Mark Gearan to give Cornell Commitment Convocation keynote
Mark Gearan, president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, will deliver the keynote address, 'Civic Engagement in the 21st Century,' for the 2006 Cornell Commitment Convocation, Friday, March 3, at 6:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall. Gearan was previously director of the Peace Corps and former President Bill Clinton's deputy chief of staff . (February 28, 2006)

New book explores housing design competitions, 1879 to 1909
'Cheap and Tasteful Dwellings: Design Competitions and the Convenient Interior, 1879-1909,' by Jan Jennings, explores the results of competitions sponsored by a magazine over a 30-year period and how the designs influenced the history of American architecture. (February 28, 2006)

Islam 101: Lecture on misunderstandings discusses stereotypes
Omer Bajwa, a Ph.D. candidate in Cornell's Department of Near Eastern Studies, covered the most common misunderstandings non-Muslims have about Islam. His Feb. 20 lecture, 'Islam 101,' was part of Cornell Islam Awareness Week 2006, held Feb. 20 to 26. (February 28, 2006)

Danish cartoon controversy: free speech vs. religious insensitivity
In a panel discussion, 'The Danish Cartoons and Their Aftermath: Religious Sensitivity Versus Freedom of Press?' on Feb. 21, five Cornell faculty members discussed the controversies and violence after several cartoons were published that satirized the Muslim prophet Muhammad. (February 28, 2006)

U.S. Muslims are part of solution to 'fallacy' of threat from Islamic world
When it comes to terrorism, Muslim Americans aren't part of the problem, they're part of the solution, according to Ahmed Younis, national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Younis spoke Feb. 23 as part of Cornell's Islam Awareness Week 2006. (February 28, 2006)

2005 Cornell United Way campaign to celebrate its success
The 2005 Cornell University United Way Campaign closes a very successful fund-raising effort with a celebratory luncheon Tuesday, March 7, at noon in the Duffield Hall atrium. Speakers will include President Hunter Rawlings, Cornell United Way cabinet members and representatives from area businesses. (February 28, 2006)

'Smart Women' media campaign targets alcohol use by undergrads
An increase in high-risk drinking among Cornell's undergraduate women has led to a media campaign designed to reduce both the incidence and the consequences of high-risk drinking, particularly among women. (February 28, 2006)

Weiss Presidential Fellows nominations deadline is March 8
Faculty, academic staff, and junior and senior students have until March 8 to submit nominations for the Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellows Award. The award recognizes tenured faculty who have a sustained record of effective, inspiring, and distinguished teaching of undergraduate students at Cornell. (February 28, 2006)

Professor to argue death penalty case before U.S. Supreme Court
Cornell Associate Professor of Law John H. Blume was scheduled to argue a case involving the death penalty before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Feb. 22. In the case, Holmes v. South Carolina, Blume, the director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, will argue on behalf of Bobby Lee Holmes, a South Carolina death row inmate. (February 28, 2006)

Bettina Wagner receives USDA grant to improve vaccine development
Bettina Wagner, assistant professor of population medicine and diagnostic sciences and a veterinary immunologist in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, has been awarded $344,000 over three years as part of a $2.1 million U.S. Department of Agriculture project. (February 28, 2006)

Earth's turbulence stirs things up slower than expected
New findings suggest that, for almost every turbulent flow on Earth, particles separate more slowly than expected. The discovery could help improve models of dispersion of pollutants and bioagents, says Cornell physicist Eberhard Bodenschatz, who co-authored a paper in Science, Feb. 10. (February 28, 2006)

Maire Ullrich and Jeff Kubeck win Excellence in IPM Awards
Educator Maire Ullrich and farmer Jeff Kubeck were awarded the Excellence in IPM Awards by the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program, a partnership between the state and Cornell University, for their innovative and proactive work in promoting IPM. (February 28, 2006)

Wortham museum chronicles Cornell's military history
The Wortham Military Museum at Cornell is not a secret. But neither is it a household name. Located in Barton Hall, exhibits include collections of military weapons and gear from World War I onward and Medal of Honor citations accompanied by stories of stunning heroics. (February 28, 2006)

Former U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to deliver Bartels Lecture
Lakhdar Brahimi will deliver the annual Bartels Fellowship Lecture on March 2 at 8 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, on campus. Brahimi's talk, 'Iraq: The Present Crisis and its Implications for Stability in the Middle East,' is free and open to the public. (February 27, 2006)

New York Ag Innovation Center helps producer market jelly globally
The New York Agricultural Innovation Center, a Cornell University affiliated program to help farmers increase sales, production efficiencies and consumer demand for their products, helped producer Allison Sacheli, market her products. (February 27, 2006)

Council for the Arts seeks to create arts institute in Ithaca
An Institute for the Arts at Cornell University? That's what is in the works, according to Milton Curry, director of the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA). Meanwhile the CCA continues to advance its mission of advocating for collaborative and experimental art through grants and awards to students, faculty and staff. (February 26, 2006)

From biological imaging to Sudoku solutions
Veit Elser, Cornell professor of physics, has found that an algorithm developed to process X-ray diffraction data also solves Sudoku puzzles. (February 26, 2006)

ROTC dog-tag ceremony brings closure to soldier's family
U.S. Army PFC Douglas Jay Crawford, killed in action in Vietnam in 1971, received a final homecoming on Feb. 23 when Cornell University's U.S. Army ROTC presented his long-lost identification tags to his surviving family members in a brief, emotional ceremony in the Wortham Military Museum in Barton Hall. (February 24, 2006)

Planning students work at service, study projects over winter break
City & Regional Planning and Historic Preservation and Planning students spent winter break in group study projects that ranged from cleaning out flooded houses in New Orleans to archiving local political history in Vermont to studying sustainable development along the Panama Canal. (February 24, 2006)

Cornell leaders concerned about effects of federal budget proposal
Cornell administrators are concerned about proposals in President George W. Bush's proposed fiscal year 2007 budget regarding student financial aid and research in agriculture and the biological sciences. (February 24, 2006)

Cornell documentaries on PBS
Two Cornell-related documentaries, "Alpha Phi Alpha Men: A Century of Leadership" and "Cornell: Birth of the American University" will be airing on local PBS TV stations beginning this coming weekend. (February 23, 2006)

Rawlings announces Feb. 28 discussion on stabbing
Cornell President Hunter R. Rawlings will host an informal discussion for concerned members of the Cornell community on Tuesday, Feb. 28, to address issues of concern and other responses to this past weekend's campus stabbing incident. Other related meetings are scheduled across campus. (February 23, 2006)

A woodwasp that kills conifers is now established in New York
Last year, E. Richard Hoebeke, a Cornell University expert taxonomist, discovered the first Sirex noctilio Fabricius woodwasp ever found in the wild in the United States. Now he's identified many more and is gearing up for a major survey. The woodwasp devastates conifers. (February 23, 2006)

Sun Grant Institute director answers questions on biofuel research
Larry Walker, Cornell professor of biological and environmental engineering and director of the Northeast Sun Grant Institute of Excellence recently answered questions about researching the use of plant biomass in energy and chemical production. (February 23, 2006)

Korean delegation visits Cornell to discuss Brain Korea 21 collaboration
A delegation of researchers from Seoul National University (SNU) visited Cornell Feb. 15 to 18 to promote the joint Brain Korea 21 (BK21) program, an established collaboration between the two universities. (February 23, 2006)

Olympic glory: Cornellians in the Olympics
As the 2006 Winter Olympics continue in Turin, Italy, competition results are in from all the Cornellians who are competing in the games. (February 22, 2006)

Africana library supports wide research
The library at the Africana Studies and Research Center houses a specialized collection of more than 20,000 volumes focused on the histories and cultures of people of African ancestry. Its print and electronic resources support Cornell's programs in African, African-American and Caribbean studies. (February 22, 2006)

Library has anti-slavery collections, black alumni papers and more
February is Black History Month. Yet Cornell's library plays a year-round role supporting Africana studies with its wide array of resources that document the experiences of African-Americans. (February 22, 2006)

Clicking in class helps lecturers and students connect
The use of polling technology has a 35-year history at Cornell in helping professors with large-enrollment classes make that all-important connection with students. (February 22, 2006)

AAAS annual meeting was serious and fun
Scientists, press gather for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis, Feb. 16-20. (February 21, 2006)

Hillel Tanner Prize awarded to Abby and David Cohen
Cornell Hillel's Board of Trustees has announced that the 2006 Tanner Prize will be awarded to Cornell alumni Abby Joseph Cohen '73 and her husband, David M. Cohen '73, for their significant contributions to the Jewish people and to Cornell. (February 21, 2006)

Junior Kevin Hwang named by USA Today as a top undergrad
Cornell undergraduate Kevin Hwang '07 was named to the All-USA College Academic Team by USA Today in its Feb. 15 issue. Among other accomplishments, Hwang was noted for founding The Triple Helix: The National Journal of Science, Society, and Law, a nonprofit, national journal (February 21, 2006)

Autistic Temple Grandin talks about how she changed cattle handling
Temple Grandin a renowned animal scientist and a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor at Cornell, has autism. As a result, she learned to think in pictures, which has strong parallels, she believes, to how animals think, she said in a public lecture Feb. 15, 2006 at Cornell. (February 21, 2006)

FIT projects help faculty use technology in teaching
Faculty Innovation in Teaching (FIT) projects allow faculty to develop innovative instructional technology projects that may improve the educational process. Faculty may apply until Arpil 1 for a 2006 project. An information session is slated for March 2, 3 to 5 p.m., in 225 ILR Conference Center. (February 21, 2006)

Plants eavesdrop for their own protection
Cornell University researchers have found that the release of chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from a wounded sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) primes the defenses of wild tobacco (Nicotiana attenuata) to prepare for herbivore attacks of its own. (February 21, 2006)

Festival of Black Gospel features longtime choir member
The annual Festival of Black Gospel, a 30-year tradition at Cornell, will put the spotlight on one of its perennial performers this year. Stephanie McClain, who has sung in the FBG Mass Choir since the event began in 1976, will headline the three-day festival's opening concert on Feb. 24 at 7 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Hall Auditorium. (February 20, 2006)

Cornell sophomore charged with stabbing a black student visiting campus
Cornell sophomore Nathan H. Poffenbarger, 20, of Woodsboro, Md., who transferred to the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell in September, was charged Sunday morning with felony assault for allegedly stabbing 22-year-old Charles Holiday, a black Union College senior from Brooklyn, N.Y. (February 20, 2006)

Nanobiotechnology Center educates children and parents
Elementary school children all over the United States have been learning about incomprehensibly tiny things by walking through and playing with very large and colorful things in a traveling science museum exhibition created by Cornell University's Nanobiotechnology Center and through the center's programs in public schools. (February 18, 2006)

Computer security problems lie in law and public policy
The real impediments to computer security lie in law and public policy, a Cornell University security expert told an audience at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (February 18, 2006)

Research priorities set roadmap for reducing worldwide hunger
If science can fly a rocket to Pluto, it can relieve worldwide hunger and poverty, but no one's doing it, said Cornell University's Per Pinstrup-Andersen, an international expert on world hunger, at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (February 17, 2006)

Amazonian black soil could improve soils, reduce global warming
Producing terra preta, the black soil found near the Amazon, not only can vastly improve soils but could help reduce global warming by sequestering huge amounts of carbon, Cornell University's Johannes Lehmann reported at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (February 17, 2006)

Scientist uses dragonflies to better understand flight
To better understand flight, consider the dragonfly. With an unusual pitching stroke that allows the bug to hover and even shift into reverse, the slender, elegant insect is a marvel of engineering. Cornell Professor Z. Jane Wang presented her research at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. (February 17, 2006)

Genetically engineered papaya isn't catching on
Genetically engineered papaya that resists the papaya ringspot virus has saved Hawaii's papaya industry, but efforts to grow the engineered papaya in developing countries are failing, reported retired Cornell University Dennis Gonsalves at the 2006 meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science. (February 17, 2006)

CCE program helps grandparents who are raising children again
Millions of grandparents are doing it all over again: raising children. And help is available with Cornell Cooperative Extension's 'Parenting a Second Time Around' program, which provides support, parenting skills and critical legal information and communication skills to grandparents as well as other relatives raising children. (February 17, 2006)

It's immoral that hunger is not declining and it feeds terrorism
Despite all the rhetoric, just as many people are hungry in the world today as 15 years ago and nothing's going to change if we continue business as usual, said Cornell University's Per Pinstrup-Andersen, an international expert on world hunger, at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (February 17, 2006)

Baird discusses use of nanotechnology to understand cell biology
Cornell University researchers have fabricated 'nano-keys' on the same scale as molecules to interact with cell membranes and trigger larger-scale responses within cells, such as the release of histamines in an allergic response. The study was presented by Professor Barbara Baird at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (February 16, 2006)

Cornellians in the Olympics update
As the 2006 Winter Olympics continue in Turin, Italy, some competition results are in from the Cornellians who are competing in the games. (February 15, 2006)

Stars evolve rapidly, violently in ultra-luminous infrared galaxies
The Spitzer Space Telescope reveals new information about the composition of distant ultra-luminous infrared galaxies. A high proportion of crystalline silicates in the galaxies' general interstellar medium indicates a large population of massive young and rapidly evolving stars. (February 15, 2006)

Shoals receives new undergraduate scholarships
Cornell's Shoals Marine Laboratory has announced eight merit-based scholarships for Cornell undergraduates to study marine sciences at the laboratory's summer program. The scholarships, funded by Henry (Hank) E. and Nancy Horton Bartels, both of the Class of 1948, are all named to honor pioneers and past directors of Shoals. (February 15, 2006)

CU scientists are bringing their research to AAAS in St. Louis
Cornell faculty members will present research on topics from dragonfly flight to using science to fight poverty at the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, which begins Feb. 16 in St. Louis. (February 15, 2006)

Near Eastern studies: Making the strange familiar
The Department of Near Eastern Studies has experienced explosive growth since Sept. 11, 2001, when the task of making 'the strange seem more familiar' became, very suddenly, more urgent than ever. Campus enrollment in Arabic classes boomed following the attacks, and modern Middle East survey courses continue to grow. (February 15, 2006)

Faculty Facets: It's a Small world, after all
Meredith Small, Cornell professor of anthropology, uses her training in primatology and her observations of different cultures to give perspective to modern life. (February 15, 2006)

Cellist's 'favorite piece' wins concerto competition
Sarah Rice '06 played the first movement of Edouard Lalo's cello Concerto in D Minor to win the 2006 Cornell Concerto Competition, held Feb. 4 in Barnes Hall. She will perform the piece in concert with the Cornell Symphony Orchestra on March 11. (February 15, 2006)

Bailey Hall pedestrian plaza plan draws praise and concern
The $17.3 million renovation of Bailey Hall has revived calls for a new Bailey forecourt, and a preliminary plaza plan of elegant design materialized from the offices of Michael Van Valkenburgh, a 1973 graduate of Cornell's Department of Landscape Architecture. (February 14, 2006)

Historic Bailey Hall takes on a grand new look
With the renovation of Cornell's Bailey Hall on schedule for completion in August, the 94-year-old hall is well on its way to a grand new look -- and a brand new sound and feel. When the doors open, audiences will find new seating and heating, new electric and ventilation systems, a restored exterior and improved acoustics and lighting. (February 14, 2006)

Caution: Roadwork ahead
Construction projects and bridge repairs will soon put the squeeze on campus drivers. The good news: When the dust settles, Hoy parking garage will have an additional 190 spaces, and Thurston Avenue Bridge will have been widened to better accommodate pedestrian, bicycle and car traffic. (February 14, 2006)

Two Cornellians elected to National Academy of Engineering
Cornell Professors Toby Berger, the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professor of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Jean-Yves Parlange, professor of biological and environmental engineering, have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. (February 14, 2006)

CU team to help shape Internet access to new government rules
U.S. citizens will be able to understand and comment on important new government regulations, thanks to a multidisciplinary Cornell team and a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's Digital Government project that will support their work. (February 14, 2006)

Darwin panel wrestles with issues of education, law and religion
The controversy over teaching evolution in public schools brings to light deeper issues: the quality of teacher education, the nature of school science curricula, the U.S. Constitution and political process, anti-intellectualism and the countering biases of 'liberal religionists.' (February 14, 2006)

Allmon takes on creationism and evolution in lecture
Warren Allmon, director of Ithaca's Paleontological Research Institution, said most teachers are afraid to teach evolution or don't know much about it, at a public lecture Feb. 11 at Ithaca's Museum of the Earth. (February 14, 2006)

Evolutionary biology seen as key to understanding life
How evolutionary biology shapes our understanding of other areas of science, including genomics; finding common ground between fundamental religion and science; and the dangers of studying human behavior in light of evolutionary theory. These were just a few of the themes discussed during a Darwin Day panel discussion, 'Evolutionary Biology: Present and Future.' (February 14, 2006)

Students spent break in Tanzania helping seed companies
To make their winter break count for something more than rest and relaxation, a group of Cornell students took a 10-day work trip to east Africa, where they provided two Tanzanian seed companies with technical and analytical assistance. (February 14, 2006)

Buffalo Pest Management Board wins IPM award
The Buffalo Pest Management Board of Buffalo, N.Y., has been awarded the Excellence in IPM Award by the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program, a partnership between the state and Cornell University, for its can-do attitude in seeking and promoting lowest-risk solutions to the city's pest problems. (February 14, 2006)

Awards honor four members of Cornell engineering community
Several faculty members and a graduate student in Cornell's College of Engineering are recipients of recent awards and honors. They include Fred Kulhawy, David Putnam, Leslie Banks-Sills and Filip Radlinski. (February 14, 2006)

'Great Gatsby' is required reading for new students
F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic 1925 novel 'The Great Gatsby' will be required reading for more than 3,000 incoming freshman and transfer students this fall. This is the sixth year of Cornell's New Student Reading Project. (February 13, 2006)

Honor King's legacy by becoming agents of change, Morial challenges
Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League and a former mayor of New Orleans, gave the 2006 Martin Luther King commemorative lecture, "The King Legacy Confronts Katrina," in Sage Chapel. (February 13, 2006)

Pest management award goes to innovative apple grower
For his innovative use of integrated pest management -- and his proactive work promoting best management practices to other growers -- George Lamont has been awarded an Excellence in IPM Award from the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University. (February 13, 2006)

Katherine Reagan named Stern curator of rare books
Katherine Reagan, curator of rare books in the Cornell University Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections since 2000, will assume the title of Ernest L. Stern '56 Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts for the next five years. (February 13, 2006)

Symptoms or not, smokers should be screened for cancer
Smokers and former smokers should be screened for lung cancer even if they don't have symptoms, according to a new study led by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. 'The smaller the lung cancer is at diagnosis, the more likely it is to be stage 1 and curable,' says lead author Dr. Claudia Henschke

Video of ivory-billed woodpecker now available online
Ten seconds of video that rocked the world of American ornithology -- featuring a fuzzy but painstakingly analyzed ivory-billed woodpecker -- is now available on the Web site of Cornell's Lab of Ornithology. (February 9, 2006)

Mosaic NYC conference brings together alumni of many backgrounds
An alumni-driven event to celebrate diversity and advance inclusion, the Cornell Mosaic New York City conference, drew about 130 alumni and guests to the Cornell Club on Feb 4. Organizer Renee Alexander '74, Cornell's director of minority alumni programs, called it 'a smashing success.' (February 8, 2006)

CLT improves how students learn and instructors teach
Cornell's Center for Learning and Teaching provides free classes, tutors and workshops to help students understand difficult courses, special accommodations for students with disabilities and specialized help for teaching assistants, instructors and faculty to help improve their teaching. (February 8, 2006)

Cornellians look to bring home the gold at Winter Olympics in Turin
Ice dancer Jamie Silverstein, freestyle skier Travis Mayer and figure skater Matt Savoie are competing in the 20th Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, along with Cornell women's hockey head coach Melody Davidson, who is coaching the Canadian women's hockey team. (February 7, 2006)

1918 pandemic recalled as Cornell plans for possible avian flu threat
If history is any lesson, as well it should be, an avian flu outbreak would not be the first time a flu pandemic struck Cornell. In October 1918, the 'Spanish influenza,' which people also referred to as 'grip' or 'la grippe,' and now called the 1918 flu, overwhelmed campus and Ithaca for over a month. (February 7, 2006)

CCTEC helps Cornell inventors with patents
For Cornell inventors, the Cornell Center for Technology, Enterprise and Commercialization helps with the complex legal details of obtaining, licensing and enforcing patents. (February 7, 2006)

Microsoft funds new high-performance computing institute at CU
A Microsoft Institute for High-Performance Computing at Cornell with annual funding of $400,000 will greatly expand the ability of researchers to work with huge databases of DNA sequences and protein composition and shapes, and explore new software and applications for the analysis of biological information. (February 7, 2006)

Betty Friedan, women's movement icon, taught at Cornell
Betty Friedan, the outspoken advocate for women's rights who died Feb. 3 in her Washington, D.C., home, was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Institute for Women and Work at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations from 1998 until her death at the age of 85. (February 6, 2006)

Willard Straight gallery to exhibit Terry Plater's art
Terry Plater, associate dean at the Graduate School, will show her original artwork in 'A Sense of Place,' a solo exhibition on display Feb. 13-24 in Cornell's Willard Straight Hall Art Gallery. (February 6, 2006)

A neutron star spins toward intergalactic space
Scientists using the Very Large Baseline Array show that the fastest known neutron star has sufficient velocity to escape the galaxy. The study, co-authored by Cornell professor of astronomy James Cordes, was published last fall in Astrophysical Journal Letters. (February 6, 2006)

Trash to treasure: CATS promotes spirit of sustainability
In a new initiative to reduce waste on campus, Cornell's Division of Financial Services has launched a Web forum where departments with assets to sell can connect with others who can use them. (February 6, 2006)

Balinese textile arts adorn walls of the Johnson Museum
Curated from the collection of Joseph Fischer, the story cloths of Bali depict scenes from the Mahabarata and Ramayan epics of India. The exhibit will be on view through March 26. (February 6, 2006)

Animal welfare expert Temple Grandin visits Cornell
Temple Grandin, renowned designer of humane livestock facilities and associate professor of animal science at Colorado State University, will give a free public talk, "Animal Behavior, Autism and Welfare Auditing," Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. in Statler Auditorium. (February 6, 2006)

From shadowing alumni to studying Shaw's sexual satire
The year got off to a furious start for Cornellians in the Big Apple. Events relating to art, music, theater and work were just a few of the offerings during January. (February 6, 2006)

Shall We Dance? Tango Week is Feb. 2-8
Professor Wolfgang Sachse worked with the Ithaca Tangueros, a student organization, to create Cornell Tango Week, Feb. 2-8, which includes performances, classes, a dinner and a lecture by Yale art historian Robert Farris Thompson. (February 2, 2006)

Candy on the desk is candy in the mouth, study finds
A study by Professor Brian Wansink finds people eat more than twice as much candy that is in clear containers on their desks than candy in opaque containers six feet away. What was surprising was that women consistently overestimated how much candy they ate when they had to get up to get it. (February 1, 2006)

Linda Rayor, Cornell's spider woman, spins web of outreach
Linda Rayor, senior research associate of arthropod behavior, uses the mystique of spiders to not only capture the scientific imagination of her students but of people of all ages. The presentations that she and her trained students have given to classrooms and community groups have reached more than 16,000 people. (February 1, 2006)

Constas gets grant to launch new professional society
A new professional organization, the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, that will have its own peer-reviewed journal is being launched by Cornell's Mark Constas, associate professor of education, with $725,000 from the U.S. Department of Education. (February 1, 2006)

CU will create a plan to manage mass casualties in disasters
Cornell University will partner with Lockheed Martin to develop a computerized system to help hospitals plan for and deal with mass casualty events. (February 1, 2006)

CU, USDA team to curb two invasive, poisonous vines
Pale and black swallow-wort -- twining vines that are members of the milkweed family recently classified as invasive species -- have spread rapidly since the mid-1990s. The plants threaten the monarch butterfly, alter ground cover and affect habitat for grassland birds. (February 1, 2006)

NYC conference to look at labor movement's responses to globalization
At 'Global Companies-Global Unions-Global Research-Global Campaigns' in New York City Feb. 9-11, trade unionists and labor scholars will strategize on the role of the labor movement in a globalized world. (February 1, 2006)

Hundreds of free workshops throughout New York give energy tips
To give consumers low- and no-cost energy tips to save money, Cornell Cooperative Extensions associations offered more than 335 free workshops in 30 counties in New York state. Another 135 workshops are scheduled for the upcoming months. (February 1, 2006)

Professor Emeritus John W. Kronik dies at 74
John W. Kronik, 74, professor emeritus of Spanish literature in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University, died Jan. 22 in Los Angeles. (February 1, 2006)

Classic forest pathology reference is revised and updated
You wouldn't think a forestry pathology text with the title 'Diseases of Trees and Shrubs' could double as a coffee-table book. But the handsomely designed and revised second edition of Wayne A. Sinclair's masterwork is very fetching to the eye. (February 1, 2006)

Xavier Torres keeps hotel guests in luxury on Costa Rica's 'gold coast'
Xavier Torres' career has really been cooking since he earned his graduate degree from Cornell's School of Hotel Administration last year. He has been given successive management responsibilities at a Four Seasons luxury resort in Costa Rica. (February 1, 2006)