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Give Kids a Smile Day set
Eight hundred children and their parents are scheduled to fill dental clinics in the School of Dental Medicine and the Pediatric Dental Clinic at Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo tomorrow to take part in the fifth annual Give Kids a Smile Day.
Children from across Western New York who do not have access to dental care will receive dental treatment free of charge that day, national Give Kids a Smile Day, as part of UB dental school's community outreach initiative. Six-hundred-fifty children have appointments at UB and another 150 are scheduled to be treated at the hospital.
More than 200 volunteers, including UB dental school faculty, staff and students; Women and Children's Hospital dentist and staff; private dentists and their staff; and students and faculty from UB's Equal Opportunity Center's Dental Assisting Program and Erie Community College's Hygiene Program will help to keep the day running smoothly.
Children ages 1-18 from local Head Start centers and elementary, middle and high schools will receive a dental exam, fluoride treatment, X-rays, sealant, oral hygiene instruction and other treatment or consultations as needed. Each child will leave the clinic with a toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss.
There also will be tours, hands-on activities, dental videos and oral hygiene instruction.
The Buffalo event is part of a national effort to encourage children to adopt good dental health habits early on, so they can avoid major problems later.
Music to present free events
Budget-conscious music lovers at UB can find much to keep them busy in February.
The free monthly Brown Bag Concert will take place at noon Tuesday in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, North Campus.
Pianist and vocal coach David Breitman, who will be in residence at UB Sunday through Tuesday, will join UB piano students in accompanying UB vocal students during the Brown Bag Concert.
Coordinated by UB faculty member Cheryl Gobbetti-Hoffman, the informal Brown Bag Concerts presented during the lunch hour allow patrons to catch a glimpse of the kind of programming offered on a regular basis by the Department of Music. Patrons are encouraged to bring their lunch and enjoy a complimentary cup of Starbucks coffee. Each attendee will receive a pair of complimentary tickets to a more formal concert within the following month.
The free events scheduled for the month also include a String Studio Recital at 12:15 p.m. Feb. 27 in Baird Recital Hall, 250 Baird Hall, North Campus, and a performance by the UB Symphony, featuring Magnus M�rtensson, conductor, at 8 p.m. Feb. 28 in Lippes Concert Hall.
UB Women's Club to host Tuscan dinner
The UB Women's Club will hold a Tuscan Wine Dinner at 7 p.m. Feb. 9 at the Buffalo Launch Club, 503 East River Road, Grand Island.
The dinner will feature the food and wine from the Tuscany region of Italy. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Grace Capen Academic Awards.
The cost is $55 per person. Reservations are required and must be made by today by contacting Joan Ryan at 626-9332 or meryan@buffalo.edu.
Program offers late-night activities
UB is reaching out to students seeking on-campus activities on Friday nights with its new Late Night UB program.
For most students, the hours from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. are prime entertainment times. Late Night UB was designed by the Division of Student Affairs to give students a chance to unwind on campus after their busy weeks with fun, student-generated events in an alcohol-free environment.
The program is open to all UB students. Programs take place from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. every Friday night during the semester. In addition, other alcohol-free events will be scheduled on most Thursdays and Saturday nights. Most events are free to UB students. Activities range from dance parties to poker to New Year's parties and movies. Programs are sponsored by student groups and university departments.
"At many universities, there is as much going on late at night as there is during the day," says Andrea Costantino, director of Student Life. "More and more students are looking for something to do after 10 p.m., but don't want the hassle of traveling off campus. We hope Late Night UB will give them a chance to get more involved, participate in planning these events and build a stronger connection to UB and their peers."
Student groups may apply for late-night programming grants of up to $300 to sponsor late-night events.
Late Night UB is sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs and the undergraduate Student Association.
For more information and a schedule of events, visit http://www.latenight.buffalo.edu.
MacMaster to perform in CFA
Celtic fiddle player Natalie MacMaster will perform at 8 p.m. March 6 in the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
With a talent that remains both raw and wondrously refined, and backed by a band any top musician would be proud of, MacMaster has grown to become the musical face of Atlantic Canada, and continually stuns crowds around the globe with her feverish fiddling and mesmerizing step dancing. While acclaimed for taking Celtic music to new heights, each album she releases displays a creativity and range that constantly pushes back the boundaries of the genre.
Her last release, "Blueprint," combines MacMaster's own musical radiance with the cream of American roots instrumentalists, including Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush and Edgar Meyer, and won her "Best Female Artist of the Year" and "Best Roots/Traditional Solo Recording" at the East Coast Music Awards in 2005.
Her live performances are renowned for their incandescent energy and toe-tapping, rhythmic intensity.
Tickets for Natalie MacMaster are $30 for general admission and $20 for students and are available at the CFA box office from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at all Ticketmaster locations, including Ticketmaster.com.
WBFO receives grant for HD conversion
WBFO-FM 88.7, UB's National Public Radio affiliate, has received a $20,000 grant from the Cameron Baird Foundation to install the new technology of broadcasting in digital format, known as HD Radio.
HD Radio will allow WBFO to offer better sound quality and reach a wider audience by broadcasting various programming with a clearer signal over three streams instead of one, according to Carole Smith Petro, associate vice president and WBFO general manager.
"The Cameron Baird Foundation has been a solid and reliable supporter of WBFO's efforts to deliver high quality public radio," Petro said. "We are grateful for their on-going confidence in WBFO. Their support allows the station to take full advantage of current digital, satellite and Internet capabilities and places WBFO in the technical forefront of both commercial and public radio stations across the nation."
The grant from the Baird Foundation will go toward the overall HD Radio project goal of $182,000. Other funding sources include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the New York State Department of Education and UB faculty members.
Virtual reality drama to be presented
The virtual reality drama "Human Trials," a collaboration between faculty members in the departments of Media Study and Computer Science and Engineering, will be performed at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 15 in the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts, North Campus.
A reception at 5 p.m. will precede the performance. Both the performance and reception will be free and open to the public.
"Human Trials" is a networked, virtual, participatory drama with human actors, intelligent agents and smart sets. It explores the intersection of virtual reality and embodied performance through an event designed both as an immersive experience for one participant and as a nonimmersive production for a live audience.
The participant enters the virtual world from a projection-based, virtual reality system and is taken on an absurd quest by two characters, Filopat and Patofil, played by human actors wearing head-mounted displays. These three protagonists see each other as avatars in the virtual world. For the participant, "Human Trials" appears to be about control and the choices one makes with power. But the games are rigged, the characters are duplicitous, the quest is a decoy and the underlying test is how to cope with disempowerment.
Meanwhile, the larger audience watches the actors and three large projections of the virtual action showing the points of view of each of the three main protagonists in the drama. The actions of the participant and the judgment of the audience determine the ending of the drama.
Human Trials is a production of UB's Intermedia Performance Studio, which is focusing its work on the integration of live actors, virtual avatars, intelligent actor-agents, dynamic sets and live, mobile audience members. The studio is a collaboration between Josephine Anstey, Dave Pape and Sarah Bay-Cheng of the Department of Media Study, and Stuart C. Shapiro of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. "Human Trials" is based on an original idea by Anstey, a virtual reality artist/dramatist who constructed the virtual set using software designed by Pape, a virtual reality and computer graphics researcher. Anstey and Bay-Cheng, an actor and performance theorist, wrote an improvisation script and Bay-Cheng directed the performance.
In addition to the human actors, the set contains computer-controlled characters that were built using Pape's software and following an agent architecture designed by Shapiro, an artificial intelligence researcher.