The outcome of Haiti's March 20 presidential election will determine much of the country's political future, but this week, more than 250 Haitian architects and engineers will take the future of Haiti's reconstruction into their own hands when they attend the third UniQ-UB/MCEER Earthquake Engineering Seminar in Port-au-Prince.

The design of next-generation nuclear power plants and other critical energy facilities will undoubtedly be influenced by the Japanese tsunami and its devastating effects on Japan's nuclear reactors, says Michael C. Constantinou, PhD, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering at the University at Buffalo.

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of northern Japan and the tsunami it triggered demonstrate the need for an integrated approach to preparing for, mitigating and responding to extreme events, say researchers at the University at Buffalo, MCEER and the UB Center for GeoHazards Studies, who spoke to media in a briefing Friday on UB's North Campus. Video commentary from UB faculty experts is available here: http://bit.ly/eeUn1S

Scientists and engineers at the University at Buffalo and UB's MCEER (Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research) will be available to discuss with media the powerful magnitude 8.9 earthquake that struck the northern coast of Japan and has triggered tsunamis and evacuations throughout half the world.

The area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that underwent a magnitude 7.2 earthquake last week is one that University at Buffalo graduate student and Fulbright scholar Mustafa Mashal knows well.

Like most doctoral candidates, University at Buffalo student and Haitian native Pierre Fouche is a study in focus and determination and, if anything, the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake that struck his home country only intensified these traits.

As Haitian citizens struggle to achieve some normalcy a year after the devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, its structural engineers and architects are demonstrating an unwavering resolve to rebuild the country the right way, despite the daily challenges.

Powerful, localized snowstorms can snarl traffic for hours or days, as Western New York saw this week when a section of the New York State Thruway closed for 24 hours. That's exactly the kind of scenario that University at Buffalo engineers hope to prevent when they complete a computer simulation of the area's roadways.

Tarunraj Singh, PhD, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University at Buffalo, has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Fellowship, which is the highest elected grade of membership in ASME, is conferred upon members with at least 10 years of active engineering practice who have made significant contributions to the profession.

Scientific and political disputes over drilling Marcellus shale for natural gas have focused primarily on the environmental effects of pumping millions of gallons of water and chemicals deep underground to blast through rocks to release the natural gas. But University at Buffalo researchers have now found that that process -- called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking"-- also causes uranium that is naturally trapped inside Marcellus shale to be released, raising additional environmental concerns.