Natural Disasters

People who live through an extreme traumatic experience such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks or an airplane crash often have the capacity to bounce back or even grow to a higher level of functioning and personal strength, according to a University at Buffalo researcher and expert in the effects of horrifying trauma.

It takes just seconds for tall buildings to collapse during powerful earthquakes. Knowing precisely what's happening in those seconds can help engineers design buildings that are less prone to sustaining that kind of damage. But the nature of collapse is not well understood. That's why researchers at the University at Buffalo and Japan's Kyoto University teamed up recently to try an innovative "hybrid" approach to testing that may provide a safer, far less expensive way to learn about how and why full-scale buildings collapse.

Researchers at MCEER, the University at Buffalo's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, and Calspan, Western New York's global leader in independent aviation and transportation testing, plan to subject two full-scale bridges and their advanced protective technologies to a full range of naturally occurring environmental and climatic conditions, as well as earthquake vibrations.

During the past decade, residents of Pasto, Colombia, and neighboring villages near Galeras, Colombia's most dangerous volcano, have been threatened with evacuation, but compliance varies. With each new eruption Colombian officials have grown increasingly concerned about the safety of the residents who live within striking distance of Galeras. Now, geologists from the University at Buffalo and the Universidad de Narino have organized a workshop in Colombia designed to tackle the communication issue.

Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo.

On April 6, a powerful earthquake struck central Italy, near the medieval town of L'Aquila, about 75 miles northeast of Rome. Gian Paolo Cimellaro, a graduate of the University at Buffalo's doctoral program in earthquake engineering and a visiting professor at UB. Cimellaro arrived in Buffalo on April 8; he was in Rome when the Paganica earthquake struck on Monday morning.

David C. Duchscherer, PE, president, Wendel Duchscherer Architects and Engineers of Amherst, was honored as the University at Buffalo Engineering Alumni Association's 2009 Engineer of the Year: Shaping the Way People Move.

In 2007, University at Buffalo computer scientist Sargur Srihari, Ph.D., one of the world's experts on pattern recognition and its application to fingerprints and handwriting, was selected by the National Academy of Sciences to serve with other national experts on its Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community. The NAS released the panel's findings in a report called "Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward"

After a collective trauma, such as Thursday's crash of Continental Flight 3407, an entire community (or even the nation) can be exposed to the tragedy through media coverage and second-hand accounts, according to Mark Seery, Ph.D., University at Buffalo assistant professor of psychology.

Snow that blows and drifts across roadways has long troubled road maintenance crews and commuters alike, creating treacherous driving conditions and requiring additional maintenance resources to mitigate the problem. Now, a University at Buffalo engineer has led the development of "SnowMan," a user-friendly, desktop software package that puts cost-effective solutions to the snow drift problem at the fingertips of highway designers and road maintenance personnel.