Education

The University at Buffalo has enrolled the most academically talented freshman class in its history, based on the average SAT scores of the 3,150 new students who begin classes this week.

More than 15 percent of University at Buffalo students come from outside the United States -- 4,300-plus last year and about the same number expected for the new academic year, which began yesterday. It is a population UB is working hard to increase.

Ia Iashvili, Ph.D., and her husband, Avto Kharchilava, Ph.D., both assistant professors of physics at the University at Buffalo, and their five-year-old son have now returned to their Amherst home after escaping the conflict in their native Georgia, where they were spending summer vacation with their families.

American pop culture holds a special place for Hollywood depictions of eccentric or inexperienced teachers who use unconventional methods to achieve classroom breakthroughs and transform the lives of their students. While these big-screen portrayals often border on the fantastical, some of the qualities exhibited by movie teachers do lead to classroom successes, according to a University at Buffalo professor who studies real-life "maverick" teachers and new teachers who succeed in urban classrooms.

In eating disorders, the "battleground is the body," says University at Buffalo researcher Catherine P. Cook-Cottone, who is examining ways to win those battles using conventional as well as less-common solutions.

University at Buffalo Law School Dean Makau W. Mutua returns to Nairobi, Kenya, this month to deliver two keynote speeches on human rights and justice in African nations. Mutua's two latest policy speeches follow a similar appearance July 21 in Nairobi during which he addressed an international conference on bringing justice to those responsible for sexual and gender-based violence in countries going through conflict and civil unrest.

According to researchers at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA), the odds of 18- and 19-year-old college women experiencing sexual aggression are 19 times greater when they binge drink than when they don't drink.

A much-anticipated debate Sept. 26 between John Edwards, former Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. senator, and Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to President George W. Bush, will kick off a high-powered lineup of speakers for the University at Buffalo Distinguished Speaker Series.

The Chinese people resent media reports about exceptional air pollution in Beijing, China's Internet censorship, poor construction of Olympic venues, half-empty hotels, algae-thickened beaches, visa problems and world-wide protests of China's Tibet policy as examples of Western imperial attitudes, says the director of the University at Buffalo's Asian Studies Program.

University at Buffalo faculty members challenged teams of Western New York's best and brightest high school students to prove their scientific and mathematical mettle in a brain-teasing race around the UB North (Amherst) Campus today. Using some of UB Engineering's high-tech lab resources, student teams competed to destroy a miniature building in a simulated earthquake, detect hidden weapons in X-ray images of luggage, use trigonometry to operate a mechanical robot and calculate turbulence in a wind tunnel.