Health and Medicine

Faced with growing concerns about workplace safety as a result of Anthrax threats and the events of Sept. 11, employers hoping to retain employees and lessen employee fears should change the way they reward them, says an expert on compensation and human resources.

The University at Buffalo's Toxicology Research Center will receive $1.3 million over the next five years as a participant in a new six-member children's environmental health research center formed to study the effects of eating large quantities of contaminated Great Lakes fish on Laotian and Hmong refugees.

Researchers at the University at Buffalo and Ohio University are using the Internet to collect data from thousands of women from around the world about their experience of pain during labor in order to understand how best to ease the pain of childbirth. This is one of the first large-scale, Internet-based survey research studies to be undertaken and is expected to yield a large foundational population sample for the study of labor pain.

When UB hosts "Digital Frontiers: The Buffalo Summit 2001," on Nov. 2 and 3, one of the projects to be exhibited in connection with the event is a little honey called "EVL: Alive on the Grid" -- a peculiar virtual experience involving avatars, simultaneous occupation of virtual space, lots of music and dancing "ghosts."

A "universal bathroom" developed by an architectural team from the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning has won the Bronze Award in the 2001 American Society on Aging (ASA) competition for new products for mature markets.

Retailers should brace for a poor Christmas sales season because many Americans feel too guilty to shop during this period of national mourning, says an expert on retailing and consumer behavior. "Not since the death of President Kennedy has the United States experienced such collective mourning," says Arun K. Jain, Samuel P. Capen Professor of Marketing Research and Chair of the Marketing Department in the University at Buffalo School of Management.

In a new study underway at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions, researchers are examining the cumulative effect of a number of risk factors associated with mothers' cocaine use on their infants' mental development.

The School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo has developed a Web site that offers online information and resources for those who are having personal difficulty coping with the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and its aftermath.

Have we developed the collective wisdom and conscience to deal with a world in which ubiquitous technological interactions are so intertwined that they cannot be untangled? Let's hope so, because that's what our future holds. "Digital Frontier: Buffalo Summit 2001," a major international conference to be held Nov. 2 and 3 at the University at Buffalo, will present observations and research on what digital technology has wrought by some of the most brilliant, pioneering thinkers in art, social science, applied science and engineering, medicine, philosophy and education.

Rush Limbaugh's loss of sensory inner-ear hair cells, a condition that likely contributed to his hearing loss, could lead to changes in his brain that would allow him optimize use of his remaining hearing, research being done at the University at Buffalo indicates.