John Leddy, director of the Concussion Management Clinic, describes the treadmill test developed by UB researchers that helps to determine whether or not concussed athletes are ready to return to play.
University at Buffalo sports medicine researchers have been awarded $100,000 from NFL Charities to develop the most objective, scientific method of determining when an athlete who has had a concussion can safely return to play.
NFL Charities, the charitable foundation of the National Football League owners, has awarded the 18-month grant to researchers at the Concussion Management Clinic in the Department of Orthopaedics, UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The grant to UB is one of 15 totaling $1.5 million that NFL Charities is providing to researchers nationwide to support sports-related medical research on concussion/traumatic brain injury and cardiovascular medicine. Continue reading →
Geoffrey Challen and Steven Ko are leading the PhoneLab project to improve mobile devices and educate students.
UB researchers are enlisting hundreds of students to build the world’s largest collection of smartphone users assembled for large-scale experiments.
Dubbed PhoneLab, the network will help researchers build more powerful, secure and efficient smartphones and smartphone applications, improve wireless networking and educate students about mobile devices.
While smartphone use is skyrocketing—Forrester Research says 1 billion people will have one by 2016—experimentation on the devices is limited. Researchers either conduct tests in the marketplace, which limits their access to the smartphone, or create their own test group, which is costly and time-consuming. Continue reading →
The new Clinical and Translational Research Center, a 170,000 square-foot research facility that houses the laboratories of several UB physician-scientists.
The University at Buffalo has made another major addition to its campus: the Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC).
The School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences held the grand opening of its CTRC in the joint UB-Kaleida Health building at Goodrich and Ellicott streets in downtown Buffalo on September 20.
The 170,000-square-foot research facility allows UB’s physician-scientists to see patients, conduct research and work with clinicians downstairs in Kaleida Health’s Gates Vascular Institute. The CTRC’s offices and laboratories occupy the building’s top four floors, while Gates Vascular Institute is housed on the bottom four.
The CTRC is an important step in the relocation of UB’s medical school to downtown Buffalo. When it is completed by 2016, the new medical school will bring approximately 1,200 people to downtown Buffalo. In total, the CTRC and medical school projects will create more than 3,000 jobs, 250 of which are physician-scientists and staff.
The new facility houses the laboratories of some of UB’s highest-profile researchers, who collectively have earned more than $25 million in research funding. They are conducting research to develop treatments for a broad range of diseases and conditions, including diabetes and obesity, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer’s and memory disorders.
In addition to custom-designed laboratories and common spaces, the CTRC includes:
Clinical Research Center, which coordinates clinical research activities among institutions in the Buffalo Translational Consortium.
Center for Research in Cardiovascular Medicine, an interdisciplinary research center.
Jacobs Institute, which conducts research, development and training in vascular medicine.
Toshiba Stroke and Vascular Research Center
Biosciences Incubator, to assist UB researchers with the commercialization of new medical therapies.
UB researcher Gary A. Giovino recently led the largest international study on tobacco use. According to the study, if current trends continue, tobacco use will lead to about 1 billion people worldwide dying prematurely in the next century.
A giant leap from the 100 million lives lost prematurely due to tobacco use in the past century. Continue reading →
Smokers who ate more fruit and vegetables smoked fewer cigarettes per day, waited longer to smoke their first cigarette of the day and scored lower on a common test of nicotine dependence.
If you’re trying to quit smoking, eating more fruits and vegetables may help you quit and stay tobacco-free, according to a new study by University at Buffalo public health researchers.
The research is the first longitudinal study on the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and smoking cessation.
The UB study found that smokers who consumed the most fruit and vegetables were three times more likely to be tobacco-free for at least 30 days than those consuming the lowest amount of fruits and vegetables. These findings persisted even when adjustments were made to take into account age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, household income and health orientation.
Researchers also found that smokers who ate more fruit and vegetables smoked fewer cigarettes per day, waited longer to smoke their first cigarette of the day and scored lower on a common test of nicotine dependence.
Several explanations are possible, such as less nicotine dependence for people who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Or the fact that higher fiber consumption from fruits and vegetables make people feel fuller, since smokers sometimes confuse hunger with an urge to smoke.
And, unlike some foods which are known to enhance the taste of tobacco, such as meats, caffeinated beverages and alcohol, fruits and vegetables may worsen the taste.
The UB researchers caution that more investigation is needed to determine if these findings replicate and if they do, to identify the reasons why fruit and vegetable consumption may help smokers quit. They also want to research how other aspects of one’s diet affect smoking.
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