Natural Disasters

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.

While many people might assume that the men rescued from the mine in Chile might suffer from psychological problems that require therapy, the miners' survival of the ordeal may actually provide a worldwide lesson on the remarkable strength of human resilience, says a University at Buffalo researcher.

To simulate earthquakes, engineers have shake tables. To simulate sub-atomic collisions, physicists have synchrotrons. Until now, though, there has been no effective way to simulate full-scale volcanic eruptions. But this weekend, the University at Buffalo's Center for Geohazards Studies will convene a National Science Foundation-funded workshop to plan the world's first international user facility where scientists will be able to test large-scale geologic hazards.

A University at Buffalo volcanologist who is an expert in volcanic ash clouds and their impact on air travel is available to speak with news media about new scientific research he is conducting on better assessing the hazards of volcanic ash clouds.

A University at Buffalo researcher will spend the next two years studying post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina on police officers who worked during the disaster.

Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, James N. Jensen, PhD, University at Buffalo professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering, says that probably the biggest lesson learned from that disaster was that municipalities and citizens now take orders to evacuate much more seriously. Jensen was one of six UB researchers that visited the Gulf Coast soon after Katrina hit, as part of a National Science Foundation-funded reconnaissance mission organized by UB's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research.