Science and Technology

With two major championships under his belt already and this week's British Open in his sights, Tiger Woods has a 13 percent chance of completing golf's coveted Grand Slam by winning all four of golf's major tournaments this year, according to a "probabilist" from the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Companies with transactional Web sites aren't providing consumers with enough assurances about the privacy, security and business integrity of the sites, according to a study by researchers from the University at Buffalo School of Management. As a result, some companies may be losing customers concerned about Internet fraud, theft of credit-card information or a company's ability to follow through on its promises.

Volcanologists and computational scientists from around the globe will gather at the University at Buffalo on July 18 and 19 to discuss how integrating fundamental physical models with sophisticated technologies, such as supercomputing, can help produce more accurate simulations of volcanic mass flows and mitigate the dangers related to real ones.

Two University at Buffalo materials researchers have developed an extremely sensitive nanoscale device that could shrink ultra-high-density storage devices to record sizes. The magnetic sensor, made of nickel and measuring only a few atoms in diameter, could increase data storage capacity by a factor of a 1,000 or more and ultimately could lead to supercomputing devices as small as a wristwatch.

University at Buffalo chemists have developed a remarkably simple and effective biotechnological method for synthesis of novel proteins using amino acids that do not occur in nature by using unique, programmable ribozymes (enzymes made of RNA, or ribonucleic acid) that they evolved in the lab. The technology provides a potentially important new tool in the field of proteomics, where scientists are working to understand all of the proteins that have been identified through the human genome project.

Leading researchers in the fields of earthquake and blast engineering, as well as social scientists with expertise in disaster response, are gathering in New York City today to examine the events of 9/11 and explore ways to make structures more resistant to terrorist attacks and reduce risk to inhabitants and emergency responders. During a two-day workshop, organized by the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, headquartered at the University at Buffalo, the researchers are discussing lessons learned from the September 11 attack and will offer recommendations for how government leaders, engineers, emergency personnel and private citizens might better prepare for future terrorist attacks.

Contrary to its revolutionary promise as a gender-free zone, cyberculture, women cyberspace pioneers argue, reproduces the power dynamics of sexist and racist practices and has a mythology that perpetuates inequality. They speak their minds in "Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture" (MIT Press, 2002), a groundbreaking collection of theoretical and fictional writing co-edited by UB librarian Austin Booth.

University at Buffalo scientists working with ice cores have solved a mystery surrounding sunspots and their effect on climate that has puzzled scientists since they began studying the phenomenon.

Structural engineers from the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), headquartered at the University at Buffalo, will gather in New York City later this month to discuss how earthquake-engineering practices and blast-resistant designs can be used to create "terror-resistant" buildings.Their analysis will be part of a two-day workshop, "Lessons from the World Trade Center Terrorist Attack: Management of Complex Civil Emergencies & Terrorism-Resistant Civil Engineering Design," on June 24 and 25.

Computer scientists at the University at Buffalo have provided the first peer-reviewed scientific validation that each person's handwriting is individual, according to a paper that will be published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences in July.