Cornell University News Service Releases
September, 2004
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.
Biologists finally close in on 'florigen,' the signal that causes plants to flower
Postdoctoral researcher Brian Ayre was listening attentively to a Cornell University seminar on flower development when he asked what seemed an obvious question: "What is the signal that controls flowering?" The seminar speaker laughed. "They've been trying to figure that out for a hundred years," he said. More laughter followed, as one of Ayre's colleagues shouted from the back of the room: "Florigen!" No one's laughing now. Ayre, currently a faculty member at the University of North Texas, went on to publish a provocative report in the August 2004 issue of Plant Physiology along with his postdoctoral adviser Robert Turgeon, a Cornell professor of plant biology. Their paper recounts the serendipitous discovery that the plant protein, CONSTANS, may be the signal -- "florigen" -- that causes plants to flower. Or at least, the researchers say, CONSTANS plays an important role in generating the signal. (September 30, 2004)
'Vagrant' bird sightings puzzle feeder-watchers
Last winter's sightings of hummingbirds in the Southeast sent Project FeederWatch volunteers to their calendars for a reality check. So did robins and bluebirds in the northern United States -- another example of birds-in-unexpected-places that professional ornithologists and birders call "vagrants." So-called common knowledge places these birds in warmer climates during the coldest months. Now, thanks to the help of bird-feeding enthusiasts from across North America, researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology know that common knowledge is changing. (September 30, 2004)
Francis Fukuyama gives keynote address at Cornell conference on capitalism Oct. 8-9
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Max Weber's seminal theory of how the values of ascetic Protestantism played a major role in the development of the spirit of capitalism in western Europe, the Center for the Study of Economy and Society (CSES) at Cornell University will host a two-day conference, Oct. 8-9. It will bring together some of the leading scholars and thinkers in the growing interdisciplinary study of economy and society. "The Norms, Beliefs and Institutions of Capitalism: Celebrating Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Conference," which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Statler Hotel Amphitheater on campus. (September 30, 2004)
National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg to present talk, 'All I am Saying Is Give War a Chance,' Oct. 4
Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg will give a lecture, "All I am Saying Is Give War a Chance," on Oct. 4 at the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall on the Cornell University campus. The lecture begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public. The lecture is sponsored by the Cornell Review and Mock Election 2004. (September 29, 2004)
Who moved my worm? Cannabinoids cope with change
Some birds' already-amazing memories -- for the thousands of different spots where they cached their food -- can be further improved by blocking natural brain chemicals called cannabinoids, which resemble the active ingredient THC in marijuana. But improved memory can be a liability for cannabinoid-free birds, Cornell University researchers have discovered: When their food is moved, birds without benefit of cannabinoids have trouble imagining where else the food might be. (September 29, 2004)
State-of-the-art institute of robotic urologic surgery established at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell
New York, NY (September 28, 2004) -- NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center has established the Cornell Institute of Robotic Urological Surgery within the Brady Department of Urology. Robotic prostate surgery for prostate cancer patients will be the centerpiece of the new program.One of the leading experts in robotic prostatectomy, the robotic surgical removal of the prostate for prostate cancer patients, Dr. Ashutosh Tewari will lead the Institute. Dr. Tewari, who comes to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell from one of the nation's premier robotic centers, the Henry Ford Hospital's Vattikuti Institute of Urology, has been named Director of Robotic Prostatectomy and Prostate Cancer Outcomes in the Brady Urologic Health Center of the Department of Urology and the Department of Public Health at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. He is also Associate Professor of Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Cornell to hold Third Party Presidential Debate on Oct. 6
Cornell University's Mock Election student group presents the 2004 Third Party Presidential Debate on Oct. 6 at 8 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall on the Cornell campus. The debate will feature Green Party candidate David Cobb, Socialist Party candidate Walt Brown, Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik and Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka. Candidate Ralph Nader declined the Mock Election group's invitation. (September 28, 2004)
Radio host Laura Flanders to talk on 'Gender Politics in the Age of Bush'
Laura Flanders, author and radio host on Air America, will present a lecture, "Gender Politics in the Age of Bush," on Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. in Auditorium D, Goldwin Smith Hall on the Cornell University campus. The event is free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by Students Acting for Gender Equality (SAGE) and by Mock Election 2004. (September 27, 2004)
20 percent of undergraduates have experienced stalking
When a romance ends, most couples go their separate way. But sometimes one partner can't let go. In fact, about 20 percent of undergraduates who took part in a survey at two universities said they have been the target of stalking or some other form of intrusive contact by a former partner. And 10 percent of those surveyed, both male and female, said they had targeted a former partner when romance ended. Of the students who had been the target of intrusive contact, about 20 percent said they feared for their physical safety at some point during the contact. All told, half of the relationships that involved intrusive contact occurred during high school. The studies looked at almost 700 undergraduates at Cornell University and the University of Virginia to see how common stalking is among young adults. (September 24, 2004)
New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell tests a new way to treat the deadliest and most common form of brain tumor
New York (September 23, 2004) -- Physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center will join roughly 50 other medical centers around the world in studying whether an experimental drug delivered directly into the brain can extend the lives of people with Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), the most common and aggressive form of primary brain tumor.Even after doctors surgically remove a tumor, cancerous cells inevitably remain in the area surrounding a tumor site. They are generally embedded in tissue and, especially in the case of GBM, tend to proliferate rapidly, leaving the patient with a high risk of recurrence.
Successful pregnancy following vasectomy reversal more effective in men who remain with same female partner
NEW YORK (September 23, 2004) -- The small number of men who remain with their female partner and undergo microsurgical vasectomy reversalÐperformed because of the death of a child or a change of heartÐ-achieve a much higher natural pregnancy and live-birth rate than the overall group of men who undergo vasectomy reversalÐmost commonly due to divorce and remarriage. The reasons for this discrepancy, identified in a new study by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, are not yet fully understood.
Of the 2.6 percent men who underwent vasectomy reversal while remaining with their female partner, 86 percent were able to achieve a natural pregnancy during a three-year follow-up period, compared to 54 percent for the cohort group. Additionally, the live-birth rate for the same-partner group was 82 percent, compared to 63 percent for the cohort group. Most impressively, among a subgroup of patients that experienced the death of a child (one-third of the same-partner group), the live-birth rate was 100 percent. The NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell study was published in the journal Fertility and Sterility."There are a few possible explanations for this discrepancy, although further study is necessary," says Dr. Marc Goldstein, the studyâs lead author, Professor of Reproductive Medicine and Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Surgeon-in-Chief of Male Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Low blood sugar a marker for babies at neurological risk during delivery, New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell study suggests
New York, NY (September 23, 2004) -- Abnormally low blood sugar may raise an infant's risk for brain damage during delivery, according to a new study led by a NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center researcher. He believes early testing for neonatal hypoglycemia might potentially reduce neurologic morbidity."In full-term babies already at elevated risk for brain damage, low blood sugar increased that risk 18-fold," said Dr. Jeffrey M. Perlman, Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Chief of the Division of Newborn Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.
Yale-Weill Cornell collaboration uncovers secrets of the synapse
New York, NY (September 21, 2004) -- As you read this, billions of synapses lying between the cells of your brain are using complex chemical signals to pass information from one neuron to the next.It's a process crucial to healthy brain function as well as drug development, drug addiction and neurological disease, and researchers at Yale University School of Medicine-Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Weill Cornell Medical College believe they now have a better understanding of how synaptic transmission works.
Engineering professor Kevin Kornegay named one of nation's top 50 black researchers
The editors of Science Spectrum magazine and US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine have selected Kevin T. Kornegay, Cornell University associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Cornell Broadband Communications Research Laboratory, as one of the "50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science" for 2004. The award was presented Sept. 18 in Nashville, Tenn., during the Emerald Awards Conference, an event that celebrates the accomplishments of several minorities in science and promotes their greater representation among science professionals. (September 24, 2004)
Former Cornell law dean Lee Teitelbaum dies
Lee E. Teitelbaum, the Allan R. Tessler Dean of Cornell University Law School from 1999 to 2003, died Sept. 22 at his home in Salt Lake City, Utah, after a battle with cancer. He was 63. Cornell Law School prospered financially under Teitelbaum's tenure, with faculty salaries becoming more competitive with peer schools, an expanded International and Comparative Law Program, more cross-disciplinary teaching and scholarship, a successful campaign to establish merit-based scholarships and enhance student recruitment, and renovated classrooms to incorporate new technologies. (September 24, 2004)
NSF awards Cornell $6.5 million to sequence tomato genome, improve aluminum tolerance in crops and improve turbulent combustion
The National Science Foundation has awarded $6.5 million to Cornell University researchers to sequence the tomato genome, improve genetic manipulation of maize to learn how to make crops more aluminum tolerant and to develop and use innovative computational algorithms for the simulation of turbulent combustion. Specifically, $4.2 million over two years has been awarded to the research consortium directed by Steven D. Tanksley, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Breeding, to sequence all 12 tomato chromosomes. Stephen Pope, the Sibley College Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and his research group have been awarded almost $1.4 million to develop computer algorithms to improve the ability to simulate combustion processes and, thereby, improve the design of combustion devices. In addition, a research group directed by Leon Kochian, an adjunct professor of plant biology and the director of the U.S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory at Cornell, has been awarded $933,000 over five years to generate better molecular and genomic resources to improve aluminum tolerance and crop performance in acid soils. (September 24, 2004)
Bronfenbrenner book sums up human development
Cornell University Professor Urie Bronfenbrenner, among the world's best-known psychologists, has been publishing articles and books for 60 years on what really matters in the development of human beings. Now he has pulled his ideas together and published a new book that traces the historical development of his groundbreaking bioecological model of human development and detailing how it can be applied via programs and policies. Making Human Beings Human: Bioecological Perspectives on Human Development (Sage Publications, 2004) is Bronfenbrenner's culminating work and statement that he hopes will shape the future of his field. Bronfenbrenner, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Human Development and of Psychology at Cornell, is a co-founder of the federal Head Start program and is widely regarded as one of the world's leading scholars in developmental psychology, child-rearing and human ecology -- the interdisciplinary domain he created. (September 24, 2004)
Losartan better than beta-blocker at shrinking enlarged hearts, New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell study shows
New York, NY (September 22, 2004) -- For patients with a dangerous enlargement of heart muscle called left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), the drug Losartan beats standard beta-blocker therapy in reducing hearts to a healthier size, according to researchers at NewYork Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.The study, published in the September 14 issue of Circulation, finds that Losartan's effects on LVH go beyond its ability to lower blood pressure -- suggesting that added mechanisms may be at work.
Journalists' workshop Oct. 3-5 will investigate techniques and issues behind nanotechnology
By the time journalists finish the hands-on workshop "Nanoscale Science Under the Microscope," Oct. 3-5, 2004, at Cornell University, they should know what nanotechnology is, where this promising approach to dealing with the very small in engineering and medicine is headed and what all the fuss is about anyway. Sponsored by the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, and organized by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and by the Cornell News Service, the workshop is open free of charge to journalists, including freelance science and technology writers. (September 21, 2004)
Alyssa Apsel named among world's top innovators by Technology Review
Technology Review magazine has named Alyssa Apsel, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell, one of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators in 2004. Apsel and the other 99 honorees -- known as the TR100 -- were chosen by a panel of judges from a field of 650 final candidates under the age of 35 whose innovative work has transformed the nature of technology and business. (September 20, 2004)
Low-dose, over-the-counter statins may be safe, effective aid in preventing heart disease
New York, NY (September 17, 2004) -- Cholesterol-busting statin medications have revolutionized the prevention and treatment of coronary heart disease (CHD), the leading killer of American men and women.But a recent move by the British government toward approval of low-dose, over-the-counter (OTC) simvastatin (Zocor®) has raised heated debate here in the U.S. Now, in his editorial in the September 15 issue of the American Journal of Cardiology, Dr. Antonio M. Gotto, Jr., Professor of Medicine and the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, says the proven effectiveness and good safety record of statin medications argues for a similar move in the U.S.
Cornell Acacia fraternity chapter wins five national awards
The Cornell University chapter of Acacia fraternity has received five awards from its national fraternal organization, including the prestigious National Award of Merit to an outstanding alumnus. Steven L. Stein, Class of 1973, was presented the award by chapter president Thomas Balcerski, Class of 2005, at the Fall Scholarship Banquet of the Cornell chapter Sept. 12. The Award of Merit is Acacia's highest honor, recognizing individuals who have rendered outstanding service to the fraternity or attained a high position in their community or profession. The award is given only to alumni, and no more than 10 can be given at each biannual national conclave. This year, Stein was one of seven recipients nationally; he is one of only six Cornell Acacians to have received the award. (September 20, 2004)
Cornell historian says it's time to stop executing minors
On Oct. 13, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in Roper v. Simmons, a case that could determine the future of the juvenile death penalty in America. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Cornell University professor of history, human development and gender studies, with expertise on the history of American childhood, says the court must -- once and for all -- halt the practice of executing minors. "America cannot legitimately hold itself up as a beacon of human rights around the world as long as we continue to execute people for crimes committed as juveniles." (September 17, 2004)
Five World Food Prize laureates to speak on global hunger
Five World Food Prize laureates will address the problem of world hunger in a fall semester seminar series, as part of Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) yearlong centennial celebration. The seminars will be in Room G10 of the Biotechnology Building on campus from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. and are free and open to the public. The first seminar, Sept. 23, "Accomplishments and Aspirations: Linking Agriculture, Nutrition and Health," features World Food Prize laureates Nevin Scrimshaw (1991), Catherine Bertini (2003) and Cornell Professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen (2001). (September 16, 2004)
Stephen Ceci wins prestigious award from psychological society
Cornell University developmental psychologist Stephen J. Ceci is the recipient of the 2004-05 American Psychological Society's (APS) James McKeen Cattell Award "for a lifetime of outstanding contributions to the area of psychological research whose research addresses a critical problem in society at large." APS is considered the nation's premier scientific psychological organization, and the award is one of APS's two highest honors. The announcement is published in this month's (September) issue of the APS Observer. (September 16, 2004)
Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's first campaign director, to speak Sept. 21
Joe Trippi, the first campaign director for Howard Dean's presidential primary bid, will speak on "Conservatism on College Campuses" Tuesday, Sept. 21, at 5 p.m. in 305 Ives Hall on the Cornell University campus. The talk is co-sponsored by the Cornell Mock Election student group and the Cornell Democrats. It is open to the public without charge. (September 16, 2004)
Fay Vincent, former commissioner of baseball, to speak Sept. 22
Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of Major League Baseball, will deliver the Stephen and Evalyn Milman Lecture in American Culture and Baseball Wednesday, Sept. 22, at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall. Vincent's talk, "The Baseball Mystery: Why Is It So Special?" is free and open to the public. Vincent became the eighth commissioner of baseball in 1989, following the death of A. Bartlett Giamatti, and resigned in 1992. In his first tumultuous year as commissioner, he presided over the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics, which was interrupted for 10 days by the Loma Prieta earthquake. During his first year, Vincent also endured an acrimonious owners lockout and oversaw the suspension of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. (September 16, 2004)
Conference on Havana and Miami architecture
Carbon nanotube oscillator might weigh a single atom
What makes humans do the crane dance?
Community Partnership Board announces over $25,000 in grants available for students' community service projects
Immune antibodies may be key to lupus-linked memory loss, Weill Cornell scientist says
Agriculture, human ecology and labor relations colleges to hold information day for prospective transfer students Nov. 5
Self-assembling designer molecules mimic nature
Bill Shore of anti-hunger, anti-poverty organization to be Iscol lecturer, Sept. 14
A novel development in bioinformatics, SigPath, brings data and interactivity to research on cellular networks
CNN's Aaron Brown to speak on 9/11 and the election
Surprise: winning teams rarely attract more alumni gifts
'Constructive' strategy of Buffalo's all-volunteer living wage commission wins labor victory, management supporters
Silencing human gene through new science of epigenetics
FDA approves new drug application of PET drug produced by Weill Cornell team, a tri-state area first
Students host heavyweight election-season debate and lecture series
Helene Selco is named director of Cornell Center for Learning and Teaching
The past and future of modernism in Havana and Miami as it is embodied in art, buildings and landscapes is the subject of a conference at Cornell University this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 17-18. The conference, "Havana and Miami: Modernism and the City," brings together artists, designers, curators and historians. Conference talks and panel discussions take place in Goldwin Smith Hall's Hollis E. Cornell auditorium. All events are free and open to the public. For details see this Web site:
Using a carbon nanotube, Cornell University researchers have produced a tiny electromechanical oscillator that might be capable of weighing a single atom. The device, perhaps the smallest of its kind ever produced, can be tuned across a wide range of radio frequencies, and one day might replace bulky power-hungry elements in electronic circuits. Recent research in nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) has focused on vibrating silicon rods so small that they oscillate at radio frequencies. By replacing the silicon rod with a carbon nanotube, the Cornell researchers have created an oscillator that is even smaller and very durable. Besides serving as a radio frequency circuit element, the new device has applications in mass sensing and basic research. (September 15, 2004)
Eighty-five hundred years after someone in ancient Anatolia drilled holes in the wings of a crane -- evidently to make a bird costume for a ritual dance -- then hid one wing in a narrow space between mudbrick houses at Çatalhöyük in what today is Turkey, scientists are asking a two-part question: Why stash the wing, along with a pile of other unusual items, in a place where only modern-day archaeologists would be likely to find it? And why do people around the world dance like cranes? For posing that question -- and attempting to answer it with evidence from an archaeological "dig" through a long-buried Anatolian village and from a museum collection of modern bird bones in Ithaca, N.Y. -- two Cornell University scientists have won the Antiquity Essay Prize for the best article of the year in that scholarly journal. Written by Nerissa Russell, associate professor of anthropology in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, and by Kevin McGowan, a research associate in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the puzzle-filled article is titled "Dance of the Cranes: Crane Symbolism at Çatalhöyük and Beyond" and was first published in September 2003. (September 13, 2004)
The Community Partnership Board, a program of the Cornell Public Service Center, is beginning its 2004-05 funding year by announcing the availability of grants for grassroots community service projects. The board grants some $25,000 annually to service projects developed between Cornell students and community agencies. In the 13 years since the board's inception, more than $100,000 has been awarded to students for student and community developed service projects. The Community Partnership Board seeks to foster leadership and social responsibility by encouraging students to take action against social problems. The board assists students in developing grassroots community action projects and administers grants funded in part by the Cornell Student Activities Fund and the Public Service Center. Up to $2,000 per project per year is available in funding. (September 13, 2004)
New York, NY (September 9, 2004) -- For years, experts have puzzled over the fact that lupus patients often experience accelerated declines in thinking and memory as they age, despite the absence of the usual neurological culprits, such as neurovascular inflammation or stroke.Now a husband-and-wife team of researchers, including Dr. Bruce T. Volpe, Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and Attending Neurologist at New-York Presbyterian Hospital and Burke Medical Research Institute in White Plains, say they have a new approach to this puzzle that may open the door to treatments that slow or prevent lupus-related cognitive decline.
Cornell University's agriculture, human ecology and labor relations colleges will host an information day for prospective undergraduate transfer students on Friday, Nov. 5. On Transfer Day, representatives from Cornell's colleges will discuss general academic information and transfer admissions policies. Students can attend a class, meet with faculty members, join currently enrolled students for lunch and talk with admissions staff. (September 09, 2004)
Some are cylindrical, some look like a double sandwich and some are continuous three-dimensional cubic structures. All are generated by a class of designer macromolecules that could lead to improvements in solar-cell and fuel-cell technology, as well as advances in ultra-miniaturization of electronic devices. These synthesized molecules self-assemble themselves into structures with dimensions on the order of ten nanometers, an unusual process that mimics nature's most fundamental system of organizing living tissue. (One nanometer is about the width of three silicon atoms). (September 03, 2004)
Bill Shore, the founder and CEO of Share Our Strength, a leading organization that mobilizes industries and individuals to fight hunger and poverty, will speak at Cornell University Tuesday, Sept. 14, at 4:30 p.m. in G73 Martha Van Rensselaer (MVR) Hall. The title of Shore's talk is "The Light of Conscience: How a Simple Act Can Change Your Life," which is also the title of Shore's most recent book (Random House 2004) that explores how acts of conscience can and have changed the world. (September 09, 2004)
New York, NY (September 2, 2004) -- Thanks to bioinformatics researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College, cell biologists around the globe will soon have a powerful new tool to model complex biochemical processes within the cell, uploading and manipulating new data as they team up with research partners via the Internet.What makes this possible is SigPath (
As part of Cornell University's annual commemoration of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Aaron Brown, lead anchor on CNN during the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, will deliver a talk titled "On Being Part of History: 9/11 and the Election" on Saturday, Sept. 11, at 7 p.m. in Statler Auditorium on campus. Brown's talk is free and open to the public; seating is first-come, first-served. Following the lecture, there will be a meet-and-greet session. (September 07, 2004)
Last-second touchdowns and pennant-waving alumni are staples of the fall college scene. But while big-time athletic programs consume enormous resources on college campuses, they don't bring the rewards colleges expect -- more and better applicants and alumni donations -- a report by a Cornell University economist suggests. The surprising results of the report contradict commonly held wisdom about the indirect benefits of successful college sports programs, and they may call into question the competitive spending spree among big-time college athletic programs across the country. (September 07, 2004)
More than 35 Buffalo workers got a raise this year and many more will soon get one, thanks to the persistence of a volunteer commission headed by Lou Jean Fleron, a Cornell University faculty member. The group is Buffalo's Living Wage Commission, the only unpaid citizen's group in the country charged with enforcing a city's living wage law (about 100 cities across the country have a living wage ordinance). (September 3, 2004)
New York, NY (September 2, 2004) -- For the first time, scientists have shown how the activity of a gene associated with normal human development, as well as the occurrence of cancer and several other diseases, is repressed epigenetically -- by modifying not the DNA code of a gene, but instead the spool-like histone proteins around which DNA tightly wraps itself in the nucleus of cells in the body.
By studying how and when these histone changes occur, many scientists hope to explain human diseases that can't be readily attributed only to irregular genes.
New York, NY (August 31, 2004) -- An innovative PET "tracer" drug manufactured at Weill Cornell Medical College received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's stamp of approval this month for use in diagnosing tumors, cardiovascular problems, and centers of epileptic activity in the brain, using positron emission tomography (PET). The FDA's approval for Fludeoxyglucose F18 injection ([18F]FDG) is the second such approval in the country for this type of radiopharmaceutical application, and the first in the New York--tri-state area.
Nationally known politicians, pundits and partisans will visit the Cornell University campus this fall for an election-season debate and lecture series presented by the student group Cornell Mock Election 2004 Steering Committee. The first major event will be a public debate between David Corn of The Nation and Rich Lowry of the National Review on Sept. 14 in Statler Hall Auditorium. The fall lineup includes a Third Party Presidential Debate, a labor outsourcing debate, and lectures by: Sandy Berger, former national security adviser under President Bill Clinton; Alan Keyes, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Illinois; and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). The series concludes with an online mock election in which Cornell students can cast their votes for the 2004 presidential election. (September 02, 2004)
Helene Selco has been named director of Cornell University's Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT). Her appointment was effective on July 1. She succeeds Susan Piliero, who returned to teaching at the beginning of 2003. (September 1, 2004)