Here is a sampling of quotations from Cornell University faculty, students and staff that have appeared recently in the national and international news media:
"In effect, the woodchuck gets an internal message that says, 'Whoops, it's just about time to wake up and breed.'"
-- Patrick W. Concannon, senior research associate, College of Veterinary Medicine, discussing groundhogs' circannual cycles, in The New York Times, Jan. 28.
"Common sense would tell you that unions with high percentages of membership do better at the negotiating table than unions with low percentages. In this case statistical analysis and common sense agree. Companies know when their counterparts are vulnerable, and they do their best to take advantage of it during negotiations. That's how the process works."-- Harry Katz, the Jack Sheinkman Professor of Collective Bargaining, discussing FedEx pilots' union elections and negotiations with management, in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Jan. 21.
"It's going to raise eyebrows. There are going to be people so astonished by this that they are going to challenge it."-- Stephen Emlen, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Behavioral Ecology, in The New York Times, Feb. 18, on a study that shows a bird species that can choose the sex of its offspring depending on evolutionary payoff.
"I think there are hot spots -- little windows where for some reason whales and ships come together. If we can find those points, we can direct ships away and save the whales....You get to know each [whale] and each one becomes important. . . . Each calf is precious. Each one holds the future of the species in the balance."-- Kurt Fristrup, assistant director of bioacoustics at the Laboratory of Ornithology, discussing how he tracks right whales for a U.S. Navy research project to preserve that endangered species, which has dwindled to an estimated 350, in an Associated Press article printed in the Atlanta Journal, Jan. 27.
"We're trying more or less to be mainstream. But the truth is the mainstream is very far from where the Riverside is."-- Walter Cohen, dean of the Graduate School and professor of comparative literature, discussing a new book he co-edited, The Norton Shakespeare, Based on the Oxford Edition, in the Jan. 31 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.