Science and Technology

Researchers at the University at Buffalo, in the Feb. 17 issue of Nature, report a new way to study the dynamics of proteins as they pass through the transition state between inactive and active.

When members of the University at Buffalo's School of Dental Medicine's Class of 2004 arrive on campus this August, they will purchase no textbooks, no laboratory manuals, no workbooks. They will pick up no course outlines or lists of recommended reading. They will receive instead one inauspicious-looking compact disc, which will contain the full content of 90 textbooks in 28 topic and the curriculum for all four years of dental school, including course syllabi, class notes, laboratory manuals and lecture slides.

Jo Freudenheim, Ph.D., professor of social and preventive medicine at the University at Buffalo, is leading a project that will map the early-childhood residences of a group of women, the proximity of their homes to sites that may have been environmentally hazardous, and compare this data to the women with and without breast cancer to see if there is an association.

An extremely enthusiastic response by University at Buffalo faculty to the year-old, high-performance computing facilities in the Center for Computational Research (CCR) has prompted the center to double the capacity of its most powerful machine, a 64-processor SGI Origin2000 supercomputer. By acquiring 64 additional processors and a high-speed interconnect, the CCR now has a 128-processor Origin2000 supercomputer.

Industry and academic experts from around the world will gather at the University at Buffalo on April 27-29 to investigate how a new wave of computer technologies is revolutionizing the way the world conducts business.

When they first arrive on campus, college freshmen are deluged with orientation packets and publications. But after the first few weeks, that deluge dries up, often leaving students' questions unanswered. The University at Buffalo has figured out how to keep information flowing to freshmen -- but not flooding them -- through the development of MyUB, an online portal for freshmen that actually grows with the student.

It won't be apparent to passengers landing on today's (Thursday, Jan. 6) inaugural flight at Istanbul's brand new international airport, but the roof of the massive terminal building features a unique approach to seismically modernizing the structure following last summer's devastating quake.

With an assist from the National Science Foundation, an assistant professor of media study at the University at Buffalo is launching a unique software game that addresses the lack of computer educational activities oriented toward girls, particularly those from underrepresented groups.

Just because a volcano isn't erupting doesn't mean it poses no danger. In papers being presented today (Tuesday, Dec. 14) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, University at Buffalo volcanologists show how, in some cases, soft spots on volcanoes that simply collapse from the side may trigger mudflows that potentially can be more devastating than eruptions.

At this moment, computers across the University at Buffalo campus are analyzing signals from the sky that could be indicators of alien intelligence.