The Academic Minute for 2016.5.16-5.20

Academic Minute from 5.16 – 5.20

Monday, May 16
James Cook – University of Missouri School of Medicine
A Better Fix for Torn ACLs
James Cook, D.V.M., Ph.D., serves as the William and Kathryn Allen Distinguished Professor in Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. Cook also is director of the Missouri Orthopaedic Institute’s Division of Research and the Mizzou BioJoint Center. Cook’s clinical interests include cartilage restoration, regenerative orthpaedics and sports medicine. His research interests include tissue engineering, as well as management, diagnosis and treatment of osteoarthritis. As senior author of the study, “Suspensory Versus Interference Screw Fixation for Arthroscopic Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction in a Translational Large-Animal Model,” his work recently was published in The Journal of Arthroscopic & Related Surgery.

Tuesday, May 17
Greg Valentine – University at Buffalo
Volcanic Flows
Ph.D., Geological Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara – 1988

Specialties and Interests: Volcanic risk, phreatomagmatic explosive eruptions, basaltic volcanic fields, pyroclastic deposits, volcano fluid dynamics, volcaniclastic and surface processes.

Wednesday, May 18
Brian Primack – University of Pittsburgh
Social Media and Depression
Dr. Brian Primack combines his expertise in education, technology, human development and medicine in his research on the effect of mass media messages on health. Specifically, he focuses on the use of media literacy education to prevent adolescent smoking, underage drinking and other harmful adolescent behaviors.

Dr. Primack has authored studies on topics such as racial disparities in tobacco advertising, the portrayal of substance use in popular music and  the relationship between “media literacy” and adolescent smoking. He has been quoted in the New York Times, ABC News, CBS News and Forbes Magazine.

Dr. Primack received his medical degree from Emory Medical School and his master’s in education degree from Harvard University.  He graduated from Yale University in 1991 with degrees in English literature and mathematics.

He is the recent recipient of the Society of Behavioral Medicine Early Career Investigator Award, the Society of Adolescent Medicine New Investigator Award, the Robert Wood Johnson Physician Faculty Scholar Award and the University of Pittsburgh Provost’s Innovation in Education Award.

Thursday, May 19
Devyn Spence Benson – Louisiana State University
Obama, Cuba and Afro-Cubans
Devyn Spence Benson is an assistant professor of history and African & African American Studies at Louisiana State University. Benson received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in the field of Latin American History, where her research focused on racial politics during the first three years of the Cuban revolution. She has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Williams College and now LSU. She is the author of published articles and reviews in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of Transnational American Studies, Journal of Cuban Studies and PALARA: Publication of the Afro-Latin / American Research Association. Benson’s work has been supported by the Doris G. Quinn, Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS), and Gaius Charles Bolin dissertation fellowships. She has also held residencies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and the WEB DuBois Institute for African and African American Research at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Benson’s newest book, Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution(UNC press, 2016) is based on over 18 months of field research in Cuba where she has traveled annually since 2003. You can follow her on Twitter @bensondevyn.

Friday, May 20
Lester Loschky – Kansas State University
Moviegoers and Eye Movements
Lester C. Loschky is an Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences at Kansas State University.  He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  His work is concerned with visual cognition and scene perception, from both a perceptual and a cognitive viewpoint, and its real world applications.  His research emphases are on the relationships between eye movements, attention, and higher-level cognitive processes, with applications in human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-assisted instruction (CAI), and educational applications of better understanding the processes involved in visual narrative perception and comprehension.