Environment and Sustainability

University at Buffalo researchers have received a five-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to assess environmental pollutants and their relationship to the prevalence of autoimmune disease, particularly lupus, and asthma in two Buffalo neighborhoods.

The University at Buffalo's Toxicology Research Center will receive $1.3 million over the next five years as a participant in a new six-member children's environmental health research center formed to study the effects of eating large quantities of contaminated Great Lakes fish on Laotian and Hmong refugees.

A new risk map that reveals the hazards most likely to occur in the future on Popocatepetl -- located just 60 kilometers from Mexico City and considered the planet's riskiest volcano -- has been developed by University at Buffalo volcanologist Michael F. Sheridan, Ph.D., and colleagues at UB and the National University of Mexico (UNAM).

A biological scientist and ecologist at the University at Buffalo has received a $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to determine how man-made environmental changes affect the transmission of malaria in Africa.

In search of evidence that could help explain how certain species were created and how their genome has changed with evolution, a University at Buffalo evolutionary biologist and nine of his students enrolled in a new course on arctic molecular ecology are participating in a two-week research expedition to the arctic climes of Alaska.

How will proposed legislation on remediation and redevelopment of brownfields and Superfund sites in New York State affect Western New York communities? Staff and officials from area municipalities will have an opportunity to find out on May 10 from 3-5:30 p.m. during a community forum titled "A Comparative Discussion of New York State Superfund/Brownfields Legislation Affecting Municipalities."

Two of the oldest volcanoes on Mars, which have been active for 3.5 billion years, are providing clues to the possibility of life on the planet, according to preliminary analysis by University at Buffalo geologists of new data from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), currently orbiting the planet.

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.

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.

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.