Science and Technology

As part of a national program to help internationalize higher education in that country, one of Vietnam's most competitive universities has entered into a partnership with the University at Buffalo to begin teaching UB's undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum to its own students next fall.

A continuous improvement program developed at a Pennsylvania hospital in partnership with The Center for Industrial Effectiveness (TCIE) in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has already saved the hospital $500,000 and earned the UB center the 2007 Award of Excellence in Workforce Development from the University Economic Development Association.

A comprehensive new study authored by University at Buffalo scientists and their colleagues for the first time documents in detail the dynamics of parts of Greenland's ice sheet, important data that have long been missing from the ice sheet models on which projections about sea level rise and global warming are based.

V-Frog, the world's first virtual-reality-based frog dissection software designed for biology education -- allowing not mere observation, but physically simulated dissection -- has been developed and is being marketed by Tactus Technologies

Two novel proteins studied by a University at Buffalo professor of microbiology and immunology appear to have the potential to enhance the production of antibodies against a multitude of infectious agents.

A new chemical synthesis method based on a catalyst worth many times the price of gold and providing a far more efficient and economical method than traditional ones for designing and manufacturing extremely novel pharmaceutical compounds is described by its University at Buffalo developers in a review article in the current issue of Nature.

In an effort to improve this process and develop new guidelines for antibiotic use for a potentially deadly staph infection, University at Buffalo researchers are collecting bacterial isolates and clinical information from SAB-infected patients hospitalized in three area hospitals and following their charted progress through inpatient treatment, discharge and for a post-discharge period.

Computer scientists in the University at Buffalo's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have been working with their colleagues in UB's Graduate School of Education to develop a computational tool that not only dramatically reduces the time it takes to grade children's handwritten essays, but that also may help boost students' reading comprehension skills.

The Concrete Central, Agway, The Great Northern, The Marine A, The Lake and Rail, Kellogg, Pillsbury, H&O Oats, Exchange American, Electric Annex -- these are just a few of the "Grand Ladies of the Lake" whose fascinating biographies and arresting photos are the subject of a new book on Buffalo's grain elevators edited by landscape architect Lynda Schneekloth.

Slow diffusion of patient-managed electronic health information record technologies, or PHRs, has limited the development of an interoperable health information infrastructure that will greatly improve health-care quality and cost and will save lives. For this reason, increasing PHR diffusion has been called a top priority by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.