Social Sciences

The Cutting Edge Lecture Series, a series of free Saturday-morning seminars in which top University at Buffalo scholars in the arts and sciences give presentations aimed at increasing public awareness of rapidly advancing fields, will open its 2005 edition on March 5 with a lecture on the Human Genome Project by an internationally known UB philosopher.

The events and ideas that led Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation are the focus of a national traveling exhibition, "Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln's Journey to Emancipation," on display through April 15 in the Reference Room of the Undergraduate Library in Capen Hall on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus.

A virtual-reality drama by University at Buffalo researchers -- aimed at transforming the movie-going experience -- is driving the development of increasingly "self-aware" computational agents that are able to improvise responses to the spontaneous actions of human users.

The School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo will continue its Spring 2005 Lecture Series with talks by downtown redevelopment expert Lynn Salagyn and, on March 30, by Peter Dreier, a nationally recognized figure in the field of urban and community planning who is the school's 2005 Clarkson Chair in Planning.

The University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning will host a slide lecture by Einar Jarmund, founder and principle of one of Norway's finest architectural firms, Jarmund/Vigsnaes Architects, who will present a slide lecture on Feb. 16 as part of the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning's 2004-05 lecture series.

A behavioral neuroscientist at the University at Buffalo holds that the ingestion of afterbirth by a mother, a feature of pregnancy in nearly all non-human mammals, not only relieves postpartum pain, but optimizes the onset of maternal behavior by mediating the activity of specific opioid activity circuits in the brain.

The world-renowned statue Hermes with the Infant Dionysos has been equipped with innovative seismic protective devices that will help the 7-foot-high marble statue of the Greek god withstand powerful earthquakes. The protective devices were custom made for the statue based on analysis and tests conducted at the University at Buffalo's earthquake engineering laboratory.

Shahin Vassigh, an architect and structural engineer on the faculty of the University at Buffalo, has received international recognition over the past two years for her revolutionary approach to teaching structural analysis and building technology to architectural students.

"Corners," an exhibit showcasing "architectural scrapbooks" constructed by first-year students in the Department of Architecture in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, is on display in the Dyett Gallery in Hayes Hall on the UB South (Main Street) Campus.

Mehrdad Hadighi, associate professor of architecture in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, who has received repeated notice over the past several years as one of the world's up-and-coming young architects, has been named chair of the school's Department of Architecture.