Environment and Sustainability

The failure of levees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina points out the need for new technologies to strengthen levees and monitor their reliability, according to Deborah D. L. Chung, Ph.D., a University at Buffalo materials scientist and inventor of "smart concrete."

Reestablishment of wastewater and drinking-water treatment facilities is a critical step for rebuilding New Orleans, but it likely will take months to get those systems operational, according to wastewater treatment expert at the University at Buffalo.

"The most critical problems related to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina are related less to the lack of technological solutions than to the absence of a sound national policy for dealing with such events," says Shahin Vassigh, associate professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

The hundreds of thousands of refugees from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina join 25 million people worldwide displaced by environmental catastrophes, events and processes, according to Lynda Schneekloth, professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

Barry Boyer, professor in the University at Buffalo Law School, has been recognized by Buffalo Niagara WorldConnect, a local group that helps entrepreneurs and leaders make global connections.

The streams of Western New York are a workshop this summer for biologists, ecologists, engineers and environmental planners who want to learn techniques for restoring inland waterways to their natural state.

The development of geographic information science tools to help rangers and forest scientists determine whether logging or prescribed burning is the best way to reduce the fuel load to mitigate the risk of devastating wildfires is the goal of software-development work being done in conjunction with the U.S. Forest Service by Chris S. Renschler, Ph.D., of the University at Buffalo.

Exposure to carcinogens in traffic emissions at particular lifetime points may increase the risk of developing breast cancer in women who are lifetime nonsmokers, a study by epidemiologists and geographers at the University at Buffalo has found.

The next generation of buildings at the University at Buffalo will be the "greenest" ones it has ever constructed, thanks to a new set of guidelines on constructing green, or environmentally sustainable, buildings, published recently by the university.

Studies using human subjects to determine a "no observable effect level" of pesticides do not meet widely accepted scientific and ethical standards for research and should not be used to set new standards, according to a scathing analysis published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health.