Cornell University News Service Releases
February, 2000
Index to all months
Index to all monthsFor the full text of any story, click on the filename at the end of the description. These stories are also available via anonymous FTP at cunews.cornell.edu. Electronic queries may be made to cunews@cornell.edu.
Groundwater capture system proposed in cleanup plan for former low-level radiation site
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has approved the conceptual plan for a groundwater recovery and treatment system proposed by Cornell University for its former low-level radiation disposal site (RDS) in the Town of Lansing, north of Tompkins County Airport.
According to Donna Connery, project manager for Cornell's Environmental Compliance Office, the planned recovery system consists of a row of wells to be drilled along Snyder Road to capture groundwater contaminated with paradioxane, a solvent used in experiments that measure radioactivity going back four decades. The groundwater also contains very small amounts of the radionuclide tritium at levels significantly cleaner than drinking-water standards, she said. CDS.RDS.ds.html (February 28, 2000)
Jewish Cuban artists' exhibit opens with a visit to Cornell in March
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Two Jewish Cuban artists will visit Cornell University in March as part of a Contemporary Cuban Art Exhibit sponsored by the Yudowitz Center for Jewish Campus Life-Cornell Hillel and the Latin American Studies Program. The exhibit runs from Feb. 28 to March 11 in the Hartell Gallery in Sibley Hall on the Cornell campus.
A gala reception for the artists, Orestes Larios Zaak and Vicente Dopico-Lerner, will be held Monday, March 6, at 5:30 p.m. in the Hartell Gallery. Both artists will be on campus for several days to discuss ideas about art and Cuba with students, faculty and staff. The exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public. jewish.cuban.Arts.html (February 25, 2000)
TCAT bus service adjustments start Thursday
Rockefeller grant for Friedan-led conference on U.S. and E.U. approaches to work and family policy
Poet and novelist launch Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading
Native Americans and NASA scientist discuss global warming and climate change in two-day panel Feb. 25-26
Uncovering structure of cellular switch could aid design of cancer-fighting drugs
NASA gives go-ahead to mission to explore comets
Proposed engineering facility begins city review
Administration appointments at Cornell
Brain neurochemicals, not gender, tell a female to act like a female
How children can avoid injury while at their computers
Genetically engineered food could be lifeline for developing world
Death by global warming?: Climate change, pollution and malnutrition
Lively book by three noted historians of science traces 150 years of AAAS history
Music may be universal, but the explanation could have a Western bias, Cornell psychologist finds
Other simplified books have made science texts harder to read
Childless couples under 50 who work for the same employer are more stressed
Foul play ruled out in death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
TCAT bus service adjustments are on the way
Students, Red Cross unite to raise disaster-relief funds for Venezuela
Shuttle radar images will probe Andes geology
MIT expert on gender equity, Lotte Bailyn, to discuss integration of work with family Feb. 14
Kim Burrell headlines 24th annual Festival of Black Gospel Feb. 18-20
Co-founder and president of City Year will speak at Cornell Tradition convocation, Feb. 11
Three new appointees at Johnson School are streamlining corporate and external relations
Jupiter's massive storms powered by the planet itself, not the sun
$35,000 Rockefeller grant to boost rice yields in Madagascar
Potato resists late blight and other diseases
WVBR's 'Bound for Glory' bound for 1,000th live broadcast on Feb. 6
Spacecraft team prepares for first orbit of an asteroid
Katherine Reagan appointed curator of rare books at Cornell Library
Spring Field Ornithology course teaches birding during peak migration time
Why some people get fat and others don't: too much snacking and too little moving
Ergonomic chairs might not protect computer users from wrist injuries
Physicist Persis Drell named to lead CLEO particle detector group
Biddy Martin nominated as Cornell Provost
Peter Eisenman, who helped redefine modern architecture, is Preston Thomas lecturer in February
Expert in Southeast Asian studies, George McTurnan Kahin, dies at 82
Cornell offers new interdisciplinary graduate training program in food safety
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (Tcat) system plans to implement several minor service revisions this Thursday, Feb. 24. Area riders should look for time schedule changes, route changes, and relocated bus stops. The new adjustments will effect routes 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 40, 43, 50, 51, 52, 60, 65, 80, and 82. The majority of these changes will be relatively small tweaks to the existing system, with the exception of a new route, Route 9, and the reworking of Route 15, the "Southside Shopper."
New print schedules are now available on all buses, at schedule outlets and on Tcat's web site
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Institute for Women and Work at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations recently received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to hold an international conference next year at the foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center on Lake Como in the foothills of the Italian alps.
The Bellagio, Italy, conference, which will be led by distinguished visiting professor Betty Friedan and Francine Moccio, director of the institute, is titled "Gross Domestic Product vs. Quality of Life: Balancing Work and Family." It will focus on the effects of comparative systems of collective bargaining, public policy and business practices on work and family issues among industrialized countries of the European Union (E.U.), Japan, Australia, and some Eastern European countries, and their implications for U.S. public policy and labor initiatives. The conference will take place Jan. 29-Feb. 2, 2001, and will involve the Feminism and Legal Theory Project at Cornell's Law School. IWW.conf.grant.html (February 23, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Novelist and poet Robert Morgan and poet and essayist Kenneth McClane will read from their works at the first Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 3, in the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
Cleaveland, Cornell Class of '74, died this past fall in an accident near his adopted home of Anaconda, Mont. An accomplished poet, writer and naturalist, he served as editor of a former student literary magazine called Rainy Day. His poetry was published in First Anthology, edited by A.R. Ammons, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry Emeritus at Cornell. After graduation, Cleaveland went on to serve as editor and columnist for The Grapevine, a now-defunct weekly newspaper in Tompkins County that Cleaveland helped launch. cleaveland.reading.html (February 21, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Akwe:kon Press and Native Americas journal, part of the American Indian Program at Cornell University, will hold a "Global Warming/Climate Change" panel discussion on campus Feb. 25 and 26. This event is free and open to the public.
Guest speakers will include Native American elder Oren Lyons, an Onondaga faithkeeper who served on the 1998 Native Peoples/Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop in Albuquerque, N.M.; John C. Mohawk, member of the Seneca Nation and a professor of American studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo; Nancy Maynard, a program director with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Robert Gough, an attorney for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Utility Commissionin South Dakota (S.D.); and Tim Johnson, from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. native.forum.rel.html (February 21, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University cancer researchers have revealed the molecular structure of a protein complex believed to influence the malignant transformation of cells, setting the stage for development of unique tumor-blocking drugs.
The structure of Cdc42, a molecular "switch" that turns on essential pathways in both normal and cancerous cells, and GDI (for guanine nucleotide-dissociation inhibitor), a key regulator of the Cdc42 switch, is reported in the February issue of the journal Cell (vol. 100, pp. 345-356). Cdc42_structure.hrs.html (February 16, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- NASA has given the go-ahead for the Cornell University-led Comet Nucleus Tour, or Contour, mission. The agency said the mission has passed a critical review and the building of the spacecraft can begin.
Cornell will lead and direct the $158 million mission to conduct close-proximity comet flybys. The spacecraft is scheduled for launch in July 2002, with the precise launch date to be decided in the next year or two. Contour.cu.deb.html (February 16, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Plans for Duffield Hall, a new research center facility aimed at keeping Cornell University a leader in nanotechnology, have been submitted to the city of Ithaca, beginning the environmental and site-plan review processes.
Recognizing the importance of public discussion of the potential environmental impacts of the type of research in the new facility, the university will prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project. At its Jan. 25 meeting, the city's Planning and Development Board concurred with Cornell's proposal that an EIS would be appropriate. Duffield.city.jg.deb.html (February 16, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University President Hunter Rawlings today (Feb. 16) announced two appointments that, he said, "will greatly strengthen the university."
Robert Harris Jr., associate professor of Africana studies and a special assistant to the provost, has been named vice provost for diversity and faculty development. Francille Firebaugh, dean emerita of the College of Human Ecology, has been named director of special projects, Office of the President and the Provost. Harris' appointment was effective Feb. 1 and Firebaugh's Jan. 1. New.appts.jp.html (February 16, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University biologists have shown how chemicals produced in a core region of the brain shared by all vertebrate animals (including humans) make males act like males, females like females -- and some males something like females.
James Goodson and Andrew Bass, who studied a fish species that produces two types of males for their report in the Feb. 17, 2000, issue of the journal Nature, say that brain processes responsible for social behavior typical of females, for example, aren't necessarily linked to the female's sex at all. neurochemical.hrs.html (February 16, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- American children typically spend between one and three hours a day at a computer, putting them at high risk for wrist, neck and back problems, says a Cornell University ergonomist.
The problem is their sitting position. The rule of thumb is that knees and elbows should be placed at an angle of 90 degrees or greater, says Alan Hedge, professor of design and environmental analysis at Cornell and director of Cornell's Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory, speaking at the National Ergonomics Conference in Anaheim, Calif., in December. To help schools and parents provide safer workstations, Hedge is offering guidelines on the World Wide Web. The site, at
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the developed world, societies enjoy abundant diets more varied now than at any other time in history. That's in stark contrast to the developing world where millions of people confront profound food insecurity every day. Part of the solution to righting this imbalance might involve something that is increasingly controversial in the developed world: genetically engineered food.
Cornell University's Susan McCouch, associate professor of plant breeding, asks if it is ethical for well-fed people in the United States, Canada and Europe to ignore the potential of biotechnology to improve the nutritional status of hungry people around the world, particularly when the same technology is being used to extend life expectancy by producing pharmaceuticals. McCouch made her observations in her talk, "Is Biotechnology the Answer?" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science today (Feb. 19) in Washington, D.C. AAAS.McCouch.bpf.html (February 16, 2000)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Coroners won't write "death by global warming," but that could be an ultimate cause as millions succumb to disease in an increasingly unhealthy environment, a Cornell University ecologist warns.
Speaking today (Feb.18) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in a session on "Human Health and Climate Change," David Pimentel said global warming will create a favorable climate for disease-causing organisms and food-plant pests -- but a much more challenging planet for humans struggling to survive. AAAS.Pimentel.hrs.html (February 16, 2000)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Commissioned institutional histories tend to be dry and self-congratulatory, dull work for anonymous authors and often even duller reading. Yet The Establishment of Science in America: 150 Years of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, released last December, transcends the genre.
That is because this is a history by three noted historians of science who see no value in protecting institutions: Bruce V. Lewenstein, associate professor of communication and science and technology studies at Cornell University; Michael M. Sokal, professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute; and Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, professor of the history of science and technology at the University of Minnesota. AAAS.Lewenstein.ms.deb.html (February 16, 2000)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Every human culture makes music. It makes people happy or sad, calm or angry. It is used for work and play, for education and celebration. "The variety of music found cross-culturally suggests a deep human need to create, perform and listen to music. But, why?" asks Cornell University professor of psychology Carol Krumhansl.
One important reason, she and other psychologists believe, is that we have certain expectations about what will follow next in the melody. The emotional response to a melody depends on whether, when and how the expectations are fulfilled, Krumhansl suggests. Krumhansl described research that partially confirms and partially questions a recent theory about how these expectations work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, D.C., today (Feb. 20). Her talk was part of a panel session titled "Bio Music: The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music." AAAS.Krumhansl.music.ws.html (February 16, 2000)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Lulled into lexical laziness by years of oversimplified schoolbooks, American students are in for a shock when they reach high school: Science books often are too hard for them to read, according to a Cornell University sociologist.
Donald P. Hayes, Cornell professor of sociology emeritus, has formulated a plan to close the classroom language gap between science books and dumbed-down texts for nonscience subjects. Reporting at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science today (Feb. 21), Hayes and Loreen Wolfer emphasized that too many American students shun high school science for "easier" subjects, and they pass into adulthood as poorly educated, science illiterates with a vulnerability to pseudoscience. Wolfer is a former graduate student in sociology at Cornell, who is now on the faculty of University of Scranton. AAAS.hayes.hrs.html (February 16, 2000)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A new Cornell University study suggests that childless couples who work for the same employer tend to experience lower life quality and have less egalitarian marriages than coworking couples with children and childless couples who work for different employers.
In fact, childless couples, particularly those under 50, who are coworkers in the same company or university report a variety of problems, ranging from job dissatisfaction to stress and depression, the study finds. AAAS.coworking.couples.ssl.html (February 16, 2000)
Baltimore, MD. -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the uncommonly gifted and prolific composer, died 209 years ago at age 35 of a common killer-- from natural rather than unnatural ailments. So concludes a panel of physicians and Mozart scholars convened here Friday, Feb. 11, at the sixth annual Clinical Pathological Conference (CPC) dedicated to notorious case histories.
Rheumatic fever extinguished the brilliant life force of one of the world's most beloved composers, not poisoning by composer and alleged rival Antonio Salieri, concluded CPC participants, among them Neal Zaslaw, Cornell University professor of music and renowned Mozart scholar. Rheumatic fever is an immune system disease that can result from streptococcal infection of the blood. Antibiotics have made it a rare ailment today. But Mozart's sudden illness and early death spawned speculations worthy of "The X Files." Mozart.death.html (February 16, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Another round of Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (Tcat) minor system revisions is scheduled to go into effect Thursday, Feb. 24. Area bus riders can expect to see time schedule changes, route changes and relocated bus stops.
This past August, Tcat introduced an entirely revamped system that included new routes and schedules. These changes were part of a service and fare consolidation study that Tcat completed with Weslin Consulting Services, a national public transportation consulting firm. During the study, public input was gathered through more than 50 meetings and a rider survey. This next phase is an extension of that process. TCAT.changes.html (February 16, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Some time between the evenings of Dec. 16 and 17, 1999, the Cordillera de la Costa, the picturesque chain of mountains that spans the Caribbean coastline in northern Venezuela's Vargas state, was transformed into a violent, chaotic onrush of rivers made of mud and debris, some more than a mile wide. Together they drowned or buried alive one-tenth of the 500,000 people living in the region and altered the landscape forever.
Although much of the world failed to take adequate notice at the time, the catastrophic landslides have been ruled the worst disaster of the Western Hemisphere in the past 500 years. Some Venezuelan Cornell University students e n route home for midwinter break witnessed the aftermath. Others who hadn't yet left campus were immediately spurred to action and are organizing fundraising efforts. Venezuelan.AID.html (February 11, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The history of the Andes mountain range is an epic and mysterious tale that a team of geologists at Cornell University has been tracing for two decades. Now the team's work is about to get a major boost from space-borne technology.
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) of the space shuttle Endeavour, scheduled to fly this week, will map much of the surface of the Earth with a new high-resolution radar. Cornell researchers will help analyze the data obtained from the Andes region, funded by a $150,000, two-year grant from NASA. Andes.radar.ws.html (February 10, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Lotte Bailyn, the T. Wilson Professor of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and author of Breaking the Mold: Women, Men, and Time in the New Corporate World, will give a free and open lecture Monday, Feb. 14, at noon in the Faculty Commons of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall on the Cornell University campus.
Sponsored by the Cornell Employment and Family Careers Institute, her lecture is titled "Integrating Work and Family: Gender Equity in Corporations and Universities." Bailyn will meet with Careers Institute faculty and postdoctoral and predoctoral fellows during her one-day visit. lotte.bailyn.ssl.html (February 10, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Texas-born singing sensation Kim Burrell will warm hearts and lift spirits on opening night of the 24th annual Festival of Black Gospel at Cornell University, Friday, Feb. 18, at 7 p.m. in Bailey Hall. Burrell is joined by a powerhouse twin bill: gospel artists Blessed Hope and Donna Ware & Harambee.
Tickets are $7 for the general public and $5 for those with student IDs or people in groups of five or more. Advance sale tickets are available locally at the Willard Straight Hall ticket office, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and Saturday, noon to 5 p.m., and at Logos Bookstore Emporium on the Ithaca Commons. Tickets also will be available at the door. blk.gosp.fest.html (February 9, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Michael Brown, co-founder and president of City Year, will visit Cornell University Friday, Feb. 11, and interact with student groups. Brown is coming to the campus to speak at the Cornell Tradition's fifth annual convocation. The Cornell Tradition is an alumni-endowed fellowship program that recognizes and rewards outstanding undergraduates.
Brown will speak on connecting citizens with democracy through civic engagement at the Cornell.Tradition.sm.html (February 9, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Three Cornell University alumni were named to positions of significant responsibility at the Johnson Graduate School of Management in 1999: John D. Nozell, MBA '83, .Angela P. Noble, MBA '94 and Michelle C. Berry, M.P.S. '92,. The managerial talents and diverse backgrounds of the appointees span the areas of career services, corporate relations, communications, media relations, recruitment and retention of diverse populations.
"These appointments are linked to our drive to become the model for management education in the next century," said Robert J. Swieringa, the Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean of the Johnson School. "Our continued emphasis on enhancing relationships with our corporate partners will be fortified by the talents of these three individuals." JGSM.appointees.html (February 9, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Anvil clouds tower more than 30 miles high, casting a pall over a hazy sky. Amid the gathering gloom, 100 mph winds whip clouds across the sky, while lightning punctuates the tumult repeatedly. Meanwhile, clouds from yet another giant storm dump several inches of rain daily over an area more than 600 miles on one side. Given that severity, and thunderheads three times as high as we see in North America, this storm is obviously not on Earth, although the storms have similarities to terrestrial weather systems. This is Jupiter.
Astronomers from Cornell University, the California Institute of Technology and the NASA Galileo Imaging Team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., have discovered that some thunderstorms on Jupiter closely resemble clusters of thunderstorms, called mesoscale convective complexes (MCCs), found on Earth. Contrary to previous belief, these MCCs develop from the intense heat emanating from Jupiter's core rather than from the sun. And these MCC's drive the planet's weather system. The findings appear in the latest issue (Feb. 10) of the journal Nature. Jupiter.Storm.bpf.html (February 8, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Rockefeller Foundation has given a two-year, $35,000 grant to the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD) to assist institutional partners in Madagascar to evaluate methods for boosting rice yields in that country and to assess what limits farmers' adoption of newer agricultural practices.
Since 1994, CIIFAD has been working with Association Tefy Saina, a Malagasy non-governmental organization which had been promoting a system of rice intensification known as SRI. The system, developed at the initiative of Henri de Laulaine, a Catholic priest, in the early 1980s, has enabled small-scale farmers there to increase rice yields on their land holdings by multiples rather than increments, by changing plant, soil, water and nutrient management practices. It does not require new seeds or input of chemical fertilizers. Madagascar.Rice.bpf.html (February 8, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- In the 1840's, the late blight fungus, P. Infestans, swept across the potato fields of Ireland, turning the vegetables into a rotten mess and leaving the country's people to fight a losing battle against famine. A million Irish perished, and a great many others left the country to land on North American shores.
Now the fungus might have met its match in a potato developed at Cornell University, the New York 121. PotatoBlight.bpf.html (February 1, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- When the cafe clock in Anabel Taylor Hall struck 8 p.m. on Sunday,
Feb. 6, WVBR's "Bound for Glory" launched its landmark 1,000th live radio show. The longest-running live folk concert broadcast in North America featured an Illinois-based folk duo called Small Potatoes and "a few surprises," said the show's producers. Bound.for.Glory.html (February 7, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- In deep space, there are very few second chances. But one year later and one year wiser, a team of Cornell University astronomers and researchers is preparing for the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid, named 433 Eros, on Valentine's Day.
In December 1998 the NEAR (for Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) spacecraft almost had been given up for dead after a problem with an attempted rocket firing left the $224.1 million mission unable to complete its goal of going into orbit around asteroid Eros. But thanks to fast thinking at Cornell, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which is managing the mission, signals were sent enabling the spacecraft instead to fly by 21-mile-long Eros, capturing images as it went. NEAR.CUteam.deb.html (February 7, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University Librarian Sarah E. Thomas has announced the appointment of Katherine Reagan as curator of rare books in Cornell Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC).
"Katherine's expertise in the history of books and printing and her knowledge of the antiquarian book trade has been a real asset to building upon the traditional strengths of our rare book collections and in developing new areas of emphasis," Thomas said. new.lib.appt.html (February 7, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. --As the southernmost birds prepare for their annual journey north, Cornell University ornithologist Stephen W. Kress is readying his lecture notes, pictures and bird calls for the 23rd annual presentation of the popular Spring Field Ornithology course, offered this year from March 29 through May 20 at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.
The eight-week, noncredit course teaches beginning-level bird watchers -- as well as more experienced birders who want to sharpen their skills -- about identification, natural history and behavior of birds in the Cayuga Lake region in the springtime. (The class also is open to Cornell students as a for-credit, independent study course with a Feb. 10 enrollment deadline.) spring_birds.hrs.html (February 7, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The main reason some people get fat isn't because of genetics or how much they eat, says a Cornell University obesity researcher. It's because compared with thinner people they snack more often during the day and move about a lot less.
The best way to slash the country's skyrocketing medical costs associated with obesity is not through dieting but by persuading people to exercise more, says David Levitsky, professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell. He says that the government should take a more aggressive role in ensuring that employers offer workers more opportunities to stretch their legs and exercise and provide more noncompetitive sports for children as well as after-school programs in inner-city neighborhoods where children often can't play outside safely. why.some.fat.ssl.html (February 7, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- No matter how fancy an ergonomic office chair is, it's probably not going to help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome or other wrist injuries that result from working at a computer keyboard, according to a new Cornell University study.
"This study debunks the commonly held view that a good ergonomic chair alone will reduce the risks of carpal tunnel syndrome. We see no evidence for that," says Alan Hedge, professor of design and environmental analysis at Cornell and director of Cornell's Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory. "We tested typists of all sizes in high-end ergonomic chairs that were adjusted for each participant according to manufacturer recommendations. Typists worked on a keyboard on a high-end, flat, adjustable keyboard tray that was also adjusted to them. None of the chairs made any difference in protecting the wrist angles of the typists." wrists.chairs.ssl.html (February 7, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Persis Drell, professor of physics at Cornell University and a noted experimental high-energy physicist, has been named leader of the Cornell group at CLEO -- one of the world's most advanced particle detectors.
With 42 researchers and staff, the Cornell group is the largest in the CLEO collaboration, which embraces 200 members from 22 institutions across the United States, from Harvard to the California Institute of Technology. Housed in Wilson Laboratory on the Cornell campus, CLEO is a magnetic detector apparatus used to study elementary particles produced by the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR), a half-mile-circumference electron-positron collider. Drell_CLEO.deb.html (February 2, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell President Hunter R. Rawlings today (Feb. 2) announced that he will submit to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees his nomination of Biddy (Carolyn A.) Martin as University Provost, effective July 1, 2000. Martin will succeed Don M. Randel, who has been named the new president of the University of Chicago.
"Biddy Martin has had an outstanding scholarly and teaching career at Cornell," said Rawlings. "She has excelled in every assignment entrusted to her care, and has won the admiration of faculty, students and staff throughout the university. Her most recent role as senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences has given her substantial exposure to university-wide issues that will prove most valuable in her new role as provost. I look forward to working closely with her on a day-to-day basis as a colleague and a friend." Martin.provost.hnd.html (February 2, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Peter Eisenman, world-renowned architect and 1955 graduate of Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning, will deliver this year's Preston Thomas Memorial Lectures at Cornell. Eisenman helped redefine contemporary architecture, "challenging the idea that architecture has to have a single, clear aesthetic," said Werner Goehner, professor of architecture and chair of the Preston Thomas lecture series.
This year's talks are on Feb. 7, 8, 14 and 15 in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall on the Cornell campus at 6:30 p.m. The series is titled "The Critical, the Post Critical, the Ecstatic: Current Forms of Radicality." Eisenman.AAP.talks.html (February 1, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- George McTurnan Kahin, a specialist on Southeast Asia and the Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies Emeritus at Cornell University, died Jan. 29, 2000, at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y. An outspoken critic of U.S. policy during the Vietnam war, he wrote and edited classic works on Southeast Asia and Indonesia, as well as on Vietnam. He was 82.
Kahin is the namesake of Cornell's George McT. Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia, dedicated in his honor in 1992, and he was a seminal force in the creation of Southeast Asian studies in the United States, in general, and at Cornell, in particular. G.McT.Kahin.Obit.html (February 1, 2000)
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Cornell University colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences and of Veterinary Medicine have launched a new interdisciplinary doctoral training program in food safety that will provide instruction in new methods of detecting, eliminating and controlling pathogens in the food system.
"Graduate students will have access to a variety of world-class facilities and programs at Cornell, ranging from the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility to the Cornell Genomics Initiative," says Martin Wiedmann, Cornell assistant professor in food science and one of the program's organizers. The program, he says, also will offer unique internship opportunities outside of the traditional academic environment, which could range from training at a biotechnology company to experience with those state and federal agencies charged with development of scientifically based, food-safety policies and regulations. GradFoodProgram.bpf.html (February 1, 2000)