Neil Ashcroft, professor of physics at Cornell University, has been named winner of the 2003 Bridgman Award in high pressure physics, awarded by the International Association for the Advancement of High Pressure Science and Technology. The award is named for Percy Bridgman, winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in physics. Ashcroft's expertise is in theoretical condensed-matter physics, speciÞcally in interacting many-particle systems as they occur in condensed matter. Among his research interests is metallic hydrogen and matter under extreme conditions, as might be found in the interiors of the giant planets. (April 17, 2003)
Jed P. Sparks, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development program grant from the National Science Foundation. He will receive five-year funding of $500,000 to support research into foliar uptake of atmospheric nitrogen from the molecular to ecosystems levels. Early Career awards are NSF's most prestigious honor for new faculty members, recognizing and supporting teacher-scholars who are considered most likely to become academic leaders of the 21st century. (April 15, 2003)
A five-year study has found that lead is harmful to children at concentrations in the blood that are typically considered safe. Reporting in the latest issue (April 17) of The New England Journal of Medicine, two Cornell University scientists say that children suffer intellectual impairment at a blood-lead concentration below the level of 10 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dl) -- about 100 parts per billion -- currently considered acceptable by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "We also found that the amount of impairment attributed to lead was most pronounced at lower levels," says Richard Canfield, lead author of the journal paper and a senior researcher in Cornell's Division of Nutritional Sciences. (April 14, 2003)
The history of labor in the U.S. South begins in its cotton fields and mills, with workers laboring under harsh conditions at exploitatively low wages. "What other job? This is the only job," said Sally Field in the title role of the film "Norma Rae," based on a true story about Crystal Lee Sutton, a home-grown union organizer at a J.P. Stevens plant in a small southern mill town in the 1970s. Today improved working conditions through the growth of such textile workers' unions as UNITE, countered by weakened labor laws, the shift in manufacturing jobs overseas and the growth in the service sector are among the forces shaping labor in the southern United States. The southern U.S. labor picture, then and now, and related topics will be addressed at Cornell University's first Southern Labor Conference this Wednesday, April 16, in PepsiCo Auditorium in 305 Ives Hall on Cornell's campus. The event, which is being run by the Southern Organization, a Cornell student group interested in culture, social and political issues in the U.S. South, starts at 4:30 p.m. (April 14, 2003)
Cornell University has issued the following recommendations for members of the Cornell community planning travels to or from areas affected by the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic: "The World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have issued alerts regarding Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Since mid-March, Gannett: Cornell University Health Services has been working closely with Tompkins County and New York State Health Department officials to monitor information and recommendations related to SARS to protect individual and public health. To date, there have been no reported cases directly affecting anyone within the Cornell or Ithaca communities. (April 14, 2003)
The public-health infrastructure -- both in the United States and worldwide -- is ill-prepared to deal with emerging viruses and microbes, journalist Laurie Garrett will assert when she delivers the 2003 Iscol lecture Thursday, April 24, at 4:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, Cornell University. Free and open to the public, the lecture is titled "Coming Plagues: Signaling an Environment in Distress." Garrett, a 1996 Pulitzer Prize winner for her hands-on coverage of Zaire's Ebola epidemic, is a medical and science writer at Newsday. The author of two books about disease epidemics and the state of global health care, Garrett is expected to tell her audience that many scientists today know what policy-makers and governmental leaders fail to acknowledge: that emerging and re-emerging diseases -- far from being eradicated -- pose an unprecedented threat to human health. She contends that dramatic changes in attitudes, as well as resource allocation, will be needed to construct a public-health infrastructure capable of coping with the myriad challenges of globalization. (April 14, 2003)
A collection of glass lantern slides that provides a snapshot of the history of design through the 1950s and 1960s, from prefabricated housing to room interiors and furniture, has been donated to Cornell University's Rare and Manuscript Collections at Kroch Library. The slides document the work of Ruby Loper, New York state's first female extension architect. Many of the slides -- positive transparencies sandwiched between two 3 14-inch by 4-inch glass plates -- are thought to have been taken by Cornell photographer Jon Troy and used by Loper both for teaching and research. Loper worked at Cornell from 1946 to 1967 and died in 1990. (April 11, 2003)
A Cornell University housing and energy expert has been named to head a New York state consumer program to promote energy-saving incentives for homeowners, landlords and builders.
A visual art project that brought Jews and Muslims together on Cornell's campus is the winner of the 2003 James A. Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony.
John Ashbery, considered one of America's greatest living poets, will give this year's Robert Chasen Poetry Reading on Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m., in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell University. The reading, hosted by the Department of English at Cornell, is free and open to the public. Ashbery is the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Language and Literature at Bard College and the author of twenty collections, including Girls on the Run (1999), Your Name Here (2000), and Chinese Whispers (2002). His Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award, the first time a book of poetry was so universally acclaimed. (April 8, 2003)
A student team from New York University's Stern School of Business was the first-place winner April 4 in the first-ever MBA Stock Pitch Competition. Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, which hosted the competition, came in second. They competed for two days against teams from seven other top U.S. business schools and were judged by a blue-ribbon panel of Wall Street stock-analysis experts on the buy and sell sides. The NYU team won a cash prize of $3,000, and the Johnson School team won $1,500. The competition for future stock analysts was co-sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). (April 8, 2003)
Recent life-sciences research by Cornell University scientists and their students in Ithaca, N.Y., will be showcased April 12 at the Library of Congress (Thomas Jefferson Building, 1st Street SE), Washington, D.C. The scientific forum is titled "The Power and Promise of Life Sciences." (April 8, 2003)
