—a live stabilized racing drone, with a first-person view like that of a video game—in partnership with world championship racer Gabriel Kocher. The event production earned Uncle Toad’s and Natural Selection Tour a Bronze Clio.
This is the second year that Uncle Toad’s has partnered with Natural Selection. Last year, the team … [+] developed and implemented a first-of-its-kind camera angle – a live stabilized Racing Drone, or First Person View (FPV) Drone, used for primary coverage, in partnership with a world championship racer, Gabriel Kocher (Gab707).
Uncle Toad’s Media Group
This is the second year that Uncle Toad’s has partnered with Natural Selection. Last year, the team … [+] developed and implemented a first-of-its-kind camera angle – a live stabilized Racing Drone, or First Person View (FPV) Drone, used for primary coverage, in partnership with a world championship racer, Gabriel Kocher (Gab707).
Uncle Toad’s Media Group
Macdonald told me the drone footage was a “game-changer” for the Natural Selection judges. “We get a sense of watching the drone of how fast the rider’s riding down the course,” he said.
“What I saw at the Olympics this cycle—and again, this was from my couch—has been my experience with other large multisport events mostly,” Macdonald added. “I saw a bunch of sports camerapeople that don’t necessarily know how to make snowboarding look its best. One of the things I always stress—you can be the best TV producer in the world, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a good view for what judges need to judge the sport.”
Macdonald’s “gold standard” for judging these kinds of events would be the exact same camera shot every time for every rider—which, of course, is at odds with what makes for a good broadcast. “What makes good judging is consistency, and consistency in an event with 60 runs is a boring show,” Macdonald said.
“It’s incredibly difficult to try to film an event or sport that you’re not familiar with,” explains Eric Seymour, director of brand communications and content at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, which hosts the first stop of the Natural Selection Tour and Kings & Queens of Corbet’s, a one-day ski and snowboard freeride contest that sees athletes hucking themselves down the famed Corbet’s Couloir.
“You need to be able to anticipate where the skier or where the rider is going to track with the action.”
For Kings & Queens alone, 90 days before the event the JHMR production team oversees a team of 45 people from multiple states that transports 6,000 pounds of gear, including almost a dozen generators, up the mountain via tram, on foot, or on skis. They also run 4,000 feet of tactical fiber, 1,000 feet of power cables, 1,500 feet of video cables and 1,000 feet of audio cables to support 15 cameras to make sure the action is captured correctly from every angle.
The events crew for this kind of contest consists of expert-level skiers and riders who can ski black diamond slopes with 45-pound tripods, rigging up camerapeople who are standing on top of cliffs—or often hanging over them on ropes—to get the best angles.
Of course, the Olympics is not a big-mountain freeride contest like Natural Selection Tour or Kings & Queens, and it doesn’t require nearly the level of technical prowess to pull off.
But that’s also kind of the bottom line—skiing and snowboarding at the Olympics takes place on standardized courses, and though riders can hit the slopestyle course or the halfpipe in their own stylistic way, they can’t take completely different lines off the side of a mountain.
It shouldn’t be difficult for judges to receive the angles and feeds they need to judge accurately and quickly in real time—even acknowledging what a Herculean task that is to begin with.
“I’ve ridden slope and big air comps for so long now that I know what the judges are looking for,” said Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, the 21-year-old Olympic gold medalist in women’s snowboard slopestyle and silver medalist in big air. “In slope and big air there’s pretty much a template that you follow, but you can get creative with it and that gives you an extra wow for the judges.
“Going into the Olympics I knew exactly what I needed to do to win gold,” Sadowski-Synnott added. “For me it was a matter of putting it down on the day, and the judges were awesome with how they judged it.”
Julia Marino, the silver medalist in women’s slopestyle and the only American slopestyle medalist, agreed that in the women’s competition, there were no questions about the judging. “It seemed pretty accurate; no one had any complaints while we were there, it seemed like it was pretty on-point which was nice,” Marino said. “It was unfortunate for the boys that it wasn’t I guess what it could have been. It’s a human-judged sport and there’s obviously room for error. We’ll see if this Olympics sparks more conversation about that.”
We’ve established what can go wrong in filming a live snowboarding contest. So what is the solution?
“If we’re talking explicitly about OBS and the way they produce these sports, it needs to be a concerted effort to include professionals in their process of planning,” Steblay said. “In surfing’s Olympic debut [in Tokyo Games], although the conditions weren’t ideal you had a team that’s been doing WSL [World Surf League] events for a decade all gathered producing surfing in the Olympics for the first time ever. They all knew how to do surfing.”
While Steblay acknowledges the Tokyo surfing broadcast had some technical issues like cutting the cameras at the right times, overall, the production felt authentic within the surfing broadcast world. It didn’t look all that different from a WSL broadcast, but it had Olympic touches to it.
“It takes care to make sure whoever you’re including in those creative decision-making processes does care about the way it’s covered,” Steblay continued. “It shows.”
As an example of another contest that gets it right, Macdonald points to the Laax Open, which has a cable cam runs the full length of the course. “That’s perfect for judging for us,” he said.
And contests like the Olympics don’t necessarily need the kind of groundbreaking equipment and filming that accompanies a remote, big-mountain contest. The halfpipe at Laax is permanent, whereas the Olympics, of course, changes venues every four years.
A cable cam on the Olympic halfpipe course would be fantastic for judging, but it’s an unlikely investment given the ephemeral nature of the course. (Now, there’s a separate argument that the winter Olympics should be held in the same location every time, allowing for better infrastructure and investment in the courses—as well as natural snow—but that’s another article.)
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good drone follow-though of a slopestyle course,” Macdonald said. “Just in general, better camera work is the key.”
Of course, there is a limited talent pool of camerapeople capable of shooting this kind of event—and the Olympics isn’t the highest-paying event.
“I can count on two hands who does these sort of things,” Macdonald said.
Even without hiring the few camerapeople in the world who are skilled in shooting live snowboarding contests, Macdonald says one of the biggest pluses would be having someone in the TV truck who knows snowboarding and knows judging and can champion what they need from the camera angles within the production.
“One of the things that we always see is what we call ‘guy in the sky,’ the tight close crop shot,” Macdonald said. “That might be interesting for ultra-slow motion viewing but it’s absolutely useless for us as judges. It shows very little of what we need to evaluate.”
And even endemic snowboarding events have identified areas for improvement in their own broadcasts. In Kings & Queens’ 2019 iteration, Jackson Hole partnered with Red Bull on the media side but hired a third-party production company to do the livestream, which encountered numerous issues—missed runs and poor audio.
So in 2020, Red Bull took over the production to ensure it was done right, bringing in more than 5,000 pounds of production gear and top-notch commentators. They added a live drone and a live on-slope camera to ensure all angles were captured.
“We’ve really tried to build an event that’s for the athletes,” Seymour said.
Hans Mindnich rides his line at Kings & Queens of Corbet’s at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in … [+] Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA on 17 February, 2022
Brett Wilhelm / Jackson Hole Mountain Resort / Red Bull Content Pool
The lesson? The Olympics doesn’t need a massive overhaul of its process in order to improve its snowboarding broadcasts.
Still, no one I spoke to failed to appreciate what the Olympics has done for professional snowboarding and the place it holds in the industry. There is room for improvement in how it showcases the sport, but it’s an important part of the competitive ecosystem.
“The Olympics play a big role in up-leveling a lot of aspects of the sport and broadcasts,” Steblay said. “It’ll always be what it is—it’ll never be as cool as something like Natural Selection, and it shouldn’t be. We need core broadcasts and events and we need big international ones for everyone. There’s a place for both. They don’t have to meet in the middle by any means.”
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