Science and Technology

Four teams of students and alumni from the University at Buffalo will compete for cash and services in excess of $50,000 in the final round of the inaugural Technology Entrepreneur Competition from 4-6 p.m. on May 7 in the Jacobs Executive Development Center, 672 Delaware Ave.

A computing division is teaching students how to put their computers to "sleep." A chemistry department found ways to reduce fume hood use without affecting classes or research. A library department found a way to recycle microfiches and microfilms. These are just a few of the University at Buffalo's environmental efforts being celebrated this Earth Day (April 22) as part of the new Green Partners program, organized by faculty, staff and students of UB's Environmental Task Force.

Hung Q. Ngo, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the University at Buffalo's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has received a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation to develop a theory for the design and analysis of ultra-fast optical switches.

"Networks, art and collaboration," a conference that will look at the many means of dissent devised by media artists, theorists, activists and critics, and consider their long-term goals in the face of global media consolidation will be held April 24 and 25 at the University at Buffalo.

A patient who is losing large amounts of blood presents a medical emergency, requiring proper blood-typing and immediate access to multiple units of compatible blood. Health workers must hope that a transfusion doesn't add to the emergency and that the patient has no objection to receiving blood products. Then there are the cost and logistics of maintaining large stocks of blood at the ready. The solution to these problems may lie in an inorganic compound being developed as a blood substitute at the University at Buffalo.

SUNY Distinguished Professor Barry Smith, Ph.D., Julian Park Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, has received a $1,124,000 grant from the Volkswagen Foundation to continue support of the Buffalo-Leipzig Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (INFOMIS) through 2007.

Like any emerging technology, nanophotonics -- the science behind light and matter interacting on the nanoscale -- is ripe for all kinds of claims ranging from the sublime to the far-fetched. So it is an opportune time for the publication of "Nanophotonics," the first book to comprehensively cover nanophotonics, both as a fundamental phenomenon and as the origin of technologies and devices that will impact fields ranging from information technology to drug delivery.

Where once a little language stood in the way, readers -- including a few at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab -- now can dip into the work of fifth-century Indian poet and dramatist, Kalidasa, or "listen" to a 17th-century Mexican nun excoriate men who lay siege to a woman's honor, then condemn her as a whore. These new and ancient tales are available because of LiTgloss, the hugely successful text translation Web site produced and maintained by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in the University at Buffalo.

Noted structural engineer Jane Wernick, best known in the United States for the Millennium Wheel -- the 40-story Ferris wheel that is not only an engineering feat of no small proportions, but a new landmark on the London skyline -- will speak at the University at Buffalo on April 12 as part of the 2003-04 lecture series sponsored by the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.

Switzerland is widely recognized as one of today's most important centers of modern architectural thought and Peter Zumthor, the 2004 Will and Nan Clarkson Visiting Chair in Architecture at the University at Buffalo, has produced works that are among his nation's major achievements.