Not your grandmother’s retirement home

In April, RBC Dominion Securities Inc. forecast “potential nationwide demand for an additional 4,000 to 5,000 private-pay suites annually for the next 15 years.” RBC analysts singled out boomers as “likely to be demanding in terms of their desire for hotel or resort-like settings and higher levels of service.”…Despite attractive demographics, seniors housing “is not for the faint of heart,” warned James McKellar, director of the real estate and infrastructure program at York University’s Schulich School of Business, in The Globe and Mail July 22. He cited increased regulation, labour costs and the mental “hurdle” for affluent seniors to choose retirement-home living. Read full story.

York University’s Centre for Vision Research
CVR is one of the premier vision research centres in the world investigating the mechanisms and applications of vision in the broadest sense, reported International Innovation Health’s issue 22. Professor Laurence Harris, director, offers a snapshot of its pioneering work that covers a wide range of health issues from stroke to autism. “CVR is an international leader in human and machine vision research,” said Harris. “We are the largest such centre in Canada and have been ranked by external reviewers as one of the top five vision research centres in the world.” Read full story.

Have your say: How do you talk to your kids about Cory Monteith?
This week’s question: What do we say to our kids about the tragic death of a popular celebrity?…“Help your kids refocus their discussions about this event (disbelief, why this happened) to reflecting on your own ideas and values around substance use and what strengths you have as a family to deal with life’s challenges (trusting, supportive, strong relationships),” said York University psychology Professor Jennine Rawana in The Globe and Mail July 22. “You can also model healthy coping strategies (seeking support, managing stress) and nurture these strategies in your children.” Read full story.

Canada’s foreign service strike hurting tourism, creating backlogs
As a strike by foreign service workers drags on, its impact is being felt from coast to coast by the tourism and education sectors, as well as by people worldwide who need visas to come to Canada….Some postsecondary institutions have extended registration deadlines for foreign students while others have planned to allow deferrals of admissions to January….At York University, the deadline of arrival for foreign students has been extended for a week to Sept. 15, reported the Toronto Star July 22. Read full story.

Bonded by shared horrors, refugees find housing solutions
“There’s a popular myth that in newcomer communities, everybody takes care of everyone. I hear that all the time,” said Stephen Gaetz, director of the Canadian Homelessness Research Network and associate dean of York University’s Faculty of Education, in The Tyee July 23. Behind the popular ideas that ethnic immigrant communities take care of themselves, he says, is the harsher reality that people of all backgrounds face setbacks, job loss, financial difficulty – and struggle to keep a roof over their head. Read full story.

Help, the app we created is getting lost in the shuffle
Mindr Mobile Inc., which was founded in 2011, is having trouble securing financing….Investors are skeptical that the company can carve out enough of the security market to justify the financing….”If I were a financier, I would have the same questions,” said Schulich School of Business accounting Professor Janne Chung, in The Globe and Mail July 23. “I would be very reluctant to give people money if they can’t demonstrate a pick-up in the business. So they need to demonstrate they are serious – they need to go out there, pound the pavement, so to speak, and recruit customers. There are no shortcuts outside of sweat equity.” Read full story.

Having the ‘risk’ conversation
Market volatility in recent years has made it especially important to have frank discussions with all of your clients about risk tolerance, said Alan Middleton, executive director with York University’s Schulich Executive Education Centre, in Investment Executive July 23. “What one client might see as a risk, another could see as an opportunity.” With that in mind, said Middleton, it is your role to show your clients, in the most concrete way possible, how the level of risk in their portfolio can influence their financial future. Read full story.

Toronto researchers part of international team that caught neutrinos in the act
Today TRIUMF, a Canadian laboratory for nuclear and particle physics that works in partnership with York University and University of Toronto, announced a new breakthrough in understanding neutrinos – nature’s most elusive particles….It has been known that neutrinos transform from one kind into another, but this particular transformation had never before been conclusively observed and is a major milestone…. York University made significant contributions to this historic result, focusing on the study of the rate of neutrino production at the J-PARC facility and the rate of neutrino interactions in the T2K nearby detector complex, reported Space Daily July 23. Read full story.