Science and Technology

The Western New York community has a new user-friendly way to learn about the University at Buffalo's local impact and to access the university's services and programs with the new "Your UB" Web site.

Mathematics will be the subject of the day on May 18 and May 19 when the University at Buffalo welcomes hundreds of elementary and middle-school students who will conduct presentations and participate in individual and team competitions designed to engage area elementary and middle-school students in math.

A four-decade career dedicated to mitigating geologic catastrophes and saving lives will be the focus of "Volcanic Flows and Falls: A Conference to Honor Professor Michael Sheridan" to be held Thursday and Friday in the Ramada Hotel & Conference Center (formerly the University Inn and Conference Center), 2402 N. Forest Road.

In the lobby of a nondescript brick building on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus, a unique marriage of sorts is taking place through a new "Physics and Arts Exhibition."

University at Buffalo researchers are launching a series of unprecedented seismic tests on a full-scale, three-bedroom, wood-frame townhouse being built in an earthquake-simulation laboratory in the university's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In November, the structure will be put to a final test in a simulation of California's 1994 Northridge earthquake that is expected to create massive damage.

David Forliti, Ph.D., assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, is the recipient of a Prestigious Department of Defense Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program Award.

Thomas Szyperski, Ph.D., University at Buffalo professor of chemistry, biochemistry and structural biology, is a co-recipient of one of the most prestigious prizes awarded in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, the Gunther Laukien Prize.

The University at Buffalo's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) Information Service is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the devastating 1906 earthquake with a major exhibit, "A City in Ruins: The San Francisco Earthquake and Fires of 1906."

What's up with the mist? When the Niagara Parks Commission posed that question back in 2004, the concern was that high-rise hotels on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls were contributing to the creation of more mist, obscuring the very view that millions of tourists flock there every year to see. Now University at Buffalo geologists have determined that the high-rise hotels are probably not to blame.

The Physics Department in the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences will install a dramatic, 25-foot-long Foucault Pendulum extending from the third floor of Fronczak Hall to the lobby level of the building on the UB North (Amherst) Campus at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, April 14.