Science and Technology

Freshwater ecosystems in northern regions are home to significantly more species of water fleas than traditionally thought, adding to evidence that regions with vanishing waters contain unique animal life.

Simulated missions to space have recently begun launching from Jarvis Hall on the University at Buffalo North Campus, thanks to a donation from Exciting Simulations to the UB chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (UB-SEDS).

The University at Buffalo will celebrate faculty inventors and innovative companies that reside in the UB Technology Incubator during the university's annual Inventors and Entrepreneurs Reception on March 1.

Cosmic inflation explains why the universe is billions of years old, as well as why the universe is nearly flat. But is cosmic inflation the only model that can explain the beginnings of the universe? That's the question that University at Buffalo physicists set out to answer recently.

University at Buffalo engineers have developed a one-step, low-cost method to fabricate a polymer with extraordinary properties: When viewed from a single perspective, the polymer is rainbow-colored, reflecting many different wavelengths of light.

University at Buffalo researchers are expressing concern about a new, under-recognized, much more potent variant of a common bacterium that has surfaced in the U.S.

Two University at Buffalo students know all about why your footfalls echo more loudly on bare floors than on those that are carpeted. They also know the melting point of nylon 6, the density of high-volume fly ash concrete, and the uses for methyl ethyl ketone peroxide. Correct answers to questions about these topics (and more like them) helped the two UB students place very highly in the 2011 Knovel University Challenge.

Following one of Earth's five greatest mass extinctions, tiny marine organisms called graptoloids did not begin to rapidly develop new physical traits until about 2 million years after competing species became extinct. This discovery, based on new research, challenges the widely held assumption that a period of explosive evolution quickly follows for survivors of mass extinctions.

Paper be damned. Two former servers from Western New York are spinning their experience waiting tables into a technology start-up that offers a digital solution for managing food and drink orders. Refulgent Software, based in the University at Buffalo's Technology Incubator, produces and markets "Ambur," an iPod and iPad app that serves as a restaurant point-of-service system.

Michel Bruneau, PhD, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering in the University at Buffalo's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is the 2012 recipient of the prestigious American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award.