Author: Natalie Kreher

Igor Zutic, a researcher at UB, has been pondering the usefulness of magnets and how they could transform the world of computing. He believes that magnets could aid with high capacity and low energy memory, data storage and data transfer devices.In the most recent issue of Science, Zutic and UB physicist John Cerne talked about Japanese scientists who demonstrated a materials ability to turn its magnetism on and off at room temperature. All materials have electrons and those electrons have something called “spin”. The spin can be either up or down and when the electrons within the material have the…

Read More

The Making Neighborhoods Matter forum is a fantastic day long seminar on preservation and neighborhoods which will be held tomorrow with events starting at 8:00 am and running through 4:30pm at Buffalo’s giant Central Terminal. You should attend, if for no other reason, for the amazing architectural backdrop. But once you get bored with the powerful art deco structural surroundings you will find that this forum is well worth you time. It is presented by the Buffalo Neighborhood Alliance (a collaboration of 15 neighborhoods across Buffalo) along with the National Trust for Preservation, Preservation Buffalo Niagara and a list of…

Read More

New Haven Connecticut, well known as the home of prestigious Ivy League Yale University, hopes to shore up part of its sagging downtown with a college of a very different stripe. Construction has recently been started on a long planned consolidation and expansion of its community college costing over $200M. Known as Gateway Community College, it will be occupying land which recently held a vacant department store and dead downtown mall. The campus will initially be composed of 2 buildings facing each other across a major downtown street. It will anchor the south end of the city’s downtown business center…

Read More

A few days ago my neighbor, who works for a very large company in the Chicago suburbs, told me that her employer just established a one day per week, work-from-home policy and also opened a satellite office downtown. She said they did this because they are experiencing substantial difficulty finding quality new hires (even in the current economy) who want to work in the suburbs. This anecdote is backed up by an article I read a few months ago on the Cleveland based blog www.Rustwire.com. The story titled “Is Soul Crushing Sprawl Killing Business?” was in the form of a…

Read More

A few days ago I posted A story about the beautiful Wicks House on Jewett Parkway across the street from the Wright-designed Darwin Martin house in the Parkside neighborhood. Soon after that BRO posted an announcement for the 13th annual Parkside Tour of Homes which will be held in about 2 weeks on May 22. With that in mind I thought I would dig up an old post from February 2006 and keep the Parkside party going. The story was titled Then and Now #2 (I was not so slick with the story titles back then) and it highlighted a…

Read More

I had the pleasure of first meeting Dominic Luongo through Buffalo Rising’s own Joseph DiDomizio at a screening for Buffalo Nickel Productions’ Henry’s Future. Here was a gentlemen who knew his cinema and cinematography. In recent years, he’s worked on a number of music videos and film productions – both in front of the camera, behind the camera, and in the editor’s seat.To say the least, Dominic is modest about his filmmaking background. “Aside from terrible home movies? Actually, making bad home movies was surprisingly beneficial. It gave me a chance to practice, screw up, build a model for filmmaking,…

Read More

What does Friday evening mean to you? To me, a Friday evening in the early spring season invokes a tradition that has been passed down through the generations: Friday Night Fish Fry. Buffalo is no stranger to this long-standing custom, and the city boasts a large number of restaurants that participate in the fish-fry frenzy. Considering myself quite a fish-fry connoisseur, I wanted to head to a place that I’ve heard a lot of buzz about but have never had the opportunity to try. Papa Jake’s sits on Elmwood Ave near Amherst Street, a corner bar that is a bit…

Read More