Social Sciences

A study by a University at Buffalo urban planning researcher has found that houses located within a half-mile radius of Buffalo's light rail stations are assessed at $1,300 to $3,000 more than similar properties that are not within walking distance of the stations.

Monica Ridgeway, a University at Buffalo undergraduate entering her senior year, knows that when people think of a scientist, they usually think of a white male in a lab coat; but not too far in the future, she hopes they will envision someone more like herself, a young African-American woman with a head full of braids who is curious about correlations between frozen mud and global warming.

A researcher at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) is investigating the "brain's own marijuana" -- called endocannabinoid -- in the regulation of stress, stress-related behavior and anxiety.

If you're in the market for a weird, intriguing and exciting Saturday night, head down to Buffalo's Central Terminal, 495 Paderewski Drive, for a multi-media marriage of ghosts, puppets, mechanical spiders, robotic dance partners, hallucinatory discovery and industrial progress -- together at last at an event produced by University at Buffalo robotic artist Don Paul Swain.

In the name of raising environmental awareness, enterprising University at Buffalo students are turning their campus into a virtual -- and real -- playground this week as they conduct a final project for their class in "Pervasive Gaming," an emerging game genre in which virtual and real-life play come together.

Contrary to the unhappy experience of the first little pig, straw bale is a strong, cost-effective, exceptionally insulating, fire-resistant, sustainable, natural building system. University at Buffalo architecture students and community members -- cold, covered in mud and stuck with hay -- recently raised 130 50-pound "two-string" straw bales that will constitute the load-bearing walls of a community greenhouse on Buffalo's West Side.

Kathryn A. Foster, director of the University at Buffalo Regional Institute, will serve as co-investigator for the Network on Building Resilient Regions, a recently launched initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Samina Raja, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, has been awarded a $105,000 contract from the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus to study physical activity levels among the 6,000 employees on the medical campus in relation to improvements made to its infrastructure and streetscape.

"Brilliant, incisive and unafraid" is how noted architect and urban designer Marilyn Jordan Taylor describes Joan Ockman, the 2007 Will and Nan Clarkson Chair in Architecture at the University at Buffalo.

New and exciting ideas about our built surroundings will be on exhibition this week when the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning presents its annual Atelier, an extensive exhibition of work produced during year by the undergraduate and graduate students in architecture and planning studios.