Cornell University News Service Releases
January, 2001
Index to all months
Index to all monthsFor the full text of any story, click on the headline. Electronic queries may be made to cunews@cornell.edu.
Randall Robinson, author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, to speak at Cornell
Randall Robinson, African-American author and internationally respected advocate for human rights and democracy, will deliver a public talk Friday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. in the David Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall on the Cornell University campus. Randall's address, titled "Reparations: The Debt America Owes ," is based on his best-selling book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (Dutton, 1999).
(January 31, 2001)
Award-winning project studies family businesses and their impact on the family, community and economy
A multistate research group that includes Ramona Heck of Cornell University has been named winner of a prestigious award for its research on family businesses. The group has examined in more detail than ever before not only the economic impact of family businesses but also the relationships among the family, the business and the community. The group has found, for example, that more than 18 million U.S. households (almost 14 percent of the total) own at least one business and together represent about half of both the nation's gross domestic product and total wages. (January 31, 2001)
HIV-positive African mothers should still breastfeed
Despite a slight risk that HIV-positive mothers will transmit the AIDS virus to their infants via their breast milk, the risks of not breastfeeding are far greater for African babies from poor families. So concludes Michael C. Latham, a physician and Cornell University professor of international nutrition, in a preliminary report he co-authored for UNICEF. "Infants in poor households who are not breastfed are five times more likely to die from infections in the first two months of life and have a much higher risk of getting diseases that are costly to parents. For the mother, not breastfeeding puts her at risk of having another infant at risk of HIV and also destined to be an orphan. Furthermore, the costs related to formula feeding may further impoverish the family," says Latham, who has worked extensively in Africa and studies mother-to-child transmission of HIV. "Recent visits to four African countries convinced me that for almost all poor mothers in Africa, the risks of not breastfeeding are much greater than the risks of HIV infection through breast milk." (January 31, 2001)
Trustees approve 4.9 percent endowed tuition hike
The Cornell University Board of Trustees approved a 2001-02 budget that calls for a 4.9 percent tuition increase for the endowed colleges at its meeting in New York City Saturday (Jan. 27, 2001). The 4.9 percent increase sets tuition at Cornell's endowed undergraduate and graduate colleges at $25,970 for the 2001-02 academic year. Currently, endowed tuition is $24,760. (January 29, 2001)
Edward M. Scolnick, President of Merck Research Labs to give public lecture Feb. 7
Edward M. Scolnick, president of Merck Research Laboratories, will deliver a public lecture as a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor during his visit to Cornell University Feb. 6-9. Scolnick's lecture, titled "Modern Drug Discovery and Development: Science and Availability," will be Wednesday, Feb. 7, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 200 of Baker Laboratory. It is free and open to the public. (January 29, 2001)
Mathematician Paul Olum, who became president of the University of Oregon, dies at 82
Mathematician Paul Olum, who worked on the Manhattan Project in World War II, became chair of the mathematics department at Cornell University and then provost and president of the University of Oregon, died Jan. 19 in Sharon, Mass. He was 82. In the early 1940s, while working as a physicist at Princeton University, Olum joined Hans Bethe, the eminent Cornell physicist, at Los Alamos on the project to develop the first nuclear weapon. He earned his M.A. in physics from Princeton in 1942 but switched his Želd to mathematics, earning his Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard in 1947. After a two-year stay at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, he arrived at Cornell as an assistant professor in 1949. (January 26, 2001)
Cornell announces finalists in design competition
Cornell University has announced four finalists in an invited architecture design competition for its College of Architecture, Art and Planning. The $25 million project is intended to provide new studio space and other related services and offices for the Department of Architecture as well as a major auditorium and other classrooms. The envisioned facility will be a highly visible building at a prominent entrance to the university, adjacent to historic Sibley Hall. (January 26, 2001)
25th Festival of Black Gospel, Feb. 16-18
The Festival of Black Gospel at Cornell University will celebrate its 25th anniversary with 7 p.m. gospel performances Friday, Feb. 16, and Saturday, Feb. 17, in Bailey Hall on campus. The centerpiece of Cornell's Black History Month celebration and a premier regional event, the festival will present a Friday-night kickoff concert boasting three headline gospel groups: Touch, an a cappella quintet from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Tony Moore and Jehovah's Chosen, from Philadelphia; and Dickson Guillaume and the Haitian Interdenominational Mass Choir out of Brooklyn, back by popular demand, say organizers. (January 24, 2001)
Search by Cornell Police leads to the discovery of a missing person
Cornell University Police were contacted Monday, Jan. 22, at approximately 11 p.m. by university employees concerned about the disappearance of one of their associates. Members of Cornell Police, Cornell Environmental Health and Safety and the Ithaca Police Department began an investigation, and searches were conducted of localities on and around East Hill throughout the night. At 8:36 a.m. today, a member of the Cornell Environmental Health and Safety team assisting in the search observed a body in the water at the base of Fall Creek gorge just west of Triphammer Bridge. (January 23, 2001)
Scholar exchange on gender, sexuality, family and rights
Martha Albertson Fineman, the Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence at Cornell University Law School, has been awarded a grant of $824,000 from an anonymous donor to sponsor a three-year exchange program for faculty and students interested in gender, sexuality and the family. The grant will allow faculty and graduate students to study in Canada and Northern Ireland and for scholars from those regions to come to Cornell for periods ranging from several weeks to a full academic semester. (January 23, 2001)
Memorial service to be held Jan. 27 for Cornell student
A memorial service will be held Saturday, Jan. 27, at 2 p.m. in Sage Chapel for David Meng, 19, an undergraduate student at Cornell University, who died Dec. 10 in Ithaca. The Rev. Rick L. Bair, pastor of St. Luke Lutheran Church and minister in Cornell United Religious Work, will preside. (January 23, 2001)
Even low-level office noise can increase health risks
Low-level noise in open-style offices seems to result in higher levels of stress and lower task motivation, according to a new study by a Cornell University environmental psychologist. And, surprisingly, experienced workers in these mildly noisy offices make fewer ergonomic adjustments to their workstations than do workers in quiet offices. (January 23, 2001)
Long-term care staff crisis costs lives yet could be solved
Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are facing the worst staffing crisis ever, resulting in patient deaths, injuries, careless errors and risk of abuse, says Cornell University gerontologist Karl Pillemer. These problems are leading to forced shutdowns of some nursing homes, he says. "This situation is especially tragic, however, because -- unlike many persistent human problems -- we know both the cause and the cure of the nursing home crisis," says Pillemer. He is a professor of human development, co-director of the Cornell Gerontology Research Institute and a leading expert on long-term care and staffing issues in long-term care facilities. (January 23, 2001)
Cornell receives federal grant to create group to market sheep and goats in Northeast
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded a $250,000 grant to Cornell University to boost the marketing infrastructure for lambs and goats in the Northeast. The initial project, which runs to July 2002, includes the development of a regionwide small ruminant auction that will unite small producers and buyers throughout the Northeast through a telephone conference link. (January 23, 2001)
Rating the Super Bowl commercials for success
It's becoming a tradition for Douglas Stayman: The Cornell University marketing expert and his students will play Monday morning quarterback, of the commercial sort, following Super Bowl XXXV. Forget who wins the game: Stayman and company will discuss which Super Bowl ads grabbed the ring and what companies got the hook in the high-stakes battle for the hottest commercial slots sold on television. Stayman, an associate professor of marketing at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, has led the Johnson School Marketing Club through this Super Bowl exercise for several years. Stayman himself fields calls at home after the Super Bowl, offering state-of-the-ad analysis to the media. With the price of ad time at $2.3 million per 30-second spot, flops are disastrous, as so many dot-coms learned last year (dot-coms dominated Super Bowl XXXIV advertising). (January 23, 2001)
Excessive pregnancy weight gain encourages obesity
Women who gain more than the amount recommended during pregnancy are four times more likely to be obese one year after giving birth compared with mothers who gain within the recommended range, says a Cornell University nutritionist. As a result, she concludes, excessive weight gain in pregnancy is significantly contributing to the skyrocketing levels of obesity in the United States. (January 23, 2001)
Cornell trustees to meet in New York City, Jan. 25 -- 27
The Cornell University Board of Trustees will hold its first meeting of 2001 at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, Jan. 25 through 27. The full board will meet from 1:45 to 3:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26, and the first 20 minutes of the meeting will be open to the public. The rest of that meeting and a meeting on Saturday, Jan. 27, from 9 to 11 a.m., will be closed. Both meetings will be in the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Education Center at 1300 York Ave. Among topics of discussion will be a report from President Hunter Rawlings. The board is expected to approve 2001-02 tuition rates for the endowed colleges. (January 23, 2001)
$1.4 million Mellon Foundation grant for the humanities
Cornell University has received a $1.4 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for postdoctoral fellowships and seminars in the humanities and related social sciences. The grant, for use over approximately five years, will help fuel ongoing academic initiatives in the humanities at Cornell, administrators say, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborations designed to open new horizons of research and to meet the needs of today's undergraduates. "The Mellon postdocs will be part of a larger strategy for intellectual renewal in the humanities and interpretive social sciences," says Walter Cohen, vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, who co-wrote the Mellon proposal with input from other senior Cornell administrators. "We anticipate that many of the appointments will be in the area of American studies, very broadly conceived, especially in the core liberal arts programs of English, history and government." (January 23, 2001)
Traffic delays expected on Thurston Avenue Bridge Friday, Jan. 19
Traffic delays are expected between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 19, on the Thurston Avenue Bridge (also known as the Triphammer Bridge) over Fall Creek on the Cornell University campus. NYSEG crews will be repairing a natural gas leak under the bridge. The bridge's southbound lane will be closed, but two-way, flagged traffic will be maintained. However, motorists are asked to use alternative routes to and from campus, if possible, during the day. Pedestrians also are being asked to use the Noyes Lodge footbridge as an alternative. (January 23, 2001)
Web site has complete texts of significant agriculture books
Great Backyard Bird Count is Feb. 16-19
Alumni endow the Boyce McDaniel accelerator physics Professorship
Full-motion videoconferencing application for Linux
Cornell mathematician Harry Kesten wins prestigious Steele Prize
Web site answers questions about vegetable diseases
'Making of America' web site shows 19th-century America
Laser technique may produce cocaine poisoning treatment
Improving agriculture, keeping experts in sub-Sahara Africa
The civically engaged campus will be the focus of faculty symposium on service learning at Cornell Jan. 19
Archiving scholarly journals in digital form raises questions
Global ag class connects students in seven countries
Star nurseries: Not much to drink and very hard to breathe
Conference will explore "quality of life" vs. "the bottom line"
Tax top of the food chain to aid environmental sustainability
Head football coach Mangurian named new offensive line coach for the Atlanta Falcons
Rawlings applauds New York governor's high-tech initiative
Student apparel designers create a line of formal gowns for Ithaca store
For Hungary's Gypsies, minority self-governments boost community development, says Cornell rural sociology study
Cornell University's Albert R. Mann Library has unveiled a web site devoted to rare, historically significant books on agriculture. Not merely citations, the books can be read in full online. The library's Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) is an electronic collection of the most important agricultural texts published between the early 19th century and the mid-20th century. The collection includes 825 full-text monographs with over 300,000 scanned pages covering topics from agricultural economics and engineering to food and soil science. The web site is located at
Scheduled this year for Feb. 16-19, the 4th annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) asks volunteers to log on to the BirdSource web site at
Two prominent physicists, Cornell University alumni Helen T. Edwards and her husband, Donald A. Edwards, have endowed a chair in accelerator physics at Cornell. The chair is being named for Boyce D. McDaniel, who is professor emeritus of physics at Cornell following a notable career of leadership in accelerator physics. "The establishment of this chair is remarkable, since it is among the first accelerator physics chairs in the world, and it is the only one which is privately endowed," says Maury Tigner, director of the Floyd R. Newman Laboratory of Nuclear Studies (LNS) at Cornell. (January 18, 2001)
Videoconferencing on a desktop computer is usually a bumpy ride. Even with a good Internet connection, most desktop video displays 15 frames per second or less, jumping and jerking like an old movie that has been cut and spliced a few hundred times. But on Dec. 7, 2000, Cornell University undergraduate researchers started giving away qVIX, a videoconferencing application they have developed that provides full-motion, 30-frame-per-second video in full color. However, the application is only for computers running the Linux operating system. (January 18, 2001)
Cornell University mathematician Harry Kesten has won the 2001 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement. (January 18, 2001)
Is your asparagus ailing? Can your melons be suffering a malady? Find out what's hurting your corn and cucurbits at Vegetable MD Online,
It's the next best thing to being there: Cornell University Library's Making of America (MOA) Digital Collection is a major new resource for the study of 19th-century America. The MOA web site now provides full-text access to more than 900,000 pages of primary sources in American cultural and social history. Students, scholars and armchair historians can study 19th-century journals and other period ephemera detailing developments in culture, politics, literature and science, and it's all freely accessible on the Internet at
A new laser-based process to study the regulation of signal transmission between cells of the nervous system has led to the discovery of several compounds that could become the basis for a cocaine-poisoning treatment. The discovery was made using "laser-pulse photolysis," a technique under development in the laboratory of George P. Hess, professor of biochemistry at Cornell University. The technique might have other uses in illuminating nerve cell reactions in such diseases as epilepsy and Parkinsonism. The discovery was reported in the Dec. 5 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Vol. 97, No. 25, pp. 13895-13900), and described by Hess at the American Chemical Society's Pacifichem International Congress in Honolulu on Dec. 18, 2000. (January 17, 2001)
The Rockefeller Foundation has given a $900,000, four-year grant to an interdisciplinary team of Cornell University agriculture professors to develop a pilot Ph.D. training project for improving food security and natural resource management in southern and eastern Africa. The African Food Security and Natural Resources Management program also will examine how to encourage African scientists trained abroad to return home to continue these interdisciplinary activities after their training is complete. The project will focus on finding strategies for improving degraded soils, understanding the relationship between crops and livestock in Africa, and developing economically and environmentally sustainable approaches for small-scale farming. (January 17, 2001)
From setting up web sites in elementary schools to assessing the affordability of quality day care to presenting a theater project on a Native American reservation, Cornell University faculty members will learn about creative approaches to service learning at a symposium at the School of Hotel Administration in Statler Hall Friday, Jan. 19, sponsored by the Faculty Fellows-in-Service Program. Mark Gearan, president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and former director of the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., will be the keynote speaker. Cornell President Hunter Rawlings will introduce him at a noon luncheon presentation in the Terrace Lounge of the Statler Hotel. (January 16, 2001)
When a document is "born digital," how long can it be expected to live? Will the information found on the web last week still be around next year? How about 100 years from now? For the users of scholarly journals -- and the librarians who maintain them -- these are important questions. More and more of the journals that once existed only in paper form are being published in electronic editions. But suppose the publisher of a journal goes out of business 10 years from now or decides that the electronic edition is unprofitable and closes down its web site? Paper journals take up a lot of space on shelves, and librarians want to know when it will be safe for libraries to discard their paper copies in favor of digital versions. With a $150,000, one-year planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Cornell University Library will explore the idea of creating permanent digital archives for scholarly journals, with the goal of setting up a pilot archive of agricultural journals. The effort -- called "Project Harvest" -- follows in the footsteps of Project Euclid, a Mellon-funded venture by Cornell and Duke University in the online publication of math journals. (January 16, 2001)
It is the class heard 'round the world: a Cornell University distance-learning course in which undergraduate and graduate students from the Americas, Europe, Australia and India are linked electronically. On Jan. 25, students will come together for Global Seminar ALS 480, a spring semester course that examines international food issues and formulates positions on worldwide agricultural sustainability. (January 16, 2001)
After more than two years in space, NASA's Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) has provided radio astronomers with one definite conclusion about the clouds of gas and dust that make up the bulk of the mass in our galaxy, the Milky Way. "There's not much to drink there, and it's hard to breathe," says Cornell University astronomer Paul Goldsmith, one of the 12 members of the satellite science team. When SWAS was launched Dec. 5, 1998, its primary goal was to be a complete radio astronomy observatory confirming the conventional wisdom that the two most abundant molecular carriers of oxygen in interstellar clouds, after carbon monoxide, are water vapor (H2O) and molecular oxygen (O2). Since these two molecules are relatively abundant in Earth's atmosphere, their presence in distant space is hidden from Earthbound telescopes, and it is not known how abundant (or rare) these molecules are. (January 12, 2001)
NEW YORK -- Is the United States too "economically correct?" In other words, do Americans adhere too rigidly to policies like deregulation, privatization and cutbacks in the public sphere and to a belief that the free market is the cure for all of society's ills? These and other questions will be explored next month at a potentially groundbreaking conference on work and family policies. Titled "Gross National Product vs. Quality of Life: Balancing Work and Family," it is, say its organizers, the first-ever trans-Atlantic conference devoted to work and family issues. Featuring leading scholars, activists and government officials from around the world, the conference will take place between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2 at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in the foothills of the Italian Alps. (January 12, 2001)
Applying the "polluter pays" principle, a Cornell University ecologist and author suggests a way to improve the environmental sustainability of agriculture: Levy taxes according to food-chain ranking so that products with the worst environmental impact cost the most. "We should internalize the costs of dietary preferences. If one chooses to eat high-impact food, one should pay the full costs of such a choice," says David Pimentel, the professor of ecology and agricultural science who is a co-editor and co-author of the newly published book Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation, and Health (Island Press, 2000, ISBN 1-55963-807-9). (January 8, 2001)
Peter K. Mangurian, the head football coach at Cornell University for the past three seasons, has been named the new offensive line coach for the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League. In his three years as Cornell's head coach, Mangurian compiled a 16-14 overall record. In the last two seasons, Cornell -- with a record of 10-4 -- has won more Ivy League contests than any other league team. This past season, the Big Red took second place in the league. (January 8, 2001)
In his Annual Message to the Legislature, delivered this afternoon in Albany, New York Gov. George E. Pataki announced the outline of a new $1 billion high-technology initiative fund that would include an initial $250 million in state support. Cornell University President Hunter Rawlings commented on the governor's proposal: "This is most welcome news for the people of New York state," Rawlings said. "The future economic health of New York depends greatly on our ability to harness the capacity of New York's academic research centers in support of economic development. (January 5, 2001)
When a survey of female Cornell University students revealed their preferences in formal evening gowns, three Cornell textile and apparel students set out to grant their wishes. The students not only designed and sewed a set of outfits to the specifications revealed in the survey, but they also consulted with a professional patternmaker/grader to have the patterns refined and graded for all sizes. Five formals, all designed with the common themes of low backs, cowl necks and thin straps, are now available -- made to order in sizes 4 to 20 in colors such as red, black, copper and silver -- exclusively at Gala on The Commons, a formalwear dress shop in downtown Ithaca. (January 4, 2001)
In post-socialist Eastern Europe, tension has been high between national and ethnic minorities. To avoid these kinds of strains, Hungary passed Act 77, a progressive Law on National and Ethnic Minorities in 1993. This law allows the Gypsies and other national minority groups to establish their own forms of self-governance parallel to the Hungarian government. Cornell University rural sociologists studying the impact of Act 77 found that many Gypsy minority self-governments are driving forces in local development efforts, and although they differ in their level of effectiveness the local, social networks greatly influence activities and accomplishments of local governments. (January 3, 2001)