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.

The Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning landmark American musical "Rent," written by Jonathan Larson and directed by Michael Greif, is coming to the Mainstage theater at the Center for the Arts on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus for two performances at 8 p.m. on Feb. 22 and 23.

Undergraduates from Western New York will have an opportunity this summer to participate in the inaugural session of a new biomedical-research training program at the University at Buffalo funded by a $600,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Surgeons at the University at Buffalo have carried out the first minimally invasive spinal surgery in the U.S., using a new technique to stabilize the lumbar spine called axial lumbar interbody fusion, or AxiaLIF.

Companies interested in receiving matching grants from the $1 million Western New York Wellness Works Initiative should watch their mailboxes this week. The University at Buffalo's School of Public Health and Health Professions is calling for proposals from any company or business interested in developing a new wellness program for employees.

An efficient new strategy for synthesizing a natural marine product, which shows promising anti-tuberculosis activity but cannot be efficiently synthesized using conventional chemistry, is being reported by University at Buffalo organic chemists online in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

John E. Van Benschoten, Ph.D., professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering at the University at Buffalo, has been named associate dean for undergraduate education in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

University at Tulsa law professor Paul Finkelman, the chief expert witness in the lawsuit that forced the removal of a 5,500-pound Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building, will discuss observations about that case and similar ones during a lecture at the University at Buffalo Law School, to be held from 12:30-2 p.m. Feb. 18 in 104 O'Brian Hall on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

Excerpts from a book by a University at Buffalo professor of sociology are included in an anthology of writing about travel, tourism and globalism that accompanies a major exhibition mounted by Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Fifteen minority and women entrepreneurs from the Buffalo-Niagara region have been selected in a competitive process to participate in the Allstate Minority and Women Emerging Entrepreneurs Program offered by the University at Buffalo School of Management Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) and the UB Center for Urban Studies.

A novel technology that can test cells in minutes for responses to any stimulus, including antibiotics, pathogens, toxins, radiation or chemotherapy, has been developed by scientists at the University at Buffalo.

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 highly sought-after quality methodology called Six Sigma is now available to University at Buffalo students in the Department of Industrial Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

Janaina Tschape will open in University at Buffalo Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts at 5 p.m. on Feb. 18 with a gallery talk with the artist, Janaina Tschape, and UB Art Gallery curator, Sandra Firmin, followed by a reception from 6-7:30 p.m.

Seats in the front two rows of the orchestra (center section) will be made available for $20 on a first-come, first-served basis both performances of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning musical "Rent" to be performed Feb. 22 and 23 in the University at Buffalo Center for the Arts.

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.

"Indications," an exhibition of work by nine first-year master of fine arts students from the Department of Art at the University at Buffalo will open on Feb. 24 with a reception from 5-7 pm in the UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, North (Amherst) Campus.

Philip Coppens, Ph.D., SUNY Distinguished Professor and Henry M. Woodburn Chair of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry in the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the prestigious Ewald Prize by the International Union of Crystallography.

A team of engineers from the University at Buffalo's New York State Center for Engineering Design and Industrial Innovation (NYSCEDII) and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is applying its expertise in virtual prototyping and simulation to mattresses.

The University at Buffalo Music Library has mounted an online exhibition of its J. Warren Perry Music Memorabilia Collection, a collection of 2,500 photographs and items of memorabilia spanning more than 60 years that is international in scope and a striking visual record of many of the most significant musicians of the 20th century.

Two graduate students and a graduating senior at the University at Buffalo received teaching assistantships for 2005 from the J. William Fulbright Foundation Student Program and are teaching English and American culture in universities, high schools and junior high schools in Europe and Asia.

Public group discussions of three books authored by Michael Eric Dyson are being planned in conjunction with his appearance as keynote speaker at the University at Buffalo's upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration event.

Meghan Fadel of Amherst, an undergraduate in the University at Buffalo Department of English, has received first prize in the 2004 international essay competition sponsored by Early English Books Online (EEBO), a major digital research collection published by Chadwick-Healey and ProQuest Information.

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 Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy in the UB Law School has announced a full schedule of events for the spring semester, including a visiting scholars series, a faculty seminar series and numerous workshops and conferences on a variety of topics.

Paul H. Reitan, professor emeritus in the Department of Geology in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, had been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

Life in Singapore is good for Arabella Lyon. She may spend a morning sitting in a state-of-the-art library, then "stroll to a fusion food cafe overlooking lush gardens of flowering trees and palms." Or she may spend a day with her children browsing bookstores where the English collections are larger than at home, and then take a swim in the Straits of Malacca. Sure beats shivering along the banks of Lake Erie. Or on the winter tundra of the University at Buffalo's North (Amherst) Campus.

The American Studies Department at the University at Buffalo -- until last fall known for several years as the "Center for the Americas" -- is one of the oldest in the United States. In large part due to the foresight and scholarship of its founders, the department maintains an international reputation for leadership in the field.

In a run-down section of city street in Niagara Falls, N.Y. -- flanked by abandoned homes and across from a shuttered hospital -- a dilapidated old dormitory for nurses is getting a new start as transitional housing for homeless women and their children. The building's rehabilitation is being made possible, in large measure, by the efforts of University at Buffalo law students attracted to an unglamorous, roll-up-your-sleeves niche of law practice known as affordable housing.

The premise: Teams of budding young entrepreneurs pit their skills and savvy against one another in an attempt to win praise and reward from an accomplished marketing pro. Sound familiar? No, it's not the latest episode of Donald Trump's hit reality-TV show "The Apprentice." It's a new three-credit course, called "The Marketers," modeled after the TV show and offered this semester at the University at Buffalo.

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 Center for the Arts will present "Music is Art Live @ The Center," a series of live concerts by local musicians and area artist exhibitions to be held Tuesdays (March 1, 8, 22, 29 and April 5, 12, 19) in the Center for the Arts Atrium during March and April. Artist exhibitions will begin at 7 p.m., and music will start at 9 p.m. All events will be recorded for future television broadcast.

"LABOR," a benefit for the Western New York 'Zine Archive, soon to be housed in the University at Buffalo Poetry Collection, will be held March 4 at Soundlab, 110 Pearl St.