Midnight Madness to take over Alumni Arena
They're calling it awesome-the 1998 version of UB's annual Midnight Madness. Alumni Arena will be the scene of a sports and music-oriented evening tomorrow that begins at 10:30 p.m. and goes on until 12:30 a.m. More than 4,000 students are expected to attend, and everything will be free.

Before the event, SA clubs will demonstrate their activities.

Among the Midnight Madness highlights: musical entertainment by lounge performer Lance Diamond; music by the UB Pep Band and a dance performance by The Step Troupe. UB cheerleaders and The Dazzlers also will appear.

The men's and women's basketball teams will be introduced and will be involved in slam dunk and three-point shot contests.

Contests and giveaways are planned, with free tuition, a trip to Jamaica, free membership in the Schussmeister Ski Club and books for one semester as prizes.

Take Back the Night to note 20th anniversary
The AntiRape Task Force will host a Take Back the Night vigil Oct. 22. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Take Back the Night, a forum that raises awareness about the fight against sexual violence.

This year's event, to be held in Harriman Hall on the South Campus, will begin at 7 p.m. and include poetry readings, a speaker from Crisis Services Inc., a candlelight vigil on the lawn in front of Harriman, and a speak-out session. Refreshments will be served. For more information, call Heather Ward at 829-2584.

National drug agency director to speak here
Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), one of the scientific institutes of the National Institutes of Health, will be in Buffalo on Oct. 28 to speak with health professionals and opinion leaders about NIDA research and how it can be used to address local drug-abuse problems, prevention and treatment.

The town meeting, to take place from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Center for Tomorrow on the North Campus, is one of several being conducted nationwide. The Buffalo event is part of the National Red Ribbon Prevention Campaign.

Leshner will discuss "Drug Abuse and Addictions: Myth vs. Reality" before an invited audience and participate in a panel discussion with representatives of community organizations.

Earlier in the day, he will address area researchers and policy- makers at the Research Institute on Addictions, 1021 Main St., Buffalo.

Memorial service planned for Al Cook
The campus community is invited to attend a memorial service on Oct. 23 celebrating the life of Al Cook, former chair of the English department, who died July 7. The ceremony will be held in the Poetry/Rare Books Room, 420 Capen Hall.

During the three years that Cook was chair of English, he hired 25 faculty members-scholars, poets and novelists-placing UB's English department on the map and virtually redrawing the map of literary studies.

The service will include readings by English department members, including Robert Creeley, Carl Dennis, Raymond Federman, Irving Feldman, Leslie Fiedler, Irving Massey, Bill Sylvester and Max Wickert. Music will be provided by the Amherst Saxophone Quartet and refreshments will be served.

School of Social Work to offer mini-lectures
The Graduate School of Social Work this fall will offer a free mini-lecture series targeted toward those who work for, or with, community agencies and organizations, as well as social-work students.

The series will kick off with a talk by Howard Doueck, associate dean, entitled "Risk Assessment and Other Myths" from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday in The Kiva, Room 101 of Baldy Hall on the North Campus.

Dean Lawrence Shulman will give the second talk, "Engaging the Hard-to-Reach Client," from 6-8 p.m. on Nov. 9 in Room 145A of the Student Union on the North Campus. For more information, call 645-3381.

Acclaimed neuroscientist Henri Korn to lecture at UB
Henri Korn is a French neurobiologist of international reputation known for his intellectual passion, deep knowledge of American culture and his accomplishments in both neuroscience and the humanities. For many years a visiting research professor at UB, Korn is director of the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He will return to UB on Tuesday to present the 1998 Samuel P. Capen Lecture in the Humanities, the major humanities lectureship at UB.

His talk, "Society and the Scientific Imagination," will take place at 4 p.m. in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts. It will be free and open to the public.

Although his principal research is in synaptic transmission and the functional organization of the central nervous system, Korn also is a longtime serious student of philosophy and literature who in recent years has become increasingly concerned with the interplay between scientific and humanistic inquiry.

In his lecture, Korn will reflect his broader concerns in addressing a number of provocative issues: How scientific imagination "works," the role of metaphor in scientific inquiry and in talking about scientific work, the role of probability and chaos theory in brain science and how notions of predictability and free will held by scientists and humanities scholars are changing and how their inquiries inform one another.

The Capen lecture is sponsored by the Samuel P. Capen Chair in the Humanities, held by Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of English, and co-sponsored by the Melodia Jones Chair in French, held by Raymond Federman, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of English.

Jackson describes Korn as "a true intellectual, a man with a relentless passion for inquiry into and discussion of ideas. His knowledge of American culture is profound," Jackson said, "not just because he is a passionate reader or because of the many years he lived in the United States while doing research at UB and the Albert Einsten Medical Center. It's also because he has traveled widely and has an uncanny ability to get ordinary people to take him into their lives and let him see what they're really about."

Although his research at Pasteur focuses on the way the nerves "talk" to each other, he sees scientific inquiry not as a realm apart, but as part of the world of ideas and society, which, Jackson said, was why he was invited to give the lecture.

Korn received medical and doctoral degrees from the University of Paris. From 1991-93, he was scientific advisor to French Secretary of Defense Pierre Joxe. In 1992, he was awarded the Richard Lounsbery Prize by the National Academy of Science and the Académie des Sciences. He was elected to the Academia Europaea (1989), the French Academy of Sciences (1990) and the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (1995).

Ruckenstein gives Barnett Lecture at Yale
Eli Ruckenstein, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, presented The Barnett F. Dodge Distinguished Lecture in Chemical Engineering Oct. 8 at Yale University. Ruckenstein's topic was "Thermodynamics of Dispersions."

The lecture series is named in honor of Barnett F. Dodge, professor of chemical engineering at Yale who served as chair of the chemical engineering department there for 30 years.

A professor at UB since 1973, Ruckenstein's research interests have covered nearly every aspect of chemical engineering, including transport phenomena, catalysis, surface phenomena, colloids, emulsions, and biocompatible surfaces and materials.

He has been honored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers with the Alpha Chi Sigma Award in 1977 and the William H. Walker Award in 1988. The American Chemical Society presented him with the Kendall Award in 1986 and the E.V. Murphree Award in 1996 and in 1994, the Langmuir Distinguished Lecture Award from the Society's Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, he received the Senior Humboldt Award of the German government for research in surfactants in 1985.

Trombone Choir opens 39th season Oct. 23
The UB Trombone Choir, conducted by founder Richard Myers, will present the first concert of its 39th season at 8 p.m. on Oct. 23 in Slee Concert Hall. There will be no admission charge. Assisting artist will be David Bond, organist, and featured soloist will be Florence Myers, solo English horn of the Buffalo Philharmonic

UB's oldest performing organization, the choir has long been recognized as one of the leading ensembles of its kind in the United States. It was founded in 1960 by Myers, professor of trombone at UB since 1955 and principal trombonist of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra from 1955-94. The ensemble performs a wide variety of music, including more than 80 arrangements by Myers.

The program will include two world premieres; a composition for English horn, trombone choir and timpani by UB graduate Joseph DiRienzo, and "Memorial Music," by the distinguished American composer Walter Hartley.

Faculty members, alumnus to be honored
The Institute of Human Relations of the American Jewish Committee will honor four UB faculty members and a distinguished alumnus at a dinner to be held Oct. 26 in the Hyatt Regency Buffalo. One of the honorees, Jerome P. Kassirer, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and a graduate of the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, will speak at the dinner on "The Evolving Ethics of Medicine."

The other honorees include: Evan Calkins, professor emeritus of medicine; Linda C. Duffy, associate professor of pediatrics and social and preventive medicine ; Frederick E. Munschauer, III, associate professor of clinical neurology and medicine, and Theodore I. Putnam, associate professor of clinical pediatrics.

The award is given to "outstanding human beings whose dedication and commitment to the greater Buffalo community through medicine, research and the promotion of multi-culturalism have brought together people of different races, creeds and backgrounds."

Third International Film Festival, "About Women," to open Tuesday
"Living Out Loud," a comedy starring Holly Hunter and Danny DeVito, will open the Third International Film Festival "About Women" at UB on Tuesday. Organized by the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (IREWG), the festival showcases the best of recent international films on women's and gender issues by both female and male filmmakers.

All the films will be shown at 7 p.m. in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts on the North Campus. Tickets are $3 for students and senior citizens and $5 for the general public.

Other sponsors are the College of Arts and Sciences, Center for the Arts, Department of Media Study, UB Art Gallery Research Center in Art and Culture, Council for International Studies and Programs, McNulty Chair (Dennis Tedlock), Jones Chair (Raymond Federman), UB and the American Association of University Women, Buffalo chapter.

For more information, call Penka Skachkova at 829-3451.

The schedule is:
Tuesday, "Living Out Loud" USA, 1998. An adult comedy directed by Richard LaGravenese, it stars Holly Hunter and Danny DeVito.

Oct. 27, "Conceiving Ada," USA, 1997. Directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson, the film tells the story of poet Lord Byron's brilliant daughter, considered by many to have invented the first computer program, through a time-traveling, 20th-century woman computer programmer.

Nov. 3, "Esmeralda Comes by Night," Mexico, 1997. Directed by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, the film depicts the life of a nurse happily married to five husbands.

Nov. 10, "Bent Familia," Tunisia, 1997, directed by Nouri Bouzid. Three friends meet to find mutual support: a housewife in an unhappy marriage; a divorcee with two children who is exposed to public disapproval, and a refugee from Algeria awaiting a visa to live in Europe.

Nov. 17, "Private Confessions" Sweden, 1997, directed by Liv Ullmann. Ingmar Bergman's script follows the story of a woman who decides to leave her husband for an affair with a younger man.

Dec. 1, "Radiance" Australia, 1998, directed by Rachel Perkins. The first feature film directed by an aboriginal woman since Tracey Moffatt, it's a story about three sisters, each fathered by a different man, who reunite at their mother's death.

Dec. 4, Symposium, "Women and Gender in International Cinema," 2 p.m., Screening Room, Center for the Arts. A reception will follow.

UB hosts guest media artists for Asian film and video series
The Department of Media Study, in collaboration with the Asian Studies Program, this fall will present a film and video series, "Looking Asian," featuring acclaimed Asian-American and Canadian media artists. The series will include screenings of award-winning and experimental films and videos, which will be presented by the guest artists. The works explore issues of Asian identity, female subjectivity, gay sexuality, environmental/social activism and lingering burdens of history.

They are "Narmada-A Valley Rises" by Ali Kazimi, to be shown today; "Sniff," "Slanted Vision," and "Myth(s) of Creation" by Ming-Yuen S. Ma on Oct. 29 and "Strawberry Fields" by Rea Tajiri on Nov. 19.

The screenings, free and open to the public, will begin at 7 p.m. in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts. Series coordinator is independent videomaker Richard Fung, UB visiting professor of media study. Fung's own award-winning work has been shown at numerous film and video festivals and art centers. For more information, call 645-6902, ext. 1494.