UB in the News

Stephen Dunnett, vice provost for international education, is quoted in an article in the Chronicle for Higher Education about India's fast-growing higher education market and the failure of American colleges to become more engaged in that growth. American study-abroad numbers to India have remained fairly low, he said, in part because of a lack of interest among public institutions in India in developing exchange programs. Dunnett made his remarks at the annual conference of the Association of International Education Administrators in San Francisco.

J. David Smith, professor of psychology and cognitive science, was featured in a Science magazine special podcast from the 2011 AAAS meeting in Washington D.C., discussing his work in metacognition in people, pigeons and Macaque monkeys, and using techniques developed for studying animals to discover when children know what they know.

An article on the Huffington Post reports on efforts by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa to defund research he finds objectionable, including research by R. Lorraine Collins, a psychologist and associate dean of public health research. Most of the funding for her research involving marijuana and malt liquor has already been spent, she said, noting that her research does not simply study the effects of the substances in conjunction with one another – it examines methods by which public health officials can limit such use.

A story on UPI reports new nanomaterials research from UB could lead to new solutions to the age-old public health problem of how to separate bacteria from drinking water. Articles also appeared on Science Daily, Infection Control Today, Pollution Online, Water Online and Smart Planet.

An article in The National reports research conducted by David Smith, professor of psychology, has shown that monkeys are capable of exhibiting self doubt, a skill, he said, that is "one of the most important facets of humans' reflective minds." An article about his research also appeared in The Scientist.

A story on the Huffington Post reports on research by J. David Smith, professor of psychology and cognitive science, that found that there is growing evidence that animals share functional parallels to humans in metacognition. Discover Magazine, PhysOrg and the Toronto Globe and Mail also reported on the research.

Suzanne Tomkins, director of the Women, Children and Social Justice Clinic in the UB Law School, and Remla Parthasarathy, an instructor in the Women, Children and Social Justice Clinic, were interviewed on NPR about the stereotypes Buffalo Muslims have faced in the wake of the 2009 beheading murder of Aasiya Hassan, who was killed after she filed for divorce from her husband, Muzammil Hassan. The murder, both said, was a clear-cut case of domestics abuse, and not an "honor killing" as many in the local community perceived it to be.

A story on BBC reports monkeys trained to play computer games have helped to show that it's not just humans that feel self-doubt and uncertainty, according to a study conducted by J. David Smith, professor of psychology. "These results…could help explain why self-awareness is such an important part of our cognitive makeup and from whence it came," he said. The article was picked up by a number of South Asian news outlets, including MSN India and the Times of India.

An article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the suicide of a city police officer quotes John Violanti, professor of social and preventive medicine. "The job is a fertile arena for suicide," he said. "They have a gun, and there's exposure to trauma."

David Schmid, associate professor of English, was interviewed for an article distributed by the Associated Press about a Brooklyn man who went on a 28-hour stabbing rampage that led to the deaths of four people, and a number of injuries. While Americans have become increasingly familiar with certain types of multiple killings, "here you have someone who kind of can't be neatly slotted into one of those narratives," he said. The article appeared in hundreds of news outlets that include CBS News, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Metro Canada Toronto and the Albany Times Union.