UB in the News

An article in the New York Daily News on what it costs to have a dog reports that investing in a dog may yield a return that's more than financial -- in 1999, a UB researcher studying hypertensive New York stockbrokers found that those with dogs were more likely to keep their blood pressure down in stressful situations than their petless peers.

An article in the Sacramento Bee on a video that ran before Sacramento's basketball home opener against Detroit that showed a disparaging view of the City of Detroit, including burned out cars, dilapidated building and garbage-filled streets quotes Elayne Rapping, professor of American studies.

An article in the Vital Signs section of The New York Times reports on a UB study on injuries among young hockey players that found most injuries are caused when players collide with the boards or, by accident, with one another, and not by body checks. The article quotes John Leddy, associate clinical professor of orthopaedics and associate director of UB's Sports Medicine Institute.

An Associated Press article on the increase in violence in children's movies quotes Elayne Rapping, professor of American studies, who says that as animation techniques become more sophisticated and cartoons speak to audiences of all ages, the animated world looks more like reality and people become increasingly desensitized, so movies have to be more and more viscerally exciting.

An article in USA Today quotes Lee Albert, professor of law on the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel A. Alito, Jr., who was a student of Albert's at Yale University. Albert said, "I would not have picked him out of a crowd as the one who is going to rise. He did not strike me as a student with that kind of ambition. He was too low-key for that."

An article in the Baltimore Sun on the predicament that a handful of the most famous companies face when their names, once synonymous with business success, becomes shorthand for misbehavior quotes Arun Jain, professor and chair of marketing, who said the segment of the market that patronizes companies such as Wal-Mart and McDonald's don't care about reputation, but the companies "don't like the image of being attacked. They would like to expand and they're afraid this type of thing will hurt them."

An article on Inside Higher Ed looks at the unprecedented increase in the study of Chinese language, history, economics and society, and reports that UB is among many institutions that are hiring more China specialists. The article quotes Thomas Burkman, director of Asian studies.

An Associated Press article on the radical and illogical steps that some Latin American nations are taking, such as banning rice imports, to stop bird flu before it even shows up quotes Richard Lee, professor of medicine and an expert on bird flu, who said such measures are "definitely not justified." The article appeared in more than 110 news outlets throughout the world, including The New York Times.

An article on United Press International news service on efforts by the U.S. government to computerize health information in order to deal more effectively with a bioterrorist attack or a pandemic reports the Calspan-UB Research Center has been awarded a $297,000 Health IT Implementation Grant to identify and support the planning of regional data-sharing and inter-operability activities that could collect and analyze data to discover bioterrorism threats.

A segment filmed recently by Medstar TV on a new, minimally invasive spinal surgery technique being used to help patients with lower back pain get relief faster features the work of Elad Levy, associate professor of neurosurgery, who says patients who receive this type of spinal fusion recover faster and with less discomfort that with conventional spinal-fusion surgery. The segment aired on WIS-TV in Columbia, S.C., among others.