Cornell University's Dump and Run program will donate the proceeds of its August 2004 yard sale -- a total of $9,000 -- to three local nonprofit groups during a ceremony Thursday, Nov. 18, at 5:30 p.m. in the Willard Straight Hall International Room. The donations will go to Loaves and Fishes, The Advocacy Center, and Cops, Kids and Toys. Doors open at 5 p.m. and refreshments will be available. The ceremony is open to the public. The awards will be presented by Cornell senior Lauren Jacobs, who founded the university's Dump and Run program in 2003, and LeNorman Strong, assistant vice president of student and academic services. Dump and Run, a national nonprofit organization that has generated more than $100,000 through its programs at 20 colleges and universities, is sponsored by the Office of Cornell Campus Life. (November 11, 2004)
In 1999, the U.S. State Department allowed more than 4,000 Sudanese refugees into the country -- only 89 of these young orphaned war victims were girls. The disparity has both political and cultural origins, and few understand the complexities as well as Julia Duany, author of Making Peace and Nurturing Life: Memoir of an African Woman About a Journey of Struggle and Hope. Duany, a refugee who escaped from the violence in the Sudan in 1983, will deliver a talk titled "African Women's Voices: Effects of War on Sudanese Women" on Tuesday, Nov. 16, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 423 of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations Conference Center on the Cornell University campus. The talk is free and open to the public and a reception will follow. Drawing on her experiences as a refugee and activist as well as her knowledge of Sudanese women's groups, Duany will discuss challenges to women's peace-building initiatives in the Sudan. She also will address social factors that affect women in the Sudan, including family life, religion, cultural and political complexities, and the role gender plays in her multicultural, war-ravaged country. (November 10, 2004)
About one-fifth of the world's population lives in dire poverty, and the already very skewed gap between rich and poor keeps growing. Some 800 million people don't have enough to eat. The consequences of such destitution are malnutrition, environmental degradation and worldwide instability. These circumstances also leave millions of people with nothing to lose, who become ripe for turning to international terrorism in their frustration and need to be heard. So says Per Pinstrup-Andersen, the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University. To try to develop a shared vision that combines ethics and economics to counter world poverty, hunger and malnutrition, he has organized a workshop, "Ethics, Globalization and Hunger: In Search of Appropriate Policies," to be held Nov. 17 to 19 at Cornell. The highlight will be a free public lecture by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and now the executive director of the Ethical Globalization Initiative, an organization dedicated to supporting human rights. Her address, "Social Justice, Ethics and Hunger: What Are the Key Messages?" will be given Thursday, Nov. 18, at 8 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall. Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman will introduce Robinson, who will field questions after her remarks. (November 09, 2004)
Now that marine scientists know how quickly disease epidemics can spread in the oceans -- up to 10,000 kilometers a year among fish, compared with 1,000 kilometers in diseases carried by flying birds -- they are focusing on dying organisms that can't move: the world's corals.
Cornell University Police were presented with a statewide award for promoting traffic safety Oct. 18 at the New York Highway Safety Conference held in Binghamton, N.Y. Sgt. Chuck Howard, traffic enforcement coordinator, accepted the Governor's Traffic Safety Committee award on behalf of the department from Raymond P. Martinez, commissioner of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, who chairs the committee. (November 4, 2004)
By using a device only six-millionths of a meter long, researchers at Cornell University have been able to detect the presence of as few as a half-dozen viruses -- and they believe the device is sensitive enough to notice just one. The research could lead to simple detectors capable of differentiating between a wide variety of pathogens, including viruses, bacteria and toxic organic chemicals. (November 4, 2004)
Winters are getting warmer and some crops are starting to bloom earlier. Climate change is already upon us, but changes are not uniform across regions or species.
A postage stamp-sized piece of property belonging to Cornell University's Animal Research Facility in Harford, N.Y. is now the site of a national climate station. The Harford site will be part of the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), a land-based system of climate stations now being developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce. Every USCRN observing site is equipped with state-of-the instruments including, a standard set of sensors, a data logger and a satellite communications transmitter. The Harford site meets NOAA criteria for its distance from urban areas, long-term stability and reliability as an area representative of the regional climate, among other factors. (November 4, 2004)
Since the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on the red planet last January, members of the Cornell University rover team have gone from living and working on Mars time at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., to running their operations from Cornell in Ithaca on a hybrid Earth-Mars time. The planning and operations that must occur twice each day -- between the time when "yester-sol's" data reach Earth until commands for the next sol's activities are sent off to the rovers -- is becoming more efficient. It now takes just six or seven hours on average, compared with the 17 hours it once took. (A sol, a Martian day, is 39 minutes, 35 seconds longer than an Earth day.) (November 04, 2004)
Cornell researchers, who are trying to understand how proteins evolve and function by looking at their structural features, have uncovered the crystal structure of a protein involved in making the building blocks of DNA correctly.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Leon F. Litwack, professor of American History at the University of California-Berkeley, will deliver three Carl Becker lectures on Tuesday, Nov. 9, Wednesday, Nov. 10 and Thursday, Nov. 11. The lecture series, titled "Stormy Monday: Black Southerners in the Twentieth Century," is free and open to the public, and each talk will be delivered at 4:30 p.m. in Room 165 of McGraw Hall on the Cornell University campus. (November 3, 2004)
New York, NY (November 2, 2004) -- All life relies on the actions and reactions of single molecules within cells. However, these molecules are so tiny that they have long eluded direct, real-time investigation using conventional light microscopes.A breakthrough technology being developed by Dr. Scott C. Blanchard -- recently recruited to Weill Medical College of Cornell University under the College's Strategic Research Plan -- is finally allowing researchers an unprecedented view into the workings of individual molecules.
