Cornell University News Service Releases

May, 2004

Index to all months

For the full text of any story, click on the headline. Electronic queries may be made to cunews@cornell.edu.

Cornell joins high-speed scientific computer network
Cornell University has joined a nationwide consortium that owns and operates a fiber-optic networking infrastructure for scientific computer communication. The action, announced today (June 2), will provide the university's researchers with unprecedented high-speed connections and will allow other upstate New York institutions to invest in and join the system. Cornell has pledged to contribute $1 million immediately to the consortium, National LambdaRail (NLR), and another $4 million over the next four years. The funding will enable NLR to extend its existing cross-country network of optical fiber to New York City. Cornell will complete the network by leasing fiber from Ithaca to New York City, also allowing more efficient collaboration between the Ithaca campus and the Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan. (May 28, 2004)

3-D micro-imaging technology licensed to Carl Zeiss Jena
NEW YORK -- Biomedical microscopic imaging deep inside living tissue with unprecedented clarity could become routine and widely available with the signing of technology-transfer and collaborative-research agreements today (May 28, 2004) by Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH, a leading maker of microscopy instrumentation, and by CCTEC, the technology, enterprise and commercialization arm of Cornell University. The license for two-photon laser microscopy (also known as multiphoton microscopy, and protected by patents dating back to July 23, 1991) has been transferred from the British firm Bio-Rad Laboratories to Germany's Carl Zeiss. Both Bio-Rad and Carl Zeiss have been manufacturing confocal laser microscopes incorporating multiphoton technology. (May 28, 2004)

Weill Cornell scientists identify a fly gene linked to aging -- discovery could lead to drugs that extend human life
New York, NY (May 21, 2004) -- By simply switching off one copy of a gene, Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have enabled fruit flies to live 51% longer -- the equivalent in human terms of extending average lifespan to the ripe old age of 113.The gene, called stunted, is one of only a few such longevity genes to be discovered in the Drosophila fly, a favorite model for studies into aging and longevity. What's more, stunted works by encoding a molecule that connects to a receptor lying on the surface of cells -- a receptor that's long been a favorite target for pharmaceutical research.

Cornell engineering students win international FSAE race car competition for the eighth time
Cornell University's Formula SAE race car team won its eighth FSAE World Championship May 23 in Pontiac, Mich., roaring past 130 universities from 13 countries. The Cornell engineering students scored 926 points out of a possible 1,000 in a series of events that ranged from design evaluation to competitive driving. In addition to capturing first place, the team brought home a variety of other awards for design and performance, including cash awards totaling $4,950 that will help finance next year's entry. (May 26, 2004)

Rural HMO Medicare patients travel farther to a hospital
ITHACA, N.Y. --Rural patients enrolled in Medicare health maintenance organizations (HMOs) must travel up to 34 percent farther -- eight miles, or almost 10 minutes longer -- to reach a hospital than do traditional Medicare patients. "Some patients must travel 90 minutes longer to go to a hospital in their network," says Liam O'Neill, assistant professor of policy analysis and management in Cornell University's College of Human Ecology. "Although 10 extra minutes may not seem significant, that's just the average time. Time and distance are not evenly distributed." (May 26, 2004)

Jordan/Israel desert research complex to begin building
NEW YORK -- The building of a pioneering life sciences research complex situated in the desert on the border between Jordan and Israel will begin this year, the Bridging the Rift Foundation has announced. The foundation is leading an international group of scientists and educators from Jordan, Israel, Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., in building a research and education center to gather, organize and model information about all living systems. (May 25, 2004)

Samuel C. Johnson, prominent Cornell benefactor, dies at age 76
Samuel C. Johnson, chairman emeritus of the Johnson Family of Companies, died May 22 at his home in Racine, Wisc., after a long battle with cancer. He was 76. He was the fourth generation of Johnson family members to head the 118-year-old family-owned group of businesses often referred to as Johnson Wax. Johnson, who earned his undergraduate degree at Cornell University in 1950, was a presidential councillor at Cornell -- the highest honor accorded to an alumnus -- a former trustee and leading benefactor. (May 25, 2004)

Web site calculates when lawns need sprinkling
To save water, enter your ZIP code and click. The Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC) at Cornell University has introduced a Lawn Watering Input Web site to make it easy for homeowners and groundskeepers to prevent lawns and grassy knolls from being saturated. (May 24, 2004)

Cornell Police seat belt crackdown May 24-June 6
Teenagers and young adults across the country and in this area are going to be surrounded with a strong safety campaign message: "Click It or Ticket; If you won't buckle up to save your life, then buckle up to save yourself a ticket," as Cornell University Police joins more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies and other campus and university law enforcement officers in a nationwide crackdown on seat belt law violators. The message to teens and young adults will be seen and heard in television and radio ads, across college campuses, over high school public address systems and through enforcement in locations where young people congregate -- such as schools and sporting events. (May 24, 2004)

Conserving hydrocarbons would save $438 billion
Just as low-carbohydrate diets are trimming the American waistline, more judicious use of hydrocarbon-based fossil fuels would reduce U.S. energy consumption by 33 percent and save consumers $438 billion a year by 2014, according to an analysis by Cornell University ecologists. David Pimentel, Cornell professor of ecology, and 11 student ecologists found the most fat for trimming -- with the best potential for major energy savings -- in the transportation, residential heating and cooling, industrial and food-production sectors. Energy conservation and implementation of energy-efficient technologies also would allow significant savings in the production and use of chemicals, paper and lumber, household appliances, lighting and metals, the analysis showed. Their report on "U.S. Energy Conservation and Efficiency: Benefits and Costs" is in the latest issue of the journal Environment, Development, and Sustainability (Vol. #6, Issue 3-4). (May 24, 2004)

Cornell Board of Trustees to meet in Ithaca, May 27-29
The Cornell University Board of Trustees will meet in Ithaca Thursday, May 27, through Saturday, May 29. The Executive Committee of the board will hold a brief open session at the start of its meeting Friday, May 28, at 7:30 a.m. in the Taylor A&B Room of the Statler Hotel on campus. The open session will include a discussion of the 2004-05 financial plan for the contract colleges. (May 24, 2004)

Cornell MFA poet wins first prize in Atlantic Monthly writing contest
Cornell University graduate student Lauren Alleyne won first place in the poetry category in The Atlantic Monthly's 2003 Student Writing Contest, and graduate student Pilar Gómez-Ibáñez won an honorable mention. Both Alleyne and Gómez-Ibáñez are first-year students in Cornell's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in creative writing. The prestigious Atlantic Monthly contest is open to full-time graduate and undergraduate students at American universities. More than 500 students entered the poetry category. (May 24, 2004)

Special Epoch issue on poet A.R. Ammons
A.R. Ammons, Cornell University's legendary bard, is celebrated in an unprecedented 480-page issue of Epoch magazine, Cornell's literary journal. The volume titled This Is Just a Place: The Life and Work of A.R. Ammons (Cornell University, $12.95) includes 30 previously unpublished poems, prose pieces from all phases of the poet's career, entries from Ammons' Navy diary, 21 remarkable paintings by the poet, plus letters, conversations and other ephemera. Ammons, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry at Cornell, died in February 2001 at age 75. During his career, he won virtually every major prize for poetry in the United States, including two National Book Awards -- one in 1973 for Collected Poems, 1951-1971 and another in 1993 for Garbage. (May 24, 2004)

Weill Cornell scientists identify compounds inhibiting blood vessel formation
New York, NY (May 18, 2004) -- Peering into the mysteries of embryonic development, Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have identified compounds that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels.If these chemical signaling mechanisms hold true in adult tissue, the discovery could pave the way for therapies to repair damaged heart tissue or, conversely, starve malignant tumors of the blood supply they need to grow.

Blacks with hypertension have greater thickening of heart muscle
New York, NY (May 17, 2004) -- U.S. blacks with high blood pressure are about twice as likely to have an enlarged heart and a thicker heart muscle wall than their white counterparts independently of the degree of hypertension, report NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center researchers in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension.Many studies have found that left ventricular hypertrophy -- increased muscle weight of the heart's main pumping chamber -- is an independent predictor of illness or death due to cardiovascular disease, including stroke, heart attack, and heart failure. And it is known that African-Americans with high blood pressure are 50% more likely to die of stroke and 80% more likely to die of heart disease than whites.

Cornell researchers honored by five prestigious academic groups
Five Cornell University researchers have been honored by prestigious U.S. and international academic groups. They are Leonard Gross, professor of mathematics; Éanna Flanagan, associate professor of physics; D. Tyler McQuade and Paul Chirik, both assistant professors of chemistry and chemical biology; and Thomas W. Parks, professor of electrical engineering. (May 21, 2004)

Rhododendrons are blooming at Cornell Plantations
Winter-weary eyes will find relief at Cornell Plantations, where early azaleas are now blooming and opulent rhododendron flower trusses soon will brighten with sumptuous reds and pinks. It's all happening on Comstock Knoll, the wooded hilltop near Plantations headquarters building, according to Plantations Horticultural Director Mary Hirshfeld, who says, "The best time to catch the peak bloom is around the end of May." Tucked in among the rhododendrons are sky blue flowers of lungwort, the golden yellow of fairy bells, the delicate white of Solomon's seal and the rich golds and greens of unfurling hosta leaves and fern fronds. (May 19, 2004)

Iron supplements help only certain non-anemic women
Among women who are not anemic, only those with tissue-iron deficiencies can benefit from taking iron supplements, concludes a new study by Cornell University nutritionists. "Supplementation makes no difference in exercise-training improvements in women with low iron storage who are not yet tissue-iron deficient or anemic," says Thomas Brownlie, the first author of the study and a Cornell doctoral candidate in nutritional sciences. (May 19, 2004)

Weill Cornell's neurodatabase.org is a global clearinghouse for brain research
New York, NY (May 17, 2004) -- Imagine a puzzle made up of one hundred billion pieces, each reacting to the other, and you have a glimpse of the enormity of the challenge facing researchers bent on understanding how brain cells work together to create human perception, thought, and action. Every day, over 50,000 neuroscientists around the globe collect data on just these types of neural interactions, publishing their collected facts and figures in over 300 journals and scientific assemblies worldwide. But the sheer quantity and scope of neuroscientific data means that individual researchers cannot hope to utilize but a small fraction of what is available.--Many experts -- including Dr. Daniel Gardner, a Weill Cornell Medical College Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, and Director of the College's Laboratory of Neuroinformatics -- now believe the time has come to give this community of scientists a better means of accessing -- and re-analyzing -- this vital data.

Brain scans by Weill Cornell scientist help poor readers improve
New York, NY (May 17, 2004) -- Two-years ago, Dr. Bruce McCandliss, a psychologist at the Sackler Institute of Developmental Psychobiology of Weill Cornell Medical College, introduced a reading program he co-developed into some of New York Cityâs public elementary schools. The program, known as "Reading Works," uses computer-based reading lessons, and as students have learned from the curriculum, scientists have used brain scans and other methods to monitor how their brains are changing.Now, two-years later, results from the program are coming in from children across many parts of New York City, and the preliminary data are impressive. Children involved in the program, which encompasses 20 forty-minute sessions over a period of several months, are now reading at an ability level, on average, 1.2 grades higher. And, scientists now have a better idea of how children learn to read and what keeps some from becoming proficient at it.

David W. Butler, dean of Hotel Administration, announces he won't seek another term
David W. Butler, who has served as dean of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration since 2000 and was associate dean of executive education from 1993 to 2000, has announced that he will not seek reappointment when his term ends June 30, 2005. Butler has announced he plans to go into "semi-retirement" to enjoy time with his wife and to undertake targeted professional projects. (May 17, 2004)

Engineering students think 'out of the box' to redesign Lynah rink
Right now, Cornell University planners can only dream of the campus home of Big Red hockey, Lynah Rink, doubling its seating and changing the skyline with a domed translucent-fabric or peaked plastic roof that would glow in the night sky. Yet such ambitious ideas have been inspired by Cornell students -- and they have earned credits doing it. It was merely a class project when engineering professor Ken Hover assigned his students in Civil Infrastructure Design (CEE 474) this semester the task of designing a Lynah Rink renovation that would double the seating capacity (now about 3,836) of the venerable, much-loved arena without touching the ice or the bench seats already in place. But when the students in the class presented their plans recently, Hover, a professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE), and his five fellow professorial instructors weren't the only ones paying close attention. Because an enhancement of the 47-year-old structure is on a lot of people's minds, members of Cornell's administration also came to look and listen. (May 17, 2004)

Cornell migrant labor program to be changed to meet new New York state needs
A new team has been named to lead the Cornell Migrant Program (CMP) and to suggest ways to restructure the program to better meet the changing and complex needs of New York's agricultural community, including migrant and other farm labor, their families and communities. The announcement was made today by the deans of Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and College of Human Ecology (CHE), and the director of Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE). (May 14, 2004)

Intellectual property and technology-transfer management restructured
Cornell University is changing the way in which it handles its intellectual property (IP) and transfers its many new technologies to the public. The changes are designed to foster university-industry research collaborations, promote innovation and encourage entrepreneurship on campus. IP management, licensing and economic development now will be combined in a single office, the Cornell Center for Technology, Enterprise and Commercialization (CCTEC), also referred to as the Cornell Center for Technology or "C-tech." (May 14, 2004)

Freshman James McManamon dies in car accident, May 13
James H. "Jaime" McManamon, 19, a freshman at Cornell University who was a defensive lineman on the varsity football team and a shot-putter on the men's track and field team, was killed in a car accident May 13 on Interstate 86 in Chautauqua County, N.Y. McManamon was traveling with his mother, Kerry McManamon, 41, and Kelly Smith, 41, to his home in Westlake, Ohio. According to police reports, his 2000 Chevrolet Suburban left the road and rolled over several times. He was airlifted to the Hamot Medical Center in Erie, Pa., and pronounced dead upon arrival. Kerry McManamon, who was in the rear seat, was ejected from the vehicle and suffered injuries. She remains hospitalized at Hamot Medical Center. Kelly Smith, in the front passenger seat, suffered minor injuries. (May 14, 2004)

Weill Cornell launches new stem cell center with $15 million grant
New York, NY (May 12, 2004) -- The Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City voted today to establish the new Ansary Center for Stem Cell Therapeutics. The unique Center will bring together a premier team of scientists to focus on stem cells -- the primitive, unspecialized cells thought to have an unrivaled capacity to form all types of cells in the body.As part of Weill Cornellâs "Advancing the Clinical Mission" Capital Campaign, the Ansary Center for Stem Cell Therapeutics is being created with a $15 million grant from Shahla and Hushang Ansary, prominent Houston philanthropists. Mr. Ansary is a Vice Chairman of Weill Cornell Medical Collegeâs Board of Overseers.

James Krumhansl, Cornell physicist, dies at age 84
James A. Krumhansl, a professor of physics emeritus at Cornell University who led the scientific community's opposition to the superconducting supercollider in the 1980s, died May 6 in Hanover, N.H. He was 84. It was while Krumhansl was president-elect of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1987 that he testified before Congress that the supercollider should not be built if the cost would penalize superconductivity research funding. Although Krumhansl, who became president of the APS in 1989, was not speaking for the society, his words carried great weight with Congress, which in 1993 halted the project after14 miles of tunneling were completed and two billion dollars spent. (May 12, 2004)

Urbanization is devastating 17-year cicadas
Any day now, Brood X, the largest, most prolific brood of 17-year cicadas, will emerge from the ground and cut a swath across the Eastern seaboard. But many won't even make it to the surface: While the cicada nymphs have been developing into adults underground, their habitats have been paved over by parking lots, enormous shopping malls and large tracts of homes. "The Eastern U.S. corridor is so developed that cicada habitats have been destroyed," says Cole Gilbert, Cornell University associate professor of entomology. "They need gigantic numbers to swamp their predators and survive." (May 12, 2004)

Lighting-efficiency experts to counsel New York consumers in May 19 distance-learning event
New York state consumers can discover ways to improve lighting efficiency in a special distance-learning event Wednesday, May 19, at 7 p.m. at 10 Cornell Cooperative Extension sites throughout the state. The event will feature interactions with experts in residential and small-business lighting energy efficiency. The Energy Town Meeting, sponsored by Cornell University and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), will allow consumers to watch presentations over an Internet broadband connection and then ask questions of the experts. (May 11, 2004)

Head-cooling device prevents brain damage in oxygen-deprived infants, says new study
New York, NY (May 7, 2004) -- A head-cooling device called CoolCap prevents brain damage in some oxygen-deprived newborn babies, providing the first evidence in humans that many birth-related neurological problems can be reversed, according to an international multi-center clinical trial that included physician-scientists at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian, the only New York City medical center to participate in the study. The results were presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Pediatric Research in San Francisco.Using brain wave analysis at birth, researchers identified those babies who might benefit from treatment. In the group of infants with moderate to severe injury, the percentage of babies that experienced an unfavorable outcome (death or neuro-developmental disability) was significantly reduced from 66 percent to 48 percent by the cooling. In addition, there was a trend to a reduction in mortality in the cooled infants.

Women with diabetes at high risk for cardiovascular disease, yet prevention, diagnosis, and treatment is inadequate
New York, NY (May 10, 2004) -- Women with diabetes are at greater risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) than men with diabetes and persons without diabetes -- yet prevention and treatment of CVD in women with diabetes is inadequate, according to an article authored by a NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center physician-scientist and published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine.The risk of heart attack is 150 percent greater in women with diabetes than in women without diabetes, but only 50 percent greater in men with diabetes versus men without the disease. Women with diabetes are also more likely to have hypertension than are men with the disease.

New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell gastroenterologist gives advice about colorectal cancer
New York, NY (April 29, 2004) -- Colorectal cancer is the second leading cancer killer of men and women in the U.S., and yet, it is also the most preventable form of cancer."Studies show that more than 90 percent of lives could be saved through the early detection and treatment of colorectal cancer," says Dr. Mark Pochapin, Director of the Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "But a mix of ignorance, misinformation, and embarrassment about the disease is killing people -- many of whom would go on to live a full life if they had the right information and the right screenings."

New york, ny (april 29, 2004) -- colorectal cancer is the second leading cancer killer of men and women in the u.S., And yet, it is also the most preventable form of cancer.
"Studies show that more than 90 percent of lives could be saved through the early detection and treatment of colorectal cancer," says Dr. Mark Pochapin, Director of the Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "But a mix of ignorance, misinformation, and embarrassment about the disease is killing people -- many of whom would go on to live a full life if they had the right information and the right screenings."In his new book, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Colorectal Cancer, Dr. Pochapin sheds important light on this often preventable form of cancer.

Children of single mothers do just as well in school
Mothers can be a positive influence in their children's lives, whether or not they are single parents. A new multiethnic study at Cornell University has found that being a single parent does not appear to have a negative effect on the behavior or educational performance of a mother's 12- and 13-year-old children. What mattered most in this study, Cornell researcher Henry Ricciuti says, is a mother's education and ability level and, to a lesser extent, family income and quality of the home environment. He found consistent links between these maternal attributes and a child's school performance and behavior, whether the family was white, black or Hispanic. (May 06, 2004)

U.S. student engineers, back from world's poorest communities, bring stories of hope to New York City May 12
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- No longer the "me generation," American engineering students are actively taking on some of the world's toughest problems. A Cornell University-based national engineering service organization will bring stories of students and professional engineers working to improve the lot of some of the world's poorest communities, many in the developing world, to New York City next week. The group, Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), will host students and supporters from across the United States at the Mezzanine Conference Room, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, at 5:30 p.m. May 12. The event, which will be both fund-raiser and a call for volunteers, will feature students recently returned from Bosnia, South Africa and Nigeria describing their community-service engineering projects that have made a big difference in people's lives by enabling self-help, making the projects sustainable. (May 06, 2004)

Tri-Institutional Research Program executive director chosen to lead College of Human Ecology
Lisa Staiano-Coico, executive director of the Tri-Institutional Research Program (TIRP) and vice provost for medical affairs at Cornell University, has been selected as dean of the College of Human Ecology at Cornell. Since 2003, Staiano-Coico's work as executive director of the New York-based TIRP has put her at the helm of an alliance encompassing New York City's Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College, as well as Cornell's main campus in Ithaca. Established in 2000 with a $160 million gift, TIRP's collaborative research is focused in three areas -- chemical biology, computational biology, and cancer and developmental biology -- with tri-institutional graduate training programs offered in chemical biology, computational biology and medicine. (May 06, 2004)

Leading writers and journalists to speak at Cornell May 10 at student-organized conference on communicating science
Graduate students at Cornell University want to make their campus and their surrounding communities more aware of the power of science and the role that science and technology play in decision-making in Washington and the world at large. To spread this awareness, they have invited leading authors and journalists to a one-day conference on campus, May 10, on science communication. The students and their faculty adviser, Cornell professor of applied mathematics Steven Strogatz, author of the recently published book Sync and a well-known science communicator himself, are inviting all interested people on and off campus to attend the conference. The featured writers, including Ivan Amato, author of Stuff: The Materials the World is Made Of, and journalists Rick Weiss (a 1974 Cornell graduate) of The Washington Post and Robert Krulwich of ABC News, will describe the problems and rewards of successful science communication. The conference will be held in Sage Hall B-09, beginning at 10 a.m. There is no charge. (May 05, 2004)

New course about lives of migrant workers
Cornell University undergraduates can take courses in everything from canine genetics to elementary Pali (the language of Theravaada Buddhist texts). To this rich assortment add one on migrant farmworkers, a course believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation. "The course is intended to provide a very broad and eclectic perspective on the world of migrant, rural laborers, primarily from the Caribbean and mainland Latin America who work in central and upstate New York," says Ray Craib, assistant professor of history and the primary coordinator of the course. (May 5, 2004)

Applicants sought for Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship Program for '04-'05
The Cornell Public Service Center is currently seeking applications for the fourth annual Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship Program. This initiative enables the Cornell Public Service Center to initiate collaborative relationships between Cornell University and the local community, and it allows the center to award $5,000 to each selected fellow. (May 4, 2004)

'Bailey's Creme with Henry's Crunch' ice cream created for agriculture college's centennial celebration
It took 100 years to develop, but this multi-flavored melange was worth the wait. To celebrate the centennial of Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), the university's dairy has created an ice cream it calls Bailey's Creme with Henry's Crunch. Its flavor is Irish cream and it is combined with dark chocolate flakes, caramel and peanuts. The ice cream will be unveiled -- with free samples -- on May 12 following an afternoon parade across the campus to celebrate the college's centennial. (May 4, 2004)

'75 Years of Research Development' conference, May 7-9, features more than 100 international scholars
Cornell University's Ives Hall will resemble a World Bank convention center this week as more than 100 international experts arrive to discuss issues that range from the impact of the AIDS epidemic on poor countries to child labor and exchange rate crises in developing nations. The colloquium, titled "75 Years of Research Development," will be held Friday, May 7, through Sunday, May 9, and features four keynote speakers of international repute: Abhijit Banerjee of MIT; Jean Ensminger of the California Institute of Technology; Steve Morris of Yale University; and Dani Rodrik of Harvard University. Many young scholars from developing nations also will present their papers alongside more celebrated colleagues in the field. The Program on Comparative Economic Development (PCED) at Cornell is hosting the event, and all talks are free and open to the public (with the exception of the dinner/lecture on Saturday evening, which is restricted to registered participants and special invitees). (May 3, 2004)