Cornell University graduate student Lauren Alleyne won first place in the poetry category in The Atlantic Monthly's 2003 Student Writing Contest, and graduate student Pilar Gómez-Ibáñez won an honorable mention. Both Alleyne and Gómez-Ibáñez are first-year students in Cornell's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in creative writing. The prestigious Atlantic Monthly contest is open to full-time graduate and undergraduate students at American universities. More than 500 students entered the poetry category. (May 24, 2004)
New York, NY (May 21, 2004) -- By simply switching off one copy of a gene, Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have enabled fruit flies to live 51% longer -- the equivalent in human terms of extending average lifespan to the ripe old age of 113.The gene, called stunted, is one of only a few such longevity genes to be discovered in the Drosophila fly, a favorite model for studies into aging and longevity. What's more, stunted works by encoding a molecule that connects to a receptor lying on the surface of cells -- a receptor that's long been a favorite target for pharmaceutical research.
A.R. Ammons, Cornell University's legendary bard, is celebrated in an unprecedented 480-page issue of Epoch magazine, Cornell's literary journal. The volume titled This Is Just a Place: The Life and Work of A.R. Ammons (Cornell University, $12.95) includes 30 previously unpublished poems, prose pieces from all phases of the poet's career, entries from Ammons' Navy diary, 21 remarkable paintings by the poet, plus letters, conversations and other ephemera. Ammons, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry at Cornell, died in February 2001 at age 75. During his career, he won virtually every major prize for poetry in the United States, including two National Book Awards -- one in 1973 for Collected Poems, 1951-1971 and another in 1993 for Garbage. (May 24, 2004)
Five Cornell University researchers have been honored by prestigious U.S. and international academic groups. They are Leonard Gross, professor of mathematics; Éanna Flanagan, associate professor of physics; D. Tyler McQuade and Paul Chirik, both assistant professors of chemistry and chemical biology; and Thomas W. Parks, professor of electrical engineering. (May 21, 2004)
Winter-weary eyes will find relief at Cornell Plantations, where early azaleas are now blooming and opulent rhododendron flower trusses soon will brighten with sumptuous reds and pinks. It's all happening on Comstock Knoll, the wooded hilltop near Plantations headquarters building, according to Plantations Horticultural Director Mary Hirshfeld, who says, "The best time to catch the peak bloom is around the end of May." Tucked in among the rhododendrons are sky blue flowers of lungwort, the golden yellow of fairy bells, the delicate white of Solomon's seal and the rich golds and greens of unfurling hosta leaves and fern fronds. (May 19, 2004)
Among women who are not anemic, only those with tissue-iron deficiencies can benefit from taking iron supplements, concludes a new study by Cornell University nutritionists. "Supplementation makes no difference in exercise-training improvements in women with low iron storage who are not yet tissue-iron deficient or anemic," says Thomas Brownlie, the first author of the study and a Cornell doctoral candidate in nutritional sciences. (May 19, 2004)
New York, NY (May 18, 2004) -- Peering into the mysteries of embryonic development, Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have identified compounds that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels.If these chemical signaling mechanisms hold true in adult tissue, the discovery could pave the way for therapies to repair damaged heart tissue or, conversely, starve malignant tumors of the blood supply they need to grow.
New York, NY (May 17, 2004) -- U.S. blacks with high blood pressure are about twice as likely to have an enlarged heart and a thicker heart muscle wall than their white counterparts independently of the degree of hypertension, report NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center researchers in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension.Many studies have found that left ventricular hypertrophy -- increased muscle weight of the heart's main pumping chamber -- is an independent predictor of illness or death due to cardiovascular disease, including stroke, heart attack, and heart failure. And it is known that African-Americans with high blood pressure are 50% more likely to die of stroke and 80% more likely to die of heart disease than whites.
New York, NY (May 17, 2004) -- Imagine a puzzle made up of one hundred billion pieces, each reacting to the other, and you have a glimpse of the enormity of the challenge facing researchers bent on understanding how brain cells work together to create human perception, thought, and action. Every day, over 50,000 neuroscientists around the globe collect data on just these types of neural interactions, publishing their collected facts and figures in over 300 journals and scientific assemblies worldwide. But the sheer quantity and scope of neuroscientific data means that individual researchers cannot hope to utilize but a small fraction of what is available.--Many experts -- including Dr. Daniel Gardner, a Weill Cornell Medical College Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, and Director of the College's Laboratory of Neuroinformatics -- now believe the time has come to give this community of scientists a better means of accessing -- and re-analyzing -- this vital data.
New York, NY (May 17, 2004) -- Two-years ago, Dr. Bruce McCandliss, a psychologist at the Sackler Institute of Developmental Psychobiology of Weill Cornell Medical College, introduced a reading program he co-developed into some of New York Cityâs public elementary schools. The program, known as "Reading Works," uses computer-based reading lessons, and as students have learned from the curriculum, scientists have used brain scans and other methods to monitor how their brains are changing.Now, two-years later, results from the program are coming in from children across many parts of New York City, and the preliminary data are impressive. Children involved in the program, which encompasses 20 forty-minute sessions over a period of several months, are now reading at an ability level, on average, 1.2 grades higher. And, scientists now have a better idea of how children learn to read and what keeps some from becoming proficient at it.
David W. Butler, who has served as dean of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration since 2000 and was associate dean of executive education from 1993 to 2000, has announced that he will not seek reappointment when his term ends June 30, 2005. Butler has announced he plans to go into "semi-retirement" to enjoy time with his wife and to undertake targeted professional projects. (May 17, 2004)
Right now, Cornell University planners can only dream of the campus home of Big Red hockey, Lynah Rink, doubling its seating and changing the skyline with a domed translucent-fabric or peaked plastic roof that would glow in the night sky. Yet such ambitious ideas have been inspired by Cornell students -- and they have earned credits doing it. It was merely a class project when engineering professor Ken Hover assigned his students in Civil Infrastructure Design (CEE 474) this semester the task of designing a Lynah Rink renovation that would double the seating capacity (now about 3,836) of the venerable, much-loved arena without touching the ice or the bench seats already in place. But when the students in the class presented their plans recently, Hover, a professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE), and his five fellow professorial instructors weren't the only ones paying close attention. Because an enhancement of the 47-year-old structure is on a lot of people's minds, members of Cornell's administration also came to look and listen. (May 17, 2004)
