Natural Disasters

The secret to the flight of the hummingbird and other tiny birds and insects lies in the looping, swirling flow of air, called a vortex, that their flapping wings create. These aerodynamically unconventional flows are the inspiration behind new research by a University at Buffalo scientist who hopes to understand the nature of the three-dimensional vortex formation process so that it can be optimized.

Alan J. Rabideau, PhD, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering at the University at Buffalo, has been named to a National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council panel that will study hazardous waste sites with "recalcitrant" contamination that hinders their closure.

University at Buffalo professors involved in the UB 2020 strategic strength in extreme events are lending their expertise to media this week during the Vigilant Guard exercise organized by the New York National Guard and state, regional and local officials.

Dead zones in critical waterways, accelerated loss of arable land and massive famines. They're all caused by the 24 billion tons of soil that are lost every year to erosion, a phenomenon that costs the world as much as $40 billion annually. But predicting where erosion occurs, and thus how to prevent it, is a serious challenge. That's why University at Buffalo geographer Sean Bennett has constructed various systems to model it.

People who live through an extreme traumatic experience such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks or an airplane crash often have the capacity to bounce back or even grow to a higher level of functioning and personal strength, according to a University at Buffalo researcher and expert in the effects of horrifying trauma.

It takes just seconds for tall buildings to collapse during powerful earthquakes. Knowing precisely what's happening in those seconds can help engineers design buildings that are less prone to sustaining that kind of damage. But the nature of collapse is not well understood. That's why researchers at the University at Buffalo and Japan's Kyoto University teamed up recently to try an innovative "hybrid" approach to testing that may provide a safer, far less expensive way to learn about how and why full-scale buildings collapse.

Researchers at MCEER, the University at Buffalo's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, and Calspan, Western New York's global leader in independent aviation and transportation testing, plan to subject two full-scale bridges and their advanced protective technologies to a full range of naturally occurring environmental and climatic conditions, as well as earthquake vibrations.

During the past decade, residents of Pasto, Colombia, and neighboring villages near Galeras, Colombia's most dangerous volcano, have been threatened with evacuation, but compliance varies. With each new eruption Colombian officials have grown increasingly concerned about the safety of the residents who live within striking distance of Galeras. Now, geologists from the University at Buffalo and the Universidad de Narino have organized a workshop in Colombia designed to tackle the communication issue.

Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo.

On April 6, a powerful earthquake struck central Italy, near the medieval town of L'Aquila, about 75 miles northeast of Rome. Gian Paolo Cimellaro, a graduate of the University at Buffalo's doctoral program in earthquake engineering and a visiting professor at UB. Cimellaro arrived in Buffalo on April 8; he was in Rome when the Paganica earthquake struck on Monday morning.