Science and Technology

A new software system designed by a University at Buffalo aerospace engineer will help NASA detect and find air leaks in the International Space Station.

When Jim D. Atwood became the chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo in 1998, he said he wanted to make freshman chemistry "a little less hated." And with about 30 percent of freshmen flunking out of General Chemistry 101, he had a tough job ahead of him. Now, five years later, having instituted major changes in the freshman chemistry courses, Atwood and his faculty have succeeded beyond their most ambitious dreams.

Victor Paquet watches workers work -- over and over again. An expert on ergonomic job analysis and workplace injury prevention, the University at Buffalo assistant professor of industrial engineering is looking for patterns of repetitive movement that may cause injury to workers on the job.

When officials communicate the dangers of volcanic hazards to local populations, one picture may be worth a thousand words. Keeping that sentiment in mind, scientists at the University at Buffalo working on volcanic hazard mitigation have left no technology untapped as they create images of past volcanic flows in order to better predict future ones.

The first demonstration of reduction-oxidation, or redox, chemistry in RNA -- a critical missing link in the experimental evidence for an ancient RNA world -- was reported Sunday by University at Buffalo chemists in Nature Structural Biology online.

Students in an upper-level computer software engineering class at the University at Buffalo are helping to solve a real-world problem -- and restore a sense of independence to persons with speech and motor disabilities -- by designing augmentation communication devices.

Michel Bruneau, Ph.D., a leading expert on earthquake-resistant design and retrofit of buildings and infrastructure, has been named director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) headquartered at the University at Buffalo. MCEER is a National Science Foundation "Center of Excellence" in earthquake engineering.

The University at Buffalo and the New York State Department of Health are teaming up to conduct a study to investigate the incidence of autoimmune and respiratory diseases in the Bellevue neighborhood of the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga.

With almost 500 University at Buffalo physicians practicing in more than 17 primary and specialty-care areas, choosing a university-associated doctor may seem like a daunting task. But now it's been made much easier, thanks to the "Find-a-UB-Physician" Web site developed last fall by the Office of Medical Computing in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

EDS, the world's largest independent information technology services company, has given an in-kind software donation valued at $53.5 million to the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as part of UB's "The Campaign for UB: Generation to Generation."