Cornell University News Service Releases

July, 1998

Index to all months

For the full text of any story, click on the filename at the end of the description. These stories are also available via anonymous FTP at cunews.cornell.edu. Electronic queries may be made to cunews@cornell.edu.

Summer is prime hosta time at Cornell Plantations
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell Plantations' hosta collections are in their prime in the mid- to late-summertime. hosta.hrs.html (July 29, 1998)

Anderson is next American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences president
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Carol L. Anderson, associate director of Cornell Cooperative Extension, was installed as the president-elect of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) at the association's annual meeting in Atlanta earlier this month. Anderson will serve as president-elect until July 1999, when she will become president until July 2000. anderson.pres.ssl.html (July 28, 1998)

Lester Eastman wins top teaching award
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Lester Fuess Eastman, the John L. Given Foundation Chair Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, has been selected as the recipient of the 1999 Graduate Teaching Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. His citation reads, "For inspirational teaching with an impact on semiconductor devices through interdisciplinary graduate education." Eastman has been at Cornell, both as a student and faculty member, for 50 years. He is involved in graduate education in electrical engineering, applied and engineering physics, and materials science. He has supervised over 100 doctoral theses and keeps in contact with many of his former students. Many of them have made important contributions to research and development in industrial and government laboratories, and 16 former students are now faculty members at various universities. Eastman also has advised the U.S. Department of Defense and has consulted widely in this country and abroad. Eastman.deb.html (July 28, 1998)

Coast management can limit tsunami effect
ITHACA, N.Y. -- A Cornell University engineer believes it is possible to limit the destruction from the type of tsunami that slammed into the coast of Papua New Guinea on July 17 with proper coastal management, such as building structures like sea walls, and creating zoning policies banning building in high-risk areas. Philip Liu, professor of civil and environmental engineering, believes that the thousands of deaths and terrible destruction on the island by the 30-foot-high ocean wave was due both to the flatness of the land -- basically lowland jungle -- as well as the flimsy nature of the buildings. "However, it is questionable that in a country like Papua New Guinea such policies could be implemented," because of limited economic resources, he says. Liu.tsunami.deb.html (July 27, 1998)

Microgravity materials study on NASA plane
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Most students work in a library, laboratory or classroom, but Cornell University undergraduate Greg Aloe floats in space aboard the same NASA aircraft that Tom Hanks used to simulate zero gravity while filming Apollo 13. Aloe has nose-dived in the stripped and padded Boeing 707 more than 175 times, free falling "like a rock" a dizzying 1.25 miles in 25 seconds. What participants have dubbed the "vomit comet" climbs and then plummets 40 or 50 times during each two-hour flight. nasa.flight.ssl.html (July 24, 1998)

Wettest June since 1895 in the Northeast
ITHACA, N.Y. -- June 13 will go down in the record books in Boston and Providence, R.I., as the wettest June day on record in the two New England cities. Boston's total of 5.69 inches beat the previous record of 4.36 inches set in June 1881. The rainfall at T.F. Green Airport in Providence was 3.29 inches, compared with the previous June day record of 2.97 inches, set June 5, 1982. June also appeared to be a deluge throughout Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and West Virginia. It was the second-wettest June for those states since official records began in 1895, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. (Weather records for some larger cities, however, go back earlier than 1895.) NRCC.June98.bpf.html (July 22, 1998)

CU Press "Aliens" book attracts controversy
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Little green men! Brilliant spheres of light in the sky! Roswell! The X-Files.! Alien abduction! A UFO conference at--the Massachusetts Institute of Technology??!! And now Cornell University Press, that bastion of respectable academic publishing whose books of high seriousness have salvaged, salved and saved more than a few academic careers over the years, has entered the UFO waters with a big splash in the iridescent pond by publishing Jodi Dean's Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace. aliens.html (July 20, 1998)

Bruce Ganem receives Johnson & Johnson award for chemical research
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Johnson & Johnson, the multinational medical products concern, has yet again shown its support of Cornell University research by awarding a $270,000, three-year grant to Bruce Ganem, the Franz and Elisabeth Roessler Professor of Chemistry in the chemistry and chemical biology department. This is the fourth time the company has made awards to Cornell researchers under its Focused Giving Program, established in 1980 to stimulate exploration in medical science. Previous recipients were Harold Scheraga, the George W. and Grace L. Todd Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, David B. Collum, professor of chemistry, and Fred B. Quimby, professor of veterinary pathology. ganem.award.deb.html (July 20, 1998)

Student reports on Israel archeological dig
POSTCARD FROM TEL DOR--Right now, Melissa Loewenstern is in the Iron Age. By summer's end, she hopes to land in the Bronze Age. This Cornell student is spending her summer excavating an archaeological site in Israel. Read her latest dispatches from Tel Dor, a site rich in the history of biblical times. Israel.July20.bpf.html (July 20, 1998)

Clever chemistry protects beetle babies
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Naked, immobile and conspicuously colored, the squash beetle pupae would be easy picking for insect predators if they hadn't long ago perfected a science called combinatorial chemistry. In the human world it is a chemical skill that pharmaceutical researchers are still learning. By variously combining three simple molecules into a veritable arsenal of complex defensive compounds and secreting them through microscopic body hairs, Epilachna borealis pupae can thwart just about anything that would eat them, Cornell University researchers report in the July 17 issue of the journal Science. CombiBeetle2.hrs.html (July 13, 1998)

Utility lines relocation at Route 13 overpass to begin Monday
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Utility lines buried under the Route 13 overpass at East Shore Drive in the Town of Ithaca will be relocated beginning Monday, July 20. The work will provide a new path for Bell Atlantic and Time Warner Cable circuits that must be moved before construction of the Cornell University Lake Source Cooling project begins in 1999. Part of the work will include a hammering noise from boring equipment. This noise will occur during daytime hours only over the next two weeks. Traffic interruptions are not expected, and construction is expected to be completed by early August. Utility.lines.html (July 17, 1998)

Cornell's new role in 2001 Mars mission
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University's astronomy department is working in a newly defined role on NASA's Mars Surveyor lander mission scheduled for launch in April 2001. Although the Cornell-led Athena Rover vehicle program will not be included in the mission as previously planned, "we will be doing a pretty good job of recovery" by continuing to provide most of the science for the 2001 lander, says astronomy professor Steven Squyres, the lead researcher on the project to explore and analyze part of the Martian surface. Squyres confirms that because of revised budgets and time pressures NASA has postponed the Athena Rover segment of the Surveyor Mars mission from 2001, and has tentatively rescheduled it for the 2003 Mars Surveyor launch. The highly complex package consists of a suite of experiments on board a roving vehicle. In 2005, another Mars Surveyor mission has the goal of returning to Earth with Martian rock samples collected by Athena. cornell.rover.deb.html (July 16, 1998)

Policy methods for eliminating child labor
ITHACA, N.Y. -- World governments might be more successful in removing nearly 100 million children from the labor market by working to increase adult wages and employment rates rather than pursuing legislative action against child labor, which could be effective only in certain countries, say two Cornell University economists. These findings from Kaushik Basu, a professor of economics at Cornell, and Pham Hoang Van, a Cornell doctoral student in economics, appear in their paper "The Economics of Child Labor" in the June issue of The American Economic Review. Child.Labor.jw.html (July 15, 1998)

Cornell's new MILR degree is hot
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Some corporate recruiters walked away empty-handed from Cornell University this spring. All the graduates in a small, competitive degree program were hired months before commencement. "We don't have enough students to meet the demand," said Karin Ash, director of career services in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR). "It's difficult not being able to provide corporate recruiters with the talent they need, but it's very satisfying to have a 100 percent placement record." MILR.dg.html (July 15, 1998)

Alison Lurie publishes her tenth novel
ITHACA, N.Y. -- "At three a.m. on a windy late-November night, Jenny Walker woke in her historic house in an historic New England town, and sensed from the slope of her mattress and the chill of the flowered percale sheets that Wilkie Walker, the world-famous writer and naturalist, was not in bed beside her." So begins Cornell University English Professor Alison Lurie's most recent novel, The Last Resort (Henry Holt 1998), her first novel in a decade and the 10th of her career. In a single opening sentence -- deft, graceful, subtle, packed with meaning -- Lurie puts the world of her novel, its terms and stakes, into rapid motion. A chilly marriage bed, an absent husband, a worried wife, set in a historic house and town, on decorous flowered sheets, late in the year, just before winter. TenthLurieNovel.html (July 14, 1998)

How to compost and keep neighbors happy
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The raunchy reputation of backyard composting is both undeserved and unnecessary, according to waste-management educators at Cornell University who reveal a few tricks of the trade in a new instructional video, Compost Truth or Consequences. "We're not talking rocket science, but if your compost goes anaerobic and starts to smell, the neighbors may think you're a mad scientist," says Veet Deha, a composting educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County. "All you need for neighbor-friendly composting is the knowledge of a couple basic principles." compost_video.hrs.html (July 8, 1998)

Margaret Hendricks named Veterinary development director
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Margaret Hendricks has joined the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine as director of development. Most recently director of the 1998 National Conference on Volunteerism at Cornell's College of Human Ecology, Hendricks will be responsible for development programs to secure private support for the veterinary college, including individual giving, planned giving, and corporate and foundations relations. hendricks.hrs.html (July 7, 1998)

Cornell food industry courses go electronic
ITHACA, N.Y. -- For the past 34 years, food industry employees across the United States and from distant regions of the globe have been mailing their assignments and completed exams to Cornell University's Food Industry Distance Education Program. But now they can conduct all their correspondence, including receiving exams and returning completed papers, via e-mail. In recent years, students have increasingly turned to fax machines for enrollments and course work, but now many will be choosing Internet e-mail, although Cornell will continue to offer traditional independent-study formats through regular mail, says John D. Pierce, assistant director of the program. What was once known as the Home Study Program is one of the nation's oldest and largest distance-education programs, with 40 courses offered in supermarket, food distribution and convenience store operations. It is the only distance-learning program in the world for food store employees, with 18,000 students enrolled at any one time. food.distance.ssl.html (July 6, 1998)

Classicist and historian Barry Strauss studies that elusive thing called peace
ITHACA, N.Y. -- "I am tired and sick of war," said William Tecumseh Sherman. "Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell." Yet human beings have nearly always gone to war quickly and with great zeal. strauss.html (July 2, 1998)

Iroquois women influenced early feminists
ITHACA, N.Y. -- If Iroquois women could be equal partners with men, then so could white women, asserted suffragists in the mid-1800s looking to Native Americans for inspiration in seeking women's rights. To tell this little known story, an exhibit called "Sisters in Spirit: Celebrating the Iroquois Influence on the Early Women's Rights Movement" is on display at the Urban Cultural Park/Heritage Area Visitor Center in Seneca Falls, N.Y. iroquois.exhibit.ssl.html (July 1, 1998)

Early 1988 warmest on record in Northeast
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The first half of this year was the warmest Jan. 1 to June 30 period for the Northeast since records were first kept in 1895, according to climatologist Keith Eggleston at the Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC) at Cornell University. The average temperature for the 12 Northeast states during the six-month period was 45.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 4.1 degrees warmer than the normal 41.2 degrees, an average of temperatures over a 30-year period. The previous record for the first-half period was 45.1 degrees, set in 1921. NRCC.May1998.bpf.html (July 1, 1998)

Feeding bread to beef cattle
ITHACA, N.Y. -- For beef producers looking for new ways to economically and efficiently feed their cattle, Cornell University animal researchers have shown the effectiveness of an unusual diet: Let them eat bread -- and other commercial bakery leftovers and scraps. The Cornell researchers say that the steers' ruminant stomachs can digest feed that includes stale bakery products more efficiently than high-energy, corn-based diets because the baked goods have already been processed. WonderCattle.bpf.html (July 1, 1998)