Here is a sampling of quotations from Cornell University faculty, students and staff that have appeared recently in the national and international news media:
"Lots of manufacturing companies expect the skills problem to get worse."
Joseph Thomas, the Nicholas H. Noyes Professor of Manufacturing in the Johnson Graduate School of Management, commenting on the shortage of skilled workers in the United States, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on July 7.
"You don't have rain and you don't have snow but the surface of Mars is rusting away. What we don't know is how fast."
James Bell, research associate in astronomy, in USA Today, July 8, on findings by the Mars Pathfinder mission.
"Would an institution of higher education be considered an Internet-service provider? Does this apply to us? The language is not clear."
Marjorie W. Hodges, policy program manager for Cornell Information Technologies, discussing proposed Internet policy legislation in The Chronicle of Higher Education on July 11.
"There are essentially as many large craters as you can put there. This is the first time that we have seen such a situation. This is very, very unusual."
Joseph Veverka, professor of astronomy, describing new images of the asteroid Mathilde in The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11.
"I do not know a single curmudgeonly chemist who would not respond positively to this lovely creation. Perhaps some day the ferric wheel will find a use....I do not really care. For me, this molecule provides a spiritual high akin to hearing a Haydn piano trio I like."
Roald Hoffmann, professor of chemistry, in an excerpt from a 1993 essay in Scientific American about a new ring-shaped molecule (the "ferric wheel"), quoted by Malcolm W. Browne in a New York Times article about cubane, a cube-shaped molecule, on July 15.
"So this device, which demonstrates the flexibility of our fabrication scheme, is a little thing which looks much like a guitar and has small silicon wires that would actually vibrate, quite analogous to an ordinary guitar."
Harold Craighead, professor of applied and engineering physics, on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, July 24, on a new technology for the world's smallest silicon mechanical structures he has made with graduate student Dustin Carr in the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility. Among them was a nanosized guitar.