In her office in Kingsbury Hall, Erin Bell is explaining her research. “When you go to a doctor, they don’t just look at you. They do blood work; they run tests. Bridge instrumentation and testing is almost like an EKG of a bridge. You gather data, and looking at that data you can tell if something needs to be done prior to a collapse.” 

Bell delivers this explanation with infectious enthusiasm. An associate professor in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences (CEPS), Bell was chosen in 2007 as only the second-ever UNH civil engineering faculty member to receive a prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development award. Since then, she’s been hard at work on her project, “Integrating Structural Health Monitoring, Intelligent Transportation Systems and Model Updating Into a Bridge Condition Assessment...

U.S. lodging executives were more optimistic about general business conditions in January than the prior month, according to the UNH Lodging Executives Sentiment Index (LESI) for the current month ending January 2013. The index increased from 53.8 in December 2012 to 61.7 in January 2013.  

“This increase results from lodging executives’ positive opinions of the present general business conditions for their properties, as well as their positive sentiment for how they view general business conditions 12 months in the future. Expectations about room reservations during the same 12-month period also moved upward,” said Nelson Barber, associate professor of hospitality management, who manages the index. 

Twenty-seven percent of lodging executives indicated current business conditions were good, an improvement from 15 percent last period, while 67 percent indicated conditions were normal, down from 69 percent during the same period. Seven percent of the...

Abusive bosses who target employees with ridicule, public criticism, and the silent treatment not only have a detrimental effect on the employees they bully, but they negatively impact the work environment for the co-workers of those employees who suffer from “second-hand” or vicarious abusive supervision, according to new research from UNH. 

In the first ever study to investigate vicarious supervisory abuse, Paul Harvey, associate professor of organizational behavior at UNH, and his research colleagues Kenneth Harris and Raina Harris from Indiana University Southeast and Melissa Cast from New Mexico State University find that vicarious supervisory abuse is associated with job frustration, abuse of other coworkers, and a lack of perceived organizational support beyond the effects of the abusive supervisor. 

The research is presented in the Journal of Social Psychology in the article “An Investigation of Abusive Supervision, Vicarious Abuse Supervision, and...

Abused children who are removed from their homes are likely to be placed voluntarily in the homes of other family members instead of other placement arrangements, according to new research from the Carsey Institute at UNH.  

The new research is presented in the Carsey Institute brief “Informal Kinship Care Most Common Out-of- Home Placement After an Investigation of Child Maltreatment” conducted by Wendy Walsh, research associate professor of sociology at the UNH Crimes against Children Research Center and research associate at the Carsey Institute. 

Walsh looked at placement patterns nationally in both rural and urban areas. She evaluated whether abused children were placed in foster care, formal kinship care (state has legal custody and places the child with a family member), informal kinship care (a parent voluntarily places a child with a family member), or group homes or other out-of-home settings, such as emergency...

The Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics is offering tax preparation help to low-income residents.

The students, all accounting majors, are certified tax preparers with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, a collaboration among the university, Internal Revenue Service, Northeast Credit Union and the Creating Assets, Savings, and Hope (CASH) Coalition of Southeastern New Hampshire.

UNH volunteers will be available:

• Friday, Feb. 8, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the MUB, Room 207. 
• Friday, Feb. 15, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the MUB, Room 207.

The VITA program offers free tax help to low-income residents who need help preparing their own tax returns. The UNH students providing the help are graduates and undergraduates who are IRS VITA-certified to help prepare basic tax returns. This is the ninth year UNH students have volunteered for the program and over the years have helped hundreds of Granite Staters....

Public health in New Hampshire is the subject of the next Seacoast Science Café at the Portsmouth Brewery Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013, at 6 p.m. At the first in the spring series of cafes, UNH professors Michael Palace and Rosemary Caron will discuss two health threats familiar to New Englanders: Lyme disease and lead poisoning. 

Seacoast Science Cafés provide a unique chance for members of the public to learn about issues in contemporary science from scientists who lead the research in the relaxed atmosphere of a pub.   

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in the world and infections can lead to severe health problems. Because of the complicated aspects of this disease, it requires knowledge of ecology of multiple host species, which is directly tied to vegetation structure and landscape characteristics.  

Lead poisoning is a public health issue that predominantly persists in children residing in urban communities in...