Science and Technology

The University at Buffalo announced today the establishment of a Department of Biomedical Engineering that will focus on development of groundbreaking medical devices and therapies addressing society's most pressing health problems, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.

Particle physicists don't ordinarily have a reputation as the most effusive bunch in the world but University at Buffalo physicists, along with their colleagues all over the planet, are positively exuberant about the Sept. 10 debut of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the European Center for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland, the most powerful particle physics accelerator ever built.

No, the startup of the Large Hadron Collider this week won't create a massive black hole that will wipe out life on Earth as we know it, according to University at Buffalo assistant professor of physics Dejan Stojkovic.

"The modern city and the modern woman invented each other," says architectural historian Despina Stratigakos, a fact she says is clearly demonstrated in Berlin, a city that women began to claim as their own in bold and dramatic ways at the turn of the 20th century.

People who live in flood-prone areas naturally aren't thrilled about the uncertainty they must cope with each hurricane season, but research conducted by a University at Buffalo engineer is based on the idea that a better understanding of this uncertainty is key to helping mitigate damage from floods.

John R. "Jack" Davis, a well-known Western New York industrialist who graduated from the University at Buffalo with a degree in engineering, has given $1.5 million to the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in support of a new high-tech, flagship engineering building to be constructed on UB's North (Amherst) Campus.

So far, reports from the field suggest that the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans in advance of Hurricane Gustav is proceeding in a reasonable manner, says a University at Buffalo researcher who spent eight days in New Orleans in 2005 studying evacuation plans and decision making in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The 4,000-plus international students who begin classes this semester at the University at Buffalo will find enhanced resources on the UB Libraries' Web site suggested by their peers and developed by the libraries especially for them.

A novel gene signaling mechanism that controls whether a stem cell develops into its destined tissue or fails to differentiate and becomes cancer has been identified by researchers in the multi-laboratory Molecular and Structural Neurobiology and Gene Therapy Program based at the University at Buffalo.

University at Buffalo architect Annette LeCuyer's recent research is on a remarkable material that is changing the way architects and engineers think about building performance. The material, ETFE, is being showcased at the Beijing Olympics as the material used to construct the National Aquatics Center.