Cornell faculty and staff will address a wide range of topics, from language acquisition and the foundations for school achievement to genetic plant breeding and rain-forest medicine, today through Monday at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Philadelphia.
AAAS, a 143,000-member professional organization, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. Although the massive annual meeting is rarely the occasion for the first public airing of new scientific data, it is widely regarded by researchers, educators and the news media as an opportunity to assess the progress of science in an interdisciplinary setting.
Among the participants from Cornell will be Steven Tanksley, the L.H. Bailey Professor of Plant Breeding, who is set to discuss "Beyond Bt: A View of What's Possible for Plant Breeding with Genes" during a Feb. 14 session on "A New Century of Pest Management." That same day, Cornell Waste Management Institute Director Ellen Z. Harrison is co-organizer of a panel on "Science and the Unpleasant: Risk Assessment and Urban Sewage Sludge." She also will be a co-presenter on the topic "Why European and U.S. Sludge Standards Differ," while David R. Bouldin and Murray B. McBride, professor emeritus and professor, respectively, of soil science, are at the same panel on the topic "Toxic Metals in Sludge-Grown Crops: Misunderstanding Rooted in Analytical Error."
On Feb. 15 Eloy Rodriguez, the James Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies, will lecture on "Natural Medicines of the Amazonas: Evolution of Drug Selection by Indigenous Tribes and Wild Primates," and on Feb. 16, Barbara C. Lust, professor of human development, is a co-organizer and a speaker in a session, "Bound to Speak: Universal Grammar in First Language Acquisition."
Other scheduled Cornell speakers include Charles H. Greene, adjunct associate professor of ecology and systematics, on "Eyes and Ears Beneath the Sea: Video-Acoustic Imaging of Plankton;" Bruce V. Lewenstein, associate professor of communication, the organizer of panels on "Interacting Formats: Science in Print and on the Web" and "Science for the Public on Demand, Online?" and Ulric Neisser, professor of psychology, who is the organizer and a scheduled speaker in the panel "Cultural and Social Foundations of School Achievement."
Also William B. Lacy, director of Cornell Cooperative Extension, is co-organizer of the session "Toward Public Accountability of Federally Funded Research and Development"; David W. Henderson, professor of mathematics, is the co-organizer of two sessions about "Exploring New Frontiers in Geometry" and will speak on "Opening Students' Minds: Experiencing Non-Axiomatic Geometry in the Classroom." Sheila Jasanoff, professor and chair of science and technology studies, will speak on "Panacea or Poison: The Multiple Identities of DDT " in a panel, "Kill All the Mosquitoes or Cure Malaria: Communicating Controversy to Citizens"; Margaret Rossiter, the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History of Science, is scheduled to speak in the session, "Women in Science: The Last Decades," on the topic, "1970-1998: A Golden Age for Women?"; and Michele Aldrich, visiting fellow in science and technology studies, is organizer of the session, "AAAS at 150: The Past as Prologue?" and will speak on "The Dark Ages of AAAS: 1865-1900."
Be sure to see coverage of the AAAS meeting in next week's Chronicle.
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