Cornell University News Service Releases
July, 2003
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.
College of Veterinary Medicine names Robert F. Gilmour associate dean for research and graduate education
Robert F. Gilmour Jr., professor of physiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, has been named the college's associate dean for research and graduate education. Gilmour will be responsible for administrative support and leadership in the college's $31.5 million research program, which receives about half of its funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).. (July 30, 2003)
Public Service Center announces two new participants in Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship Program
The Cornell Public Service Center has announced the selection of two fellows for the third annual Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship Program to work on projects that address community-identified needs. The Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship Program enables outstanding community leaders involved in economic and community development efforts to join the Cornell community of scholars as both learners and teachers for an academic year. It was established to help expand and improve university-community collaborations. (July 29, 2003)
Human Ecology dean Patsy Brannon to step down in Spring 2004
Patsy Brannon, dean of the College of Human Ecology and professor of nutrition at Cornell University since 1999, today (July 29) announced her decision to return to teaching and research when her five-year term as dean ends May 30, 2004. She is a member of the faculty in the Division of Nutritional Sciences. She will take a year's sabbatical and will return full time to the faculty July 1, 2005. (July 29, 2003)
Freshman eating binge is real, with national implications
College freshmen beware -- the "freshman 15," the eating binge long speculated to pile on 15 pounds during the first year of college, could be real. According to a new study by a Cornell University professor and his former student, college freshmen gain an average of 4.2 pounds just during their first 12 weeks on campus. (July 24, 2003)
Cornell vice provost presents Rep. Sherwood Boehlert with award for support of science
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, was among those honored with a Public Service Award for "committed and sustained effort in support of science" at a ceremony at the Rayburn House Office Building today (July 23). The presentation, on behalf of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), was made by Cornell University vice provost for physical sciences and engineering Joseph A. Burns. The awards, which also are sponsored by the American Mathematical Society and the American Physical Society, also were given to Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va). (July 23, 2003)
An old, familiar love nest helps sexual success
Billing and cooing in an old and familiar love nest doubles and even triples some birds' chances of producing progeny, researchers at Cornell University have discovered. Their study, which focused on Japanese quail, is the first to document what farmers and researchers have long suspected: that breeding is often more successful when animals mate where they have mated before. In this study, the inseminations were more likely to fertilize eggs when they occurred in cages where the birds had previously encountered birds of the opposite sex. (July 23, 2003)
Free computer lab at Ithaca's Southside Community Center is open to the public
The Southside Community Center Computer Lab at 305 S. Plain St. is open, thanks to grants from Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) through the Ithaca Urban Renewal Agency. The center provides free public use of computers. Available are 10 PCs and two Macintoshes with high-speed Internet access and installed with programs such as Excel, Word and Photoshop. Also available are scanners, printers, educational games and a TV/VCR instructional station. A lab technician is available for help and computer support. (July 23, 2003)
Cornell's RoboCup team wins world title for the fourth time
For the fourth time in five years, Cornell University's Big Red team has won the international robot soccer competition, known as RoboCup. In finals of the latest competition, held July 2-11 in Padua, Italy, a team of pint-sized robot players built and programmed by Cornell engineering students narrowly beat the RoboRoos from the University of Queensland, Australia, 1-0. In the RoboCup competition, teams of robots play soccer under computer control, without human intervention. The game is a test of artificial intelligence as well as engineering. In the "small robots" league where Cornell competes, the robots are about the size of a cookie jar and play with a golf ball on a field about the size of two ping-pong. A video camera mounted above the playing field supplies an image to a computer that determines the location of the ball and of every robot. From this, another computer determines strategy and sends commands by radio to each robot on the team. (July 22, 2003)
Cornell Commitment programs undergo administrative changes
After leading a review of programming and budget for the Cornell Commitment programs, Provost Biddy Martin announced July 21 that changes will be made in the programs' management structure. "While Cornell's commitment to these programs remains unchanged, we cannot insulate them from the thoughtful review of administrative structure and support needs that is currently under way across campus," Martin wrote in a letter distributed to students and alumni of the programs. "In this difficult fiscal period, we are committed, not only to fiscal responsibility, but to the clarification of roles and responsibilities within our units and to the enhancement of coordination across units. . . . We have approached the task of review by trying to balance our commitment to the programs and students they have benefited with our responsibility to make necessary budget reductions." (July 22, 2003)
Cornell Cooperative Extension's NY 4-H Foundation awards $18,000 in scholarships to club members -------------------------------------------------------
The New York State 4-H Foundation, administered by Cornell Cooperative Extension, has awarded $18,000 in college scholarships to 15 outstanding members of the 4-H Youth Development program from across the state. The New York 4-H Opportunity Scholarship Program was announced last summer at the 2002 State Fair in Syracuse to celebrate the National Centennial of 4-H Youth Development. The foundation and its donors wanted to provide dedicated, hardworking youth with scholarships to pursue a collegiate education. (July 22, 2003)
Barbara Viniar to lead Cornell-based group serving community colleges
Barbara Viniar is the new executive director of the Institute for Community College Development (ICCD) at Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), Extension Division, starting today (July 21). The institute was created in 2001 to help community colleges worldwide meet societal needs for training and education and provide valuable education and professional development for community college administrators and faculty members. Founded through an agreement between the State University of New York (SUNY) and Cornell, ICCD originally was housed in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Department of Education. It moved to ILR's Extension Division, the outreach and public service arm of the school, in the summer of 2002. (July 21, 2003)
Gary Thompson heads Hotel School's Center for Hospitality Research
New projects funded by Bronfenbrenner center
Students partner with New York City agencies serving the poor
Rapid evolution helps hunted outwit their predators
Biohazard symposium for land-grant universities
Archive documents the history of home economics
Cornell's Organization Development Services to receive 2003 Community Service Award on July 18
Report on U.S. immigration actions since 9/11
'Unzipping' double helix to study protein-DNA interaction
New director of Johnson School's Parker Center has Wall Street experience
In the development of heart disease, LDL cholesterol isn't the only villain
'Domestic Peace Corps' seeks local recruits, housing options, via Cornell's Public Service Center
New York Organic Crops and Soils Field Day, Aug. 12, features forage crop talk
Cornell dispute resolution group to share mediator roster with the EEOC
City-grown air pollution is tougher on country trees
U.S. Government releases Weill Cornell computer model for bioterror response
Joseph A. Burns named vice provost for physical sciences and engineering
Fidelity is key mate-preference factor for both sexes
Humane slaughter may affect kosher and halal practices
Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman to strengthen university's outreach
Gary M. Thompson has been appointed executive director of the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, effective July 1, 2003. Thompson is an associate professor at the Hotel School. The Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) was founded in 1992 to conduct research aimed at improving industry practices. Under the leadership of outgoing executive director Cathy Enz, who served for three years, the center has earned a reputation in industry and academe as a leading source of practical knowledge that can be applied across the full range of operating disciplines. Enz continues as the Lewis G. Schaeneman Professor of Innovation and Dynamic Management, at the Hotel School. CHR research reports can be accessed at the center's Web site:
Does obesity play a role in employment disability? Can certain neighborhood designs influence residents' physical activity? Does level of education relate to whether people will start or quit smoking? Can daily telephone interviews capture how busy working parents cope with family meals? These are questions now being addressed by researchers in the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell University with Innovative Research Program Awards from the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell. The awards, each up to $10,000, aim to help researchers pursue collaborative, multidisciplinary research on studies that affect quality of life and families. The goal also is to enhance the likelihood that researchers will obtain funding outside of Cornell for related projects. (July 17, 2003)
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Twenty-four undergraduates from Cornell University are spending this summer interning with community-based organizations serving New York City's poorest children and families. And an additional nine Cornell graduate students are collaborating with agencies serving the city's poor. Members of the media are invited to attend a public forum at the Cornell Club in New York City on Wednesday, July 23, from 5 to 7 p.m., during which students participating in this year's Cornell Urban Scholars Program will discuss the results of their summer internship placements and collaborative research activities. The club is at 6 E. 44th St. (near Grand Central Station). (July 17, 2003)
In the fishbowl of life, when hordes of well-fed predators drive their prey to the brink of extinction, sometimes evolution takes the fast track to help the hunted survive -- and then thrive to outnumber their predators. This rapid evolution, predicted by Cornell University biologists in computer models and demonstrated with Pac-Man-like creatures and their algae food in laboratory habitats called chemostats, could play an important role in the ecological dynamics of many predator-prey systems, according to an article in the latest issue (July 17, 2003) of the journal Nature. (July 16, 2003)
Cornell University will host a symposium Sept. 8-9 focusing on land-grant university research and outreach to help communities prepare for natural and man-made biohazards. The symposium, "Role and Responsibilities of the Land Grant System in Building Community Strengths to Address Biohazards," will be held in Room G-10 of the Biotechnology Building on campus. "The perception and reality of risks to health, food systems and the local environment have been in the public consciousness especially since the Sept. 11 attacks," says Lois Levitan, program leader of Cornell's Environmental Risk Analysis Program and an organizer of this symposium. (July 16, 2003)
Cornell University is putting more than 1,500 volumes -- more than 600,000 pages -- in an online archive documenting the history of home economics, thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The archive provides free access to hundreds of books and journals published between 1850 and 1950, many of which are drying and crumbling at an alarming rate. The archive is provided through Cornell's Albert R. Mann Library at
Good deeds do get noticed. For exemplary enthusiasm in volunteering throughout the community, the staff of Cornell University's Organizational Development Services (ODS) will receive the 2003 Community Service Award from the Cornell Business and Technology Park. The ODS group will receive a plaque July 18 at 5:30 p.m. at the Pond Pavilion on Thornwood Drive. In addition to the plaque, $1,000 each will be donated in the department's honor to the Community Dispute Resolution Center and to the Women's Opportunity Center. The ODS is part of Cornell's Office of Human Resources. (July 14, 2003)
How have U.S. immigration actions changed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks? What do the changes mean for Americans, and what should be done next? A report issued this summer by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) has the answers, although a few of its recommendations may irk some on both sides of the political spectrum, says co-author Stephen Yale-Loehr, who teaches immigration law at Cornell University Law School. (July 14, 2003)
Fifty years after Watson and Crick described the structure of double helix DNA, Cornell University biophysicists are discovering the roles of DNA-binding proteins in much the same way an impatient person frees a stuck zipper. Not exactly brute force -- but rather carefully metered dynamic force -- is the key to pulling apart two strands of the DNA "zipper" and popping loose restriction enzymes and other proteins along the way. A report in the journal Physical Review Letters (PRL Vol.91, No.2, July 11, 2003) by Steven J. Koch and Michelle D. Wang, titled "Dynamic Force Spectroscopy of Protein-DNA Interactions by Unzipping DNA," tells how to do it and predicts future applications of the technique. (July 11, 2003)
Former Wall Street equities researcher Lakshmi R. Bhojraj has been appointed director of operations of the Parker Center for Investment Research at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management. The Parker Center,
New York, NY (July 9, 2003) -- A major educational conference in New York on July 10-13 -- the International Symposium on Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, and Cardiovascular Disease -- will show that it may not be enough simply to reduce LDL cholesterol (or "bad cholesterol") in the effort to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Each year, CHD kills more men and women in the United States than the next seven causes of death combined. But about half of the heart attacks each year strike people with low to normal cholesterol. Thus, factors other than high cholesterol must also contribute to CHD risk. The conference will elucidate a particular group of risk factors that have come to be known as the "metabolic syndrome." Dr. Antonio J. Gotto, Jr., M.D., the Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and one of the world's foremost experts on cardiovascular disease, will open the conference and participate in satellite symposia.The metabolic syndrome represents a constellation of risk factors for coronary heart disease, comprising abdominal obesity, elevated triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol (the "good cholesterol"), elevated blood pressure, and elevated glucose levels, among other factors. It is vitally important, as it increases a person's risk for developing CHD (e.g., a heart attack) and can also lead to diabetes. Persons with Type 2 diabetes have a twofold to fourfold greater risk for CHD. The increasing prevalence of obesity in Western societies, including the United States, has led to a growth in the number of people with the metabolic syndrome.
The Cornell University Public Service Center currently is recruiting AmeriCorps*VISTA members to serve in the Ithaca community. AmeriCorps is a federally funded network of national service programs that engage 50,000 Americans each year. VISTA stands for Volunteers in Service to America and is often referred to as the "domestic Peace Corps." Since the early 1960s, the VISTA program has embedded volunteers for one-year terms within low-income communities to help address critical issues related to poverty. In 1993, VISTA formally joined the AmeriCorps network, and today nearly 6,000 AmeriCorps*VISTA members serve in hundreds of nonprofit organizations and public agencies throughout the United States -- working to fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses, increase housing opportunities or help bridge the digital divide. (July 9, 2003)
Tom Frantzen, an organic farmer from Alta Vista, Iowa, will provide the keynote address on how to grow organic forage crops, at the second annual New York Organic Crops and Soils Field Day, Aug. 12, at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y. Cornell Cooperative Extension, the Northeast Organic Network, New York Certified Organic and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York sponsor the field day. (July 9, 2003)
A Cornell University group with a national roster of mediators skilled in dispute resolution will help the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) resolve any workplace disputes that might arise within its own agency. The EEOC is the federal agency governing equal opportunity in employment throughout the United States. As part of the new working relationship, the Alliance for Education in Dispute Resolution at Cornell will open to the EEOC its nationwide roster of expert mediators, all of whom received alliance training and are experienced in workplace discrimination and related employment issues. (July 9, 2003)
A tree grows in Brooklyn -- despite big-city air pollutants. Meanwhile, identical trees planted downwind of city pollution grow only half as well -- a surprising finding that ecologists in a Cornell University-based study, reported in the current issue of Nature (July 10, 2003), attribute to an atmospheric-chemistry "footprint" that favors city trees. "I know this sounds counterintuitive but it's true. City-grown pollution -- and ozone in particular -- is tougher on country trees," says Jillian W. Gregg, lead author of the Nature cover article, "Urbanization effects on tree growth in the vicinity of New York City." Other authors of the Nature report are Clive G. Jones, an ecologist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., where some of the field studies were conducted, and Todd E. Dawson, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a professor at Cornell when the study began. (July 1, 2003)
New York, NY (June 27, 2003) -- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced the release of a new computer model, developed by researchers in the Department of Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical College, that will help health officials better plan large-scale antibiotic dispensing and vaccination responses to bioterrorism and large-scale epidemics. Funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), this is the first such computer model that hospitals and public health agencies can easily download and customize to meet their local needs. The computer model will be made available to all 50 states and major U.S. cities in order to help them comply with Federal guidelines on preparedness for large-scale disasters.
Joseph A. Burns, the Irving Porter Church Professor of Engineering, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and professor of astronomy at Cornell University, has been named as the university's vice provost for physical sciences and engineering. Burns' role is to facilitate Cornell's research in the areas of physical science and engineering, especially at federally funded centers, and to advise on the university's research policies and priorities in those areas. In the appointment, which became effective July 1, Burns replaces John Silcox, who retains his post as the David E. Burr Professor of Engineering, Applied and Engineering Physics. (July 8, 2003)
Not looks or money but rather life-long fidelity is what most people seek in an ideal mate, according to a Cornell University behavioral study that also confirmed the "likes-attract" theory: We tend to look for the same characteristics in others that we see in ourselves. The study began when Cornell University students in an animal-behavior class conducted a scientific survey of 978 heterosexual residents of Ithaca, N.Y., ages 18-24. Hoping to learn whether likes attract, students asked their male and female survey subjects to rate the importance they placed on 10 attributes in a long-term partner -- and to rate themselves on the same attributes. (July 7, 2003)
The humane slaughter of agricultural animals has been improved in recent years due to consumer demands on fast-food chains and supermarkets, says Joe Regenstein, Cornell University professor of food science. Regenstein will discuss how these changes could affect the future of halal practices, the Islamic food laws, as part of his keynote address to the Fifth International Halal Food Conference, July 11, at the Palmer House in Chicago. (July 7, 2003)
Cornell University President Jeffrey Lehman, who assumed office July 1, announced plans to strengthen the university's outreach in key strategic areas, including government affairs, community relations and communications. "For Cornell to continue providing leadership in teaching, research and public service, we must sustain a broad array of vibrant relationships," Lehman said. "We must extend ourselves to ensure that our friends and neighbors -- local, state, national and international -- all understand how they might participate in, and benefit from, Cornell's pursuit of its distinctive intellectual mission. And we must listen carefully, to ensure that we are good citizens within the many communities that are affected by our work on campus." (July 3, 2003)