The Executive Committee of the Cornell University Board of Trustees will hold a brief open session when it meets Thursday, Dec. 11, at 2 p.m. in the Fall Creek Room of the Cornell Club of New York, 6 E. 44th St., New York City. The short public session at the beginning of the meeting will include a report from Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman and a report of the Buildings and Properties Committee. (December 4, 2003)
The year in which IQ is tested can make the difference between life and death for a death row inmate. It also can determine the eligibility of children for special services, adults' Social Security benefits and recruits' suitability for certain military careers, according to a new study by Cornell University researchers. That's because IQ scores tend to rise 5 to 25 points in a single generation. This so-called "Flynn effect" is corrected by toughening up the test every 15 to 20 years to reset the mean score to 100. A score from a test taken at the end of one cycle can vary widely from a score derived from a test taken at the beginning of the next cycle, when the test is more difficult, says Stephen J. Ceci, professor of human development at Cornell. (December 3, 2003)
A $5 million gift from Samuel C. Johnson will give global environmental sustainability issues more prominence in MBA studies at Cornell University. The gift is the latest among many given to Cornell by Johnson, chairman emeritus of S.C. Johnson and Son of Racine, Wis., and a Cornell alumnus. His $20 million gift to the Johnson School in 1984, made with his family and company, is the foundation of the school's current endowment. Johnson earned his A.B. degree at Cornell in 1950. (December 3, 2003)
Spent nuclear fuel has been removed from Cornell University's inoperative research reactor at the Ward Center for Nuclear Sciences and deposited in a nuclear materials storage site maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy, university officials announced today (Dec. 2). The removal of the spent nuclear fuel from the Teaching, Research, Isotope, General Atomics (TRIGA) reactor is a phase of the decommissioning process for Ward Lab. The university shut down the small-scale teaching and research reactor June 30, 2002, so that the building can be used for other academic purposes. (December 02, 2003)
Most parents -- and not a few teachers -- think computer games are a waste of time. David Schwartz, Cornell assistant professor of computer science, thinks they can be a powerful teaching tool -- especially if you get students interested in creating their own. So Schwartz, aided by Rajmohan Rajagopalan, Cornell instructor in computer science, and Rama Hoetzlein, who graduated from Cornell in 2001 with a dual major in computer science and fine art, is teaching an experimental course in computer game design. The course is part of an overall plan Schwartz calls the Computer Game Design Initiative. He hopes that game design eventually can become a tool to interest high school and elementary school students in science and technology, while teaching a little physics, writing and other skills along the way. (December 2, 2003)
Mexican President Vicente Fox on Nov. 24 presented Mexico's most prestigious youth award, the Premio Nacional de Juventud (National Youth Prize), to Gerardo Chowell-Puente, a third-year Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, for his research in the mathematical modeling of communication in networks, which has provided new understanding of the way disease spreads through a population. In recent work as a visiting research assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chowell-Puente and his Los Alamos colleagues modeled the transmission of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Hong Kong, Singapore and Ontario, Canada. The work validated the decision of Canadian health authorities to intervene with strict quarantines. Without that intervention, the model showed, the disease might have spread to some 200,000 people, instead of the few hundred who were infected. (November 26, 2003)
The vast majority of elderly Americans want to stay in their homes as long as possible, even if they become ill or disabled. But significant psychological benefits can be gained by planning ahead, well before the onset of infirmity.
Cornell University Director of Athletics Andy Noel announced today (Nov. 25) that Tim Pendergast has been dismissed as head football coach at the university. The Cornell football team posted a 1-9 record this season under Pendergast, including a 0-7 mark in Ivy League play. (November 25, 2003)
The average high temperature for the Fourth of July in Ithaca is a comfortable 79 degrees Fahrenheit, although it did hit 102 degrees once that day in 1911. Snow bunnies, skiers, sledders and skaters will love to hear that Ithaca's average high temperature for January is 31.2 degrees. Fun facts like these are available in the 2004 Ithaca Weather Calendar, prepared by Cornell University's Northeast Regional Climate Center and Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. In the calendar, the climatologists provide Ithaca weather data for every day of 2004, a leap year. (November 24, 2003)
While Thanksgiving falls late this year, the best chances for snow on Turkey Day occur in upstate New York and portions of New England, according to Keith Eggleston, a senior climatologist.
'Garden of Lights,' a design by Cornell undergraduate Sean Corriel and two others, was chosen as one of eight finalists in a competition for a memorial at the site of the former World Trade Center.
Cornell University has created its first permanent, temporary-use office space that will accommodate various campus offices as needed. The housing is at Surge 1, at the entrance of the Cornell Plantations off Forest Home Drive. The first tenants are two centers displaced when the north wing of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, the home of the College of Human Ecology (CHE), closed in July 2001 due to structural problems. The two centers, the Family Life Development Center and the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center, were then temporarily housed in the original Mann Library building. (November 19, 2003)
