UB in the News

An article prepared by the Newhouse News Services and running in newspapers nationwide cites the work of the reconnaissance team from UB's Multidisciplinary Center of Earthquake Engineering Research that visited the devastated Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina to study damage to large structures as an example of how disaster data help scientists in their research.

Deborah D.L. Chung, Niagara Mohawk Professor of Materials Research and director of the Composite Materials Research Laboratory in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is quotes in an article being distributed nationally by UPI, on how the "smart concrete" invented by her would be a better alternative to strengthen levees and monitor their reliability.

An Associated Press story in Newsday reports on UB professors and students using "clickers" -- slender, handheld devices also known as "Audience Response Systems" that are used in television shows such as "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" -- in large classes to help the classes feel less impersonal and more effective for both students and professors.

An article on CBS MarketWatch on the need to rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina that are universally accessible quotes Edward Steinfeld, professor of urban planning and design and director of UB's IDEA Center, who says the "current housing stock is woefully deficient in meeting the needs of people with mobility impairment."

An article in The New York Times on the National Endowment for Financial Education and its efforts to improve people's financial literacy quotes Lewis Mandell, professor of finance and managerial economics, who asks whether "just creating awareness and bringing people to a Web site is going to get very many people to modify their behavior in a significant manner. It just isn't easy for us to change our basic behavior patterns."

An article in the Los Angeles Times on a strike by members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, who are protesting Boeing because 60-70 percent of the company's next-generation 787 Dreamliner will be made overseas, quotes David Pritchard, research associate in the Canada-United State Trade Center within the Department of Geography, who says Boeing is sowing the seeds of its own destruction by sharing valuable technology with foreign governments intent on setting up their own aerospace industry.

An article in The New York Times on the growing number of companies that are defaulting employee pension plans quotes James A. Wooten, professor of law and a pension-law historian, who says that Congress knew it was creating an imperfect system when it established the pension corporation in 1974, and that it expected to make improvements later.

Elayne Rapping, professor of American studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, is quoted in an Associated Press story that already has been used by more than 200 print and broadcast media outlets, about a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that says more women, particularly those in their late teens and 20s, are experimenting with bisexuality.

An article in the Christian Science Monitor on concrete and new forms of the material quotes Deborah Chung, Niagara Mohawk Professor of Materials Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who says of her carbon fiber-reinforced concrete, "You can monitor room occupancy in real-time, controlling lighting, ventilation and cooling in relation to how many people are there."

An article in Inside Higher Ed on what colleges are doing to help students and staff displaced by Hurricane Katrina reports that UB has discontinued searches for some administrative jobs and reserved them, on a three- to six-month basis, for administrators displaced by the hurricane.