Tripped up by the word "boniface," the team from WBFO 88.7 FM, The National Public Radio affiliate operated by UB, placed second to a team from The Buffalo News in the corporate spelling bee held on Feb. 28 to benefit the Community Music School. News Director Mark Scott was captain of the team. Rounding out the "W-Bee-F-O" spellers were General Manager Jennifer Roth and Kara Sweet, underwriting and community relations coordinator.

William J. Rapaport, associate professor of computer science and engineering; adjunct professor of philosophy, and a member of the Center for Cognitive Science, gave two presentations last week to the computational linguistics research group in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. The presentations were "Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition: A Computational Theory and Educational Curriculum," which was based on Rapaport's National Science Foundation-sponsored research with Michael W. Kibby, professor of learning and instruction, and director of the UB Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction, and "How to Pass a Turing Test and Escape from the Chinese Room," which was based on Rapaport's philosophical research project on syntactic semantics.

Several hundred members of the university community were honored recently for having had a positive impact on a student from the Class of 2000. The honorees, recognized during a reception in the Student Union Social Hall, were named by participants in the Office of Career Planning and Placement's survey of graduates of the Class of 2000.

The Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research is an organizer and co-sponsor of the Third National Seismic Conference and Workshop on Bridges and Highways, to be held April 28 through May 1 in Portland, Ore. The NSC represents one of the largest gatherings anywhere focused on highway seismic design and retrofit strategies for practicing engineers. It is expected to attract between 300 and 400 participants including: bridge and highway engineers, design consultants, and federal, state, and local transportation owners and representatives from throughout the United States.

Joseph Masling, emeritus professor of psychology, has had the 10th volume in his series "Empirical Studies in Psychoanalytic Theory" published by the American Psychological Association. The newly published volume is entitled "The Psychodynamics of Gender and Gender Roles."