Environment and Sustainability

Each year, American drivers waste an estimated 3.7 billion hours, or the equivalent of five days, sitting in traffic, burning 2.3 billion gallons of fuel. Students at the University at Buffalo will soon be learning how to reduce that waste, creating less congestion and cleaner air, thanks to an IBM grant to Adel Sadek, PhD, UB associate professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering.

Scarcely a year into its existence, the Environmental Affairs Department of the University at Buffalo Undergraduate Student Association (SA) has been awarded the 2011 Good Going Award for Best Earth Day Outreach for an Organization.

From Earth Pong to Mt. Trashmore to the annual appearance of the University at Buffalo's solar-powered smoothie cart, the UB community will be busy celebrating Earth Week in a variety of ways, leading up to Earth Day on Friday, April 22.

Viewers who log onto the University at Buffalo's falconcam to watch BB and Yankee, UB's resident peregrine falcon mom and dad, will see more of the couple's falcon chicks once they hatch and become mobile, thanks to the installation this spring of a second camera. Watch the live streaming video from both cameras at http://ubfalcon.buffalo.edu/

New materials science research from the University at Buffalo could hasten the creation of "smart" windows that reflect heat from the sun on hot summer days but let in the heat in colder weather. The findings concern a unique class of synthetic chemical compounds that are transparent to infrared light at lower temperatures, but undergo a phase transition to begin reflecting infrared when they heat up past a certain point. An article detailing some of these discoveries appears today (April 7) on the cover of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

Lina Mu, PhD, assistant professor of social and preventive medicine at the University at Buffalo and a native of China, has received a $1.3 million, three-year grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to study the short-term effects of particulate matter (PM) among Beijing residents.

The University at Buffalo's Department of Geology is holding a series of talks about the gas industry, and unconventional gas drilling or hydraulic fracturing and its relationship to the economy and environment of New York State. The lectures, which are free and open to the public, will be held at 8 p.m. each Thursday from March 31 to May 19 in Room 250, Baird Hall on UB's North Campus. To register, go to https://www.ubevents.org/event/marcellus

Alan H. Lockwood, MD, professor of neurology and nuclear medicine in the University at Buffalo's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences calls the Japanese Health Ministry's advice not to give tap water to infants "prudent." Lockwood, a board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, can discuss human health effects of radiation. Six weeks after the Chernobyl accident, he examined survivors at a Moscow hospital.

The University at Buffalo Law School and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy will host a two-day conference on hydrofracking -- "Hydrofracking: Exploring the Legal Issues in the Context of Politics, Science and the Economy" -- Monday and Tuesday, March 28-29, in 509 O'Brian Hall on UB's North Campus.

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.