Cornell University officials and staff are offering support services to students who have been affected by alleged incidents of unlawful surveillance by a landlord for rental housing in Ithaca. Susan Murphy, vice president for student and academic services, has convened a crisis management task force to handle issues of emergency housing, finances and legal issues, as well as to provide psychological support. (August 26, 2004)
With equipment so sensitive that it can locate clusters of electrons, Cornell University and University of Tokyo physicists have -- sort of -- explained puzzling behavior in a much-studied high-temperature superconductor, perhaps leading to a better understanding of how such superconductors work. It turns out that under certain conditions the electrons in the material pretty much ignore the atoms to which they are supposed to be attached, arranging themselves into a neat pattern that looks like a crystal lattice. The behavior occurs in a phase physicists have called a "pseudogap," but because the newly discovered arrangement looks like a checkerboard in scanning tunneling microscope (STM) images, J.C. Séamus Davis, Cornell professor of physics, calls the phenomenon a "checkerboard phase." (August 26, 2004)
Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, will deliver a public lecture titled "Creativity and the Brain," Thursday, Sept. 2, at 7:30 p.m. in Statler Auditorium on the Cornell University campus. The talk is free and open to the public. Tickets are required and will be available starting Aug. 26 at the Willard Straight Hall Ticket Office with a limit of two per person. During his second campus visit as an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell, Sacks also will visit five classes and deliver a presentation based on his BBC program "Poison in Paradise" to undergraduates in the new Alice Cook House on West Campus. (August 25, 2004)
All aboard: On a 50-city tour to register young voters for the upcoming elections, the "Rock The Vote" bus tour stops in Ithaca on Saturday, Aug. 28. The rockin' bus rolls to its first stop on the Ithaca Commons from noon to 4 p.m. Next, it will park on East Avenue on the Cornell University campus, near Goldwin Smith Hall, from 4:30 to 7 p.m. The last stop of the day will be at the Alice Cook House, the new residence hall on West Campus, from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. (August 24, 2004)
To be worry-free about having enough food is not the norm in the United States, says a Cornell University sociologist. "Rather, the need to use food stamps is a common American experience that at least half of all Americans between the ages of 20 and 65 will face," says Thomas A. Hirschl, professor of development sociology at Cornell who has completed a study of food stamp use. (August 24, 2004)
Johannes Gehrke, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University, has been named a faculty associate director of the Cornell Theory Center (CTC). "Johannes is not new to the center," said Thomas Coleman, CTC director and professor of computer science and applied mathematics. "He has already helped in significant ways with many CTC initiatives over the last several years; this appointment is, in part, recognition of a growing and positive relationship. It also recognizes his international research reputation, strong leadership potential and effective collaboration skills. Our team is now deeper and stronger." (August 24, 2004)
Time is fast running out for the semiconductor industry as transistors become ever smaller and their insulating layers of silicon dioxide, already only atoms in thickness, reach maximum shrinkage. In addition, the thinner the silicon layer becomes, the greater the amount of chemical dopants that must be used to maintain electrical contact. And the limit here also is close to being reached. But a Cornell University researcher has caused an information industry buzz with the discovery that it is possible to precisely control the electronic properties of a complex oxide material -- a possible replacement for silicon insulators -- at the atomic level. And this can be done without chemicals. Instead, the dopant is precisely nothing. (August 23, 2004)
Steve Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy and the principal scientific investigator for the Mars rover mission, took a break from his hectic schedule this July to talk to Cornell News Service Senior Science Editor David Brand about the progress of the history-making mission.
Even when poor rural families receive food stamps from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, many still do not have enough food, according to a new study by nutritionists at Cornell University and their colleagues from several other land-grant universities. The researchers found that about half of the families in their study used food stamps, and half of these families said they did not have enough to eat. (August 19, 2004)
Cornell University's fourth annual New Student Reading Project rolls out Sunday, Aug. 22, at 3:30 p.m., when more than 3,600 first-year and transfer students are scheduled to gather in Barton Hall for an interactive faculty presentation on Franz Kafka's The Trial. The event will be broadcast live on Time Warner Cable Channel 16. On Monday, Aug. 23, Cornell students, led by administrators, faculty members, graduate students and staff, will meet in 230 groups across campus to discuss Kafka's prescient work. More than 20,000 Cornell alumni from 23 classes also are involved in the Kafka reading project. For campus and alumni readings and related events, visit Cornell's reading project Web site. (August 17, 2004)
More than 4,300 new students are arriving at Cornell starting this Friday, Aug. 20, when campus residence halls open their doors at 8 a.m. This year Cornell expects to enroll roughly 3,100 freshmen, 564 new undergraduate transfer students and 610 new graduate and professional students.
The American Chemical Society has paid tribute to the scientific accomplishments of Jack H. Freed, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University, by dedicating the July 8 issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry B to the internationally respected scientist. The issue is titled the "Jack H. Freed Festschrift." The German term (literally, "feast writing") is commonly used to celebrate a senior scholar's birthday with a special edition of original papers on topics relevant to the honoree's research. The volume celebrates Freed's 65th birthday and relates to his groundbreaking contributions to electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy, a state-of-the-art technology for studying the molecular properties of fluids and of biological materials, including the structure and complex dynamics of membranes and proteins. (August 17, 2004)
