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:

"This is not business as usual. This is as if you went outside and all the trees were white."

--Drew Harvell, professor of ecology and systematics, discussing the widespread bleaching of coral reefs due to disease, in a presentation to the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing about stresses placed on the world's oceans by pollution and global warming, quoted in the Boston Globe and other newspapers, Nov. 4.

"If you are jammed in a tiny space with other people, busy all the time with tasks someone else has set out for you to do, the sameness and stress make you cry out for enjoyment. They'll (astronauts to Mars) need variety, and food is one of the only things up there that will give them any variety at all."

--Jean Hunter, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering, discussing her project which is preparing menus grown from hydroponically grown food for the Mars mission, in the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 28.

"You long to grab the pigeon by the scruff of the neck and say, 'What was the problem?'"

--Charles Walcott, professor of neurobiology and behavior, on why homing pigeons sometimes lose their way, on ABC's Good Morning America Sunday, Oct. 25.

"Fostering relationships with more faculty is something undergraduates need."

--Kevin Yamamura, editor in chief of the Cornell Daily Sun, commenting on President Hunter Rawlings' plan to enhance undergraduate education and research, in The New York Times, Oct. 24.

"I think I found the solution in about a week or two. Then maybe two months later I wrote a paper, and ... sent it to the Physical Review."

--Hans Bethe, professor emeritus of physics, recounting his development of the theory of stellar energy production that won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1967, in the Dallas Morning News, Oct. 19.

"Why does anyone go into this? That's what I want to know. I mean, it's such hard work. And I'll tell you why. It's in your blood. It gets in your blood."

-- Robert Kime, research specialist at the New York State Agriculture Experiment Station at Geneva, describing the lure of beekeeping in an article in the September issue of Harper's