Soundbites

"It's not giving you a license to eat more, necessarily, just because it's sugar-free."

-- Christina Stark, extension nutritionist, discussing the new sugar substitute Splenda in a June 24 Associated Press wire story picked up by dozens of publications and radio and TV stations, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Daily News, Miami Herald, Syracuse Post-Standard, ABC News, CBS 2 TV Chicago, KYW-TV CBS 3 Philadelphia, KPIX-TV CBS 5 San Francisco and KCBS-TV CBS 2 Los Angeles.

"The largest boulder here, casting a big shadow, is about 300 meters across -- that would squash the Rose Bowl and most of the surrounding parking blocks pretty well."

-- Peter Thomas, senior astronomy researcher, speaking at a Jet Propulsion Laboratory press briefing in Pasadena, Calif., describing Saturn's outer moon, Phoebe, which the Cassini spacecraft flew by on June 11. As reported by Richard Harris on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," June 23. (Read related story.)

"You let Tsinghua be Tsinghua, you let Beida (Beijing University) be Beida, you let each one bloom in its own way; I think that is the right philosophy. And then you develop partnerships, collaborations within China and with key universities in the world."

-- Jeffrey Lehman, president, quoted in China's Xinhua News Service, June 17, while discussing the purpose of his trip to China. He was commenting on the personalities of the different universities he will be visiting. (Read related story.)

"[Putting the Native American collection on the Internet will] release and unleash it so people around the world have access to it."

-- Sarah E. Thomas, University Librarian, on Cornell Library's plans for some documents in its newly acquired Native American collection, one of the largest in the world, in The New York Times, June 16. Cornell purchased the collection this June from the Huntington Free Library after the Huntington won a 15-year court battle with the Smithsonian Institution over the collection's ownership.

"Good behavior is contagious, but so, too, is bad behavior. An overriding emphasis on voluntary compliance is bad public policy, not just because it requires those who comply voluntarily to pay an unfair share, but also because it inevitably generates a race to the bottom."

-- Robert Frank, professor of management and economics in the Johnson Graduate School of Management, discussing behavioral studies described in his new book, What Price the Moral High Ground, in the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, June 12.

"These findings suggest a new cause of insulin resistance and argue against the general belief that antioxidants are beneficial to insulin function. ... Although antioxidants are beneficial for health, too many may be harmful and we need to be much more cautious in making recommendations to supplement the diet with them."

-- Xingen Lei, associate professor of animal science, discussing his findings that a selenium-containing enzyme could promote type 2 diabetes, in the Web-based magazine Science Daily, June 11.