Health and Medicine

University at Buffalo scientists have discovered a promising new drug lead that works by inhibiting the sophisticated bacterial communication system called quorum sensing.

Fertility researchers at the University at Buffalo have shown that nicotine and cotinine, a substance produced by nicotine's breakdown, cause sperm to change in ways that could reduce fertility potential.

Binge drinking by African Americans who drink appears to negate the protective health effects seen in most groups who, as in this population, consume moderate amounts of alcohol in general, researchers at the University at Buffalo have found.

Gambling is widespread -- and spreading -- in American society with 82 percent of individuals interviewed having gambled in the past year, according to a national survey conducted at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) and reported in the Winter 2002 issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies. Previous surveys found gambling participation at 61 percent (1975) and 63 percent (1998).

With a new four-year, $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education (GSE) has announced it will establish new teacher education programs designed to improve classroom instruction for students in Buffalo and rural Western New York schools who have limited English proficiency (LEP).

Four University at Buffalo faculty members with expertise in cults and the ethical, legal and social implications of human cloning are available to members of the media covering claims made by Clonaid and the controversy surrounding human cloning.

The Raelians -- the cult behind Clonaid, the company claiming to have cloned a human being -- are a remnant of the "flying-saucer cults" that originated in the 1970s and '80s, according to cult expert Phillips Stevens, Jr., an associate professor of anthropology at the University at Buffalo.

A new method with the potential to quickly detect suspicious patterns in reported illnesses in specific geographic regions is being developed by a geographer at the University at Buffalo. Combining cluster analysis with quality-control techniques traditionally used on assembly lines in factories, the method takes a novel approach to the problem of detecting potentially significant increases in the incidence of disease within specific geographic areas.

Merril T. Dayton, M.D., chief of gastrointestinal surgery at the University of Utah College of Medicine, has been named chair of the Department of Surgery in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, effective July 1.

It might have killed the cat but a new study by psychologists at the University at Buffalo suggests that curiosity is very good for people. Their study concludes that the degree to which people are curious actively influences their personal growth opportunities and the level of intimacy that develops when they meet someone new.