Soundbites

Here is a sampling of quotations from Cornell University faculty, students and staff that have appeared recently in the national and international news media:

"What we're really after here ... is bringing back samples to terrestrial laboratories that will enable us to determine what the martian environment was like long ago, whether it might have been the kind of environment that could support life and whether or not there is any evidence of life in those samples."

--Steven Squyres, professor of astronomy, discussing NASA's Mars exploration plans in an Associated Press wire story Nov. 23.

"The global warming that is taking place is encouraging outbreaks of various disease organisms and also encouraging vectors of disease, such as mosquitoes and other organisms, that do well under warm, moist conditions."

--David Pimentel, professor of entomology and of ecology, on CNN Moneyline, Nov. 11.

"He was a superb political tactician ... one of the great insurrectionists of American history. But that may have been his undoing. The Republicans he brought in were insurrectionists too. They didn't know how to govern. They were more comfortable staying out there in the jungle, shooting at authority figures."

--Joel Silbey, professor of history, discussing the downfall of Newt Gingrich in The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 7.

"All the evidence so far is that there will continue to be profound discoveries, that we're not as clever as we think we are."

--N. David Mermin, the Horace White Professor of Physics, commenting on whether we've seen "the end of science," in the Dallas Morning News, Oct. 19.

"Today's systems are vulnerable to attack and failure, yet increasingly the nation depends on them to control critical infrastructures."

-- Fred B. Schneider, professor of computer science, commenting on Internet security in the San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 30.

"We have done the trials on mice and are now applying for permission to test the vaccine on humans."

--Charles Arntzen, president of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell, discussing the edible vaccine being developed there against a form of gastroenteritis, in the Sunday (London) Times, Sept. 20.