UB Faculty Experts

EXPERT CONTACT :   Kelly Roy Director, Early Childhood Research Center Unversity at Buffalo (716) 645-4065 kellykan@buffalo.edu

Common sense is often helpful when parents ask themselves whether their children are involved in too many extra-curricular activities, according to Kelly Roy, director of UB's Early Childhood Research Center. Look at the signs in your child, she says. "Is the child happy? Are they still enjoying the activities you've signed them up for? Are they able to maintain their commitment?"

These are the questions parents should ask themselves in this age of overextended children, Roy says. Are they sleeping adequately? Are they able to eat healthy meals? "Do you have time to sit down as a family and develop memories together?" she says. "Can they maintain a typical schedule for a child? If they can't, then it's too much."

Roy says it's important for families to set priorities and clarify their common goals. "Before you start a new activity for your child, ask yourself what do you want your children and your family as a whole to get from those activities," she says.

"Do the parents just need some parent time? Does the child need additional physical activity? Do they need to enhance skills they already have,  or do they need to build skills where they may be deficient? 

"Plan as a group. because everyone is in it together. It's not something that just the child has to partcipate in."

Roy says it's good parenting to encourage the child to honor his or her commitment to these activities.

Variety if also important, she says. Trying different activities to determine what they really like is healthy. But the image of the overextended child rushing from organized activity to organized activity can be a real concern.

"Children, even teenagers, need to have an opporutunity for unstructured play. We all need to learn how to manage our time. That's one of the things kids need to practice. What do we do when we are not scheduled?"

"The earthquake was moderate but significant because we haven't had very many earthquakes of this magnitude in the eastern United States or eastern Canada," said Andre Filiatrault, PhD, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering at the University at Buffalo and director of UB's MCEER (Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research).

"This earthquake will be useful in providing data to help us make better seismic maps," he said, adding that the quake's impact was probably more psychological than physical. "A good reminder that earthquakes can happen in the eastern part of North America."

Filiatrault said that the data collected from this quake will help scientists better predict where earthquakes may occur and help engineers design more durable buildings.

More information about UB's MCEER is available at http://mceer.buffalo.edu. Media Contact: Ellen Goldbaum, UB Communications, 716-645-4605 or 716-645-6969. 

EXPERT CONTACT : Cristian Tiu, PhD  Professor of Finance and Managerial Economics School of Management University at Buffalo 716-645-3299 ctiu@buffalo.edu http://mgt.buffalo.edu/faculty/academic/finance/faculty/ctiu

The impact of Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United State's credit rating depends on the perspective from which it's viewed, according to a finance expert in the University at Buffalo.

"A rating downgrade for the U.S. doesn't make much difference from a fundamental perspective," Tiu says. "First, because we'd always be able to pay our debt, even by printing more money. Second, it's nothing new to hear that our economy is not in great shape."

But Tiu says a downgrade makes a big difference on investor sentiment. "In that respect, we live each day on the roller coaster of 'Does S&P know more to have downgraded the U.S, or not, do they, or not...'"

EXPERT CONTACT : Dr. Shambhu Upadhyaya Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Director of UB's Center of Excellence in Information Systems Assurance Research and Education University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences 716-645-3183 shambhu@buffalo.edu

Shambhu Upadhyaya teaches and conducts research in the area of computer security. He is director of the Center of Excellence in Information Systems Assurance Research and Education (CEISARE), whose work has included studying cybersecurity and training students to protect the nation’s information technology systems.

With hacker collectives carrying out high-profile cyber attacks — most recently claiming to have stolen a large trove of data including personal information from U.S. law enforcement agencies — Upadhyaya comments on how much of a threat these groups really pose to cybersecurity.

Q: Are hacker groups like Anonymous the biggest threats to cybersecurity today?

A: No. Groups such as Anonymous, LulzSec, AntiSec, etc. belong to a special group who indulge in ‘hacktivism’ — hacking and activism. They are largely a sympathizer of ‘freedom of information,’ and their agenda is basically to protest what they perceive as violation of freedom of information or violation of privacy. These attacks are not aimed at individuals but against organizations. Based on the recent arrests across the country and in the U.K., it appears that the group consists of juveniles who want to get some notoriety. They are not big threats because they indulge in denial of service attacks—creating nuisances such as defacing of websites, slowing down online accesses on the Internet, etc.—and occasionally stealing sensitive information such as password files, social security information, etc.

EXPERT CONTACT : Jennifer P. Read, Ph.d Associate professor Departjment pf Psychology    (716) 645-0193 jpread@buffalo.edu

College students drink for the same reasons many of the rest of us drink, says Read. Because it can amplify an evening or social gathering. Because it's a ritual of celebration. Because it can be fun. "For many students, it's also perceived as an expectation. You're going off to college, and the expectation is you're going to drink and you're going to party," she says. So many students drink for what can be called celebratory reasons. "Reasons like having a good time, enhancing an evening, making a sporting event more fun. those kinds of things."

Read's research into binge and excessive drinking among young people has found a relationship between the "very, very strict parent and the not-at-all strict parent." Young people on both ends of the extremes are often the ones who are going to struggle the most, she says. "Kids who have never had enough limits placed on them, and the kids who have not had to make enough of their own choices before they go out to college."

The best chances for young people to become responsible drinkers is to raise them in a place in the middle where they have some freedom to explore, but where there is also some limit-setting in the years preeceding college in the home, Read says. Those are the ones who fare the best once they get to college.

"Parents have to find what they are most comfortable with," she says. "It's seems the most favorable results come when parents start early, talking  with kids even when they are young about both the good and the bad things about drinking. If you send a message just that alcohol is poison, and drinking is goiing to kill you, kids are going to find out that that is not necessarily true. It's finding a way to talk to your kids honestly about the good things but also the risks if you overindulge.

 The young people Read studied in her research often showed a lack of awareness of how much they drink in an evening. "They end up drinking more than they expect and they got drunker than they thought they would," Read says. "Young people are not always good at estimating how drunk they were. Many of them are surprised that their blood-alchohol levels are much higher than they thought.

"They probably could have had just as good a time had they drunk less, and they would have been putting themselves at less risk."

A new doll is about to enter  the American toy market. It's called "Breast Milk Baby" and, in addition to the "breastfeeding doll," little girls (and boys) will get a halter top that they can wear that has two flowers on the chest that represent nipples. As the doll’s mouth is brought close to the flowers, it makes a sucking sound, as if it is drinking milk. Afterward, the doll cries until it is burped.

EXPERT CONTACT : Richard V. Lee, MD  Professor of Medicine University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences dmdrvl@buffalo.edu  716-667-3304

Even healthy people need to take care to stay cool and hydrated during heat waves, says Richard V. Lee, MD, professor of medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and social and preventive medicine at the University at Buffalo. “It’s important for everyone to maintain their water-electrolyte balance,” he says. “For that reason, if you are drinking 8 to 12 glasses of water per day, you need to make sure that one of those glasses contains Gatorade, or fruit or tomato juice so that you are replacing the electrolytes. If all you do is drink water, you can dilute the amount of sodium in your blood. When you do that, you don’t sweat as efficiently, which can cause you to stop thinking correctly, and lead to fatigue and muscle weakness.”

An expert in geographic medicine and public health, Lee adds that young people who may be attending sports practice sessions during this heat wave need to heed their coaches’ advice about resting and drinking. “This is the kind of weather that fosters heat stress and heat stroke,” he says. “That’s when you can’t thermoregulate the way you normally do. Normally, our bodies thermoregulate by dilating the blood vessels in our skin and radiating heat, but if you get really dehydrated and your electrolytes become depleted, then you no longer have the ability to cool your skin by sweating. That’s when people become a sort of hot box and that’s when heat stroke can occur.”

Both the very young and the very old need special attention, he adds. “Older people, especially those with medical conditions who are taking medications should probably check with their family doctors about what they need to do during this heat wave,” he says. “People taking diuretics for blood pressure, for example, will be urinating a lot so they need to be careful about maintaining the water-electrolyte balance,” he says. “They shouldn’t overdo their salt intake.”

Elderly people who have even mild dementia can also lose their ability to sense changes in body temperature, he says. “They tend to lose the fine touch of their thermal sensing system. Patients in nursing homes or hospitals who are lying in bed, covered with blankets, also can lose the ability to sense temperature changes, and they can become feverish simply because they are too hot.” Lee adds that just like the elderly, babies don’t thermoregulate well either and they, too, can become feverish just because they are too hot. In those cases, he says, a cool bath and more fluids are helpful.

EXPERT CONTACT : Elayne Rapping, PhD Professor of American Studies University at Buffalo Author, "Law and Justice as Seen on TV" erapping@gmail.com

“The public response to the Casey Anthony and Dominique Strauss-Kahn cases show the largely media-inspired confusion Americans have about how the legal system, as the Founding Fathers constructed it, actually works,” says Rapping, author of the book “Law and Justice as Seen on TV.“

“The media, for one thing, focuses inordinate attention on the most sensational cases and encourages viewers to respond emotionally to what appear to be black and white morality tales in which swift justice to ‘obvious’ wrong doers should be pretty much automatic--and when it isn’t, to feel outrage. What the media fails to do is educate the public about the realities of criminal law. 

Casey Anthony--like O.J. Simpson--is a flawed human being, to be kind, and may well have been guilty as sin, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn is clearly a man with serious problems in his treatment of women. But the law, in the interest of making sure that individual citizens are protected from the potential abuse of the great powers of the state, demands that the prosecution prove --beyond a reasonable doubt!--that a crime actually took place before depriving citizens of life or liberty. In these cases the actual evidence did not meet this hard burden of proof."

We may wail and gnash our teeth at what seems a miscarriage of justice, but the jurors, unlike TV viewers, with our bombardment of melodramatic images and narratives,  have only the legally allowable facts to analyze and for the most part they take their responsibilities seriously and abide by the instructions they are given. And for anyone accused of a crime, which could be any of us, that is a good thing."