Social Sciences

News about UB’s social sciences programs, including anthropology, psychology and social work. (see all topics)

  • "Interval": How Film Can Help Us "Think Thought"
    10/27/05
    They are variously referred to as "makers of art films," "avant-garde filmmakers" and "experimental filmmakers." By any name, they will travel to Buffalo next month from several nations to explore the nature of the cinematic image in relation to time. They will join viewers, scholars and theorists in a two-day film conference Nov. 5 and 6 titled "Interval."
  • Researchers to Describe Katrina's Damage
    10/25/05
    In a live and online Webcast seminar, structural engineers and social scientists who were dispatched to New Orleans and Mississippi in the days after Katrina hit will describe the vast devastation they saw and discuss strategies for improving U.S. resilience and response to natural disasters, terrorist attack and other extreme events.
  • New Orleans -- What Urban Myths Say about U.S.
    10/19/05
    It is now evident that the reports of child murder, rape, widespread looting, snipers and chaos resulting from the total breakdown of moral and legal order in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina were enormously exaggerated if true at all.
  • Men Who Smoke Heavily May Impair Sperm, Fertility
    10/17/05
    Men who smoke cigarettes may experience a significant decline in their capacity to father a child, research by a reproductive medicine specialist from the University at Buffalo has shown.
  • Study Tests New Method to Instill Abstinence after Detox
    9/27/05
    An addiction specialist at the University at Buffalo has received a $1.28 million grant from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to develop and test a new program designed to improve abstinence rates after alcohol detoxification.
  • Teen Labels Provide Insights into Drug, Alcohol Use
    9/23/05
    The labels that teen-agers use to describe themselves and their peers provide an insight into their drug and alcohol use, according to a study at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions.
  • God, Cosmos, Katrina and Rita
    9/23/05
    The desire to assign cosmic significance to the arrival of hurricanes Katrina and Rita is an example of humankind's ages-old need to find reason within chaos, according to University at Buffalo anthropologist Phillips Stevens Jr., Ph.D., a renowned expert on the origins, nature and meaning of cults, superstitions and cultural identities.
  • Symposium Highlights Land, Ecosystem Interaction
    9/22/05
    Effective mitigation of the drastic effects of extreme natural phenomena like hurricanes, floods, landslides and wildfires through integrated environmental management that includes the perspectives of geomorphologists and ecosystem scientists is the focus of the interdisciplinary 36th International Geomorphology Binghamton Symposium to be held Oct. 7-9 at the University at Buffalo.
  • Rita Causing Flashbacks for Katrina Survivors
    9/22/05
    Three short weeks after they fled New Orleans, many victims of Hurricane Katrina housed in shelters in Texas are having difficulties dealing emotionally with the disaster, particularly with another destructive hurricane headed toward the state where they took refuge, according to Nancy J. Smyth, Ph.D., associate professor and dean of social work at the University at Buffalo.
  • Katrina Spurs Geology Professor to Shift Course Focus
    9/15/05
    Aug. 29., the day that Hurricane Katrina barreled ashore on the Gulf Coast, also was the first day of class for Geology 428/528, "Preventing Geologic Disasters," at the University at Buffalo. Even though he had already prepared a semester's worth of historical examples, Michael F. Sheridan, Ph.D., UB professor of geology, decided that day to ditch much of it and to focus, instead, on Katrina as the harshest of case studies.