Science and Technology

Alex Anas, Ph.D., Frank H. and Josephine L Goodyear Professor in the Department of Economics in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, who has developed a new strategic-planning model that will allow urban planners to examine alternative "what-if" scenarios in advance and predict their consequences, and his interdisciplinary project team have received a $450,000 award from the National Science Foundation to continue their three-year study of the effect of different infrastructure investment-and-financing strategies on the development of metropolitan areas.

The Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute and the University at Buffalo have received grants totaling $3.13 million to develop new, high-speed methods to determine the molecular structure of proteins, which is essential for designing new drugs to treat, prevent and cure disease.

Reading made easy through technology -- that's the plan behind a $100,000 gift from Verizon to a collaborative literacy project of the Center for Applied Technologies in Education at the University at Buffalo, the Buffalo Public Schools, Computers for Children and EPIC (Every Person Influences Children).

A UB scientist who may have the largest scientific inventory of lake-ice dates in North America, covering more than 250 lakes in New York and several hundred in other states, is providing researchers with new insights into climate change, thanks to the efforts of hundreds of volunteer assistants.

A University at Buffalo professor's research has led him to develop and teach the world's first academic course in a new technique called combinatorial chemistry that has taken the pharmaceutical industry by storm.

University at Buffalo chemists have found that nitric oxide, a common air pollutant and one of the components of acid rain, is highly reactive with ethanol, potentially making the chemical an even more insidious pollutant than has been thought.

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.