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WHAM TV ABC 13 Rochester (February 8, 2012)
U of R Students Attempt Record for Longest Taco Line
Students at the University of Rochester are attempting to break the world record for the longest line of tacos. Students lined up 1,036 tacos side-by-side and filled them with traditional toppings including meat, beans, lettuce and tomato. (Also Reported in: YNN, Henrietta Post)

The Atlantic (February 8, 2012)
The Misunderstood Power of Michael Jackson's Music
By Joseph Vogel
More than two and a half years after his untimely death, Michael Jackson continues to entertain. Cirque du Soleil's crowd-pleasing Michael Jackson Immortal World Tour is currently crisscrossing North America, while a recent Jackson-themed episode of Glee earned the show a 16 percent jump in ratings and its highest music sales of the season. Even Madonna's halftime Super Bowl spectacle harkened back to a trend first initiated by Jackson.

Joseph Vogel is the author of Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson. He is a doctoral candidate and instructor in the Department of English at the University of Rochester.

TIME (February 7, 2012)
Does Online Dating Make It Harder to Find 'the One'?
"There is no reason to believe that online dating improves romantic outcomes," says Harry Reis, a professor of psychology at University of Rochester and one of the study's co-authors. "It may yet, and someday some service might provide good data to show it can, but there is certainly no evidence to that right now."

"Interaction is a rich and complex process," says Reis." partner is another human being, who has his or her own needs, wishes and priorities, and interacting with them can be a very, very complex process for which going through a list of characteristics isn't useful." (Also Reported in: CNN, Huffington Post UK, The Globe and Mail, CBC, The Herald, The Guardian, The Telegraph, WebMD, RedOrbit, HealthDay, Computerworld, WHEC-TV)

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle (February 7, 2012)
Nora Bredes honored posthumously with lifetime achievement award
Nora Bredes, a former Suffolk County legislator and director of the Anthony Center for Women's Leadership, will be posthumously honored with this year's Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award by the center that she helped shape at the University of Rochester.

Bredes served as director of the Anthony Center for Women's Leadership for 12 years.

CBS News (February 7, 2012)
Online dating full of downsides, study shows: What should daters do?
Study co-author Harry T. Reis, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in N.Y., told WebMD that he thinks the sites should share their methodology anyway.

Reis told WebMD that daters should look at only a handful of people at a time, allowing them to evaluate partners on an individual level, not just how they compare to other potential dates. Don't just look at characteristics people list in their profile, he said, but try to picture yourself going on a vacation with this person. (Also Reported in: The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, CBS News, Newsday, Herald Sun, Chronicle Herald, Minyanville, PC Advisor)

ABC News (February 6, 2012)
Online Dating: Popular and Stigma Is Gone, but Don't Pay for It
Now researchers confirm that romance and dating has gone digital. It is the second most-popular way of connecting, surpassed only by meeting people through friends.

"There is no particular reason for people to use sites that charge a lot of money to offer something they cannot deliver," said co-author Harry Reis, a nationally known relationship expert and professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.

As for what makes a good match, "You can't quantify it," Reiss said. "You can define it, but we do not know how it occurs and where it comes from. ... Science isn't there yet."  (Also Reported in: Global Toronto, Daily Mail, Yahoo! UK & Ireland News, AOL Lifestyle UK, London Stock Exchange, New Glasgow News, Winnipeg Free Press, Amherst Citizen)

New York Times (State Version) (February 3, 2012)
No Rust in Rochester
By DUNCAN T. MOORE

AFTER years of decline, Eastman Kodak, once the largest employer in Rochester, filed for bankruptcy protection last month. But rather than following Detroit, Cleveland and other once-bustling industrial cities into decay, Rochester continues to grow at a healthy clip. Why?

It also helps that Rochester has a strong higher-education sector, which has likewise been supported by Kodak. The University of Rochester became a leading research center through gifts from Kodak's founder, George Eastman, who also gave generously to the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle (February 1, 2012)
Changing the scope of Black History Month
For the University of Rochester - and for many institutions in and around Rochester - recognition of Black History Month goes far beyond posters of Rosa Parks and videos of Martin Luther King Jr.

As Rochester's black community has changed, so have the events that honor its history. At UR, the diverse event schedule includes a panel discussion on Haiti and a lecture titled African Identities, reflecting the increasingly diverse black population of the institution, the state and the country as a whole.

"The stage of history has all the main stars on it - the Lincolns, the Washingtons and the Jeffersons. That's what we've been doing for the past 40 years or so," said Larry Hudson, a professor at the University of Rochester's Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies. "We have to bring in the other supportive actors. You have to have Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass, but sometimes you'll just have an enslaved family."

Rochester Business Journal (February 1, 2012)
Simon School rises in international rankings
The Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester is on the rise. One year after ranking No. 26 on Financial Times of London's annual ranking of the world's best business schools, the Simon School rose four spots to No. 22. The school also ranked No. 49 among the top 100 business schools in the world.  (Also Reported in: WROC-TV, YNN)

Huffington Post (February 1, 2012)
Birth Control Recall: What To Do If You Are Affected By The Pfizer Recall
Pfizer announced yesterday that it is recalling 1 million packages of its Lo/Ovral-28 tablets and generic Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol tablets, because some of the birth control tablets may be out of sequence, or there may be more of the active pills in some packages and more inactive pills in other packages.

"It's concerning -- I just hope there's not too much of a fallout from this," Dr. Adam Griffin, an assistant professor in the obstetrics and gynecology department at the University of Rochester Medical Center, told HuffPost.

Financial Times (January 31, 2012)
Tech powers and a harsh lesson in survival
From troubled BlackBerry maker Research In Motion to fading internet power Yahoo and the bankrupt Eastman Kodak, the business headlines this year have told a familiar story: the fortunes of once-dominant technology powers can fade with unnerving severity.

Those strengths, according to Larry Matteson, now a professor at the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, included a powerful research and development base, particularly a world-leading position in organic chemistry; a specialist manufacturing capability learnt in the film business; and one of the top global consumer brands.

"They were thinking about taking a business with 60-80 per cent [profit] margins and going into consumer electronics, where 5 per cent is pretty good," says University of Rochester's Mr. Matteson.

Bloomberg News (January 31, 2012)
Rochester's Primo Says Obama Ratings "Remarkable" (audio)
David Primo, a business administration professor at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, says President Obama's approval rating "speaks to the weakness of the Republican field." Primo talks with Bloomberg's Ken Prewitt and Tom Keene on Bloomberg Radio's "Bloomberg Surveillance."

WHEC-TV (January 31, 2012)
'Bike and Build': Local U of R students to bike cross-country
Two University of Rochester students are recruiting for a cross-country bike ride this summer called "Pedaling for Affordable Housing."

22-year-old Karla Sordia Lozano is a senior at the University of Rochester. She and friend Ryan Brown will be biking across the country to raise funds and create awareness for the cause of affordable housing. Sordia and Brown are in the non-profit organization called "Bike and Build." Sordia appeared on Roc City Tonight on Tuesday to spread the word about her efforts.

Discovery News (January 31, 2012)
Marijuana Mouth Spray: Will It Be Abused?
In addition, while marijuana is a hodgepodge of about 64 different substances, Sativex is composed mainly of two ingredients: THC and another cannabinoid called CBD. The latter component is thought to ameliorate some of the side effects of THC, including the high that marijuana users feel, said Dr. Armando Villarreal, an assistant professor of neurosurgery and pain management at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. (Also Reported in: MSNBC, Fox News, Scientific American, Live Science, Yahoo! News, Oregon Herald, Mother Nature Network)

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle (January 30, 2012)
If Rochester is losing, these guys will take more of it
Joel Seligman calls it the Rochester miracle. The University of Rochester president says it's nothing short of miraculous that the region could lose all the jobs it did as Eastman Kodak and other large companies drastically downsized over the past 30 years - and yet show an increase in employment. "We've transformed ourselves," he told a Rochester Downtown Development Corp. luncheon Thursday.

A knowledge-based economy - high-tech health care, advanced manufacturing, energy breakthroughs, telecommunications - has grown up to replace an economy that revolved around little yellow boxes of camera film.

Wegman suggested that if this region is losing, he'll take a second helping of it. Noting that Rochester accounts for more than half of all the private-sector jobs being created upstate, he said, "I call that winning."

Financial Times (January 30, 2012)
A league of their own
In order to compile the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2012, the FT surveys more than 20,000 alumni from the world’s leading business schools. This year 9,466 alumnni from the class of 2008 completed the survey. In addition to supplying data for the ranking, alumni were also asked to rate the teaching at their school in a selection of subjects. Their responses, which are not used in the compilation of the rankings, form the basis of the Top 10s below.

Top Ten in Finance
3. University of Rochester: Simon

Top Ten in Economics
4. University of Rochester: Simon

Top Ten in Accountancy
7. University of Rochester: Simon

The Huffington Post (January 28, 2012)
Shoveling Snow? How to Protect Your Back (And Your Heart)
The combination of frigid weather and normally sedentary people going all-out can be a recipe for back injuries. "The shoveling tends to be done by people who are not otherwise in good shape," says Richard Pomerantz, M.D., a professor of medicine in cardiology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in Rochester, N.Y. "Sometimes a potato chip is the heaviest thing they've lifted for a while."

There's both an aerobic and weight lifting component to snow shoveling, says Dr. Pomerantz, and the weight lifting portion can raise blood pressure. "You're increasing the load on the heart very, very quickly when maybe the heart is not used to it," he says. "If you do that in a setting where it's cold, your arteries and vessels tend to constrict, so the relative blood supply goes down at a time when you're asking the heart to do a lot more. Demand is high and supply is low and that can be too much sometimes."

Gizmodo (January 26, 2012)
How Your Friends' Locations Give Yours Away Online [Privacy]
You might have the privacy settings locked down on all your social networks, but it's the weak links in the system that make the difference. A team at the University of Rochester in New York, for instance, say they can predict where you are to within 100 meters, just by analyzing the location of your friends on Twitter.

13WHAM-TV (January 25, 2012)
University Of Rochester Extends Benefits Coverage
The University of Rochester announced plans to extend benefits to all domestic partners of its employees.

The change will cover opposite-sex and same-sex couples on July 1. (Also Reported in: Rochester City Newspaper, YNN, 1180 WHAM, WROC-TV)

New Scientist (January 25, 2012)
What your online friends reveal about where you are
YOU'VE set your Facebook account to "friends only", your Tweets are protected and you wouldn't dream of setting a virtual foot near location-sharing services like Foursquare - in other words, you can feel pretty safe online, right? Wrong. We all unwittingly leak vital information through friends.

"You can actually infer a lot of things about people, even though they are pretty careful about how they manage their online behaviour," says Adam Sadilek of the University of Rochester in New York. (Also Reported in: Yahoo! India News, Newstrack India)