Science and Technology

It's "do or die" time for many e-retailers this holiday season, say industry analysts. But amid speculation about the the ability of e-retailers to deliver orders in time for Christmas, one prominent toy manufacturer quietly has staked a claim on the Internet, arousing the suspicion of the big bricks-and-mortar retailers, says a professor of marketing at the University at Buffalo.

Television and computer screens that would be lighter, brighter and thinner -- that's the goal behind a $100,000 donation to the University at Buffalo's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics from AKT, Inc., the world's leading supplier of CVD systems, processes and services to the flat-panel-display manufacturing industry.

The University at Buffalo has joined a new alliance of upstate New York education, industry and government partners that aims to generate economic success in the western part of the state.

The same principles that ensure user-friendly designs in products ranging from refrigerators to computers to dashboards on automobiles should be applied to the design of both paper and machine election ballots, according to a UB professor of industrial engineering.

A University at Buffalo geologist has used computer models to show that huge lava flows -- called flood basalt eruptions -- that exited the earth’s crust relatively slowly, rather than explosively, were capable of dramatic global-scale climate shifts and mass extinctions.

In their most harried moments, professors trying to balance the demands of teaching, research and family may feel that the only solution to their overloaded schedules is to be in two places at once. And now -- for better or worse -- they can as the result of advances in high-quality Internet videoconferencing pioneered, in part, by the University at Buffalo.

An agreement between the University at Buffalo and Microsoft will put into the hands of every one of UB's students and faculty and staff members the newest, most popular Microsoft software on the market while saving the university more than a quarter of a million dollars per year.

The University at Buffalo School of Management, the Institute for EntrepreneurshipSM and state Sen. Mary Lou Rath (R-C, Williamsville) announced today the launch of an Online MBA program designed for busy entrepreneurs and executives.

The University at Buffalo is the lead institution in a $10 million project to develop specific ferromagnetic materials for use in "spintronics," the emerging research field in physics focused on spin-dependent phenomena applied to electronic devices.

It will be a walk on the "Web side" when a 20th-century Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece goes virtual through a grant to the Center for Virtual Architecture in the University at Buffalo's School of Architecture and Planning.