Social Sciences

Today's anticipated announcement that Oprah Winfrey will end her award-winning show in 2011 marks the end of an era in television, but don't expect her influence to wane, says Elayne Rapping, a nationally known media critic and analyst.

University at Buffalo faculty experts are available to discuss the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, the Dow's climb to its highest point in a year and the shootings in Orlando and at Fort Hood in Texas.

The University at Buffalo Law School will host the annual Northeast People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference (NEPOC) Oct. 23 and 24 in the UB Law School on UB's North (Amherst) Campus. The annual event will bring scholars from around the country together to discuss legal issues and topics of concern to people of color.

Scenario: A group of friends are drinking at the local pub, when one gets a cell phone call. He takes it in a quiet corner; nothing unusual. But this isn't a "What's Up" call from a friend: It's a "What-are-you-doing-right-now?" call from an automated voice system programmed to collect data in real time, via cell phone, from participants enrolled in research studies on alcohol, marijuana and the situational factors that surround their use.

The possibility that climate change might simply be a natural variation like others that have occurred throughout geologic time is dimming, according to evidence in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published today . The research reveals that sediments retrieved by University at Buffalo geologists from a remote Arctic lake are unlike those seen during previous warming episodes.

A study about why African American seniors do or do not get influenza vaccinations finds that many of them do not have accurate and complete information about the flu itself, the safety and efficacy of the inoculations, and the ease and necessity of getting the shots.

Ten percent of young adolescent boys -- or one in 10 -- exhibit a symptom of conduct disorder as well as a symptom of risky or problem gambling, according to new research findings from the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA).

A film by Emmy-award winning artist and filmmaker Elliot Caplan, "15 Days of Dance: The Making of 'Ghost Light,'" produced and developed at the University at Buffalo, will receive its premiere screening this month at Lincoln Center.

Dead zones in critical waterways, accelerated loss of arable land and massive famines. They're all caused by the 24 billion tons of soil that are lost every year to erosion, a phenomenon that costs the world as much as $40 billion annually. But predicting where erosion occurs, and thus how to prevent it, is a serious challenge. That's why University at Buffalo geographer Sean Bennett has constructed various systems to model it.

Thursday night's acknowledgement by "Late Show" host David Letterman that he has had sexual relations with members of his staff was more than a "little story" he had to share with his audience. It was an offensive and tacky write off of his sexual dalliances, says a nationally known media critic and expert on women's issues at the University at Buffalo.