New York, NY (August 31, 2004) -- An innovative PET "tracer" drug manufactured at Weill Cornell Medical College received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's stamp of approval this month for use in diagnosing tumors, cardiovascular problems, and centers of epileptic activity in the brain, using positron emission tomography (PET). The FDA's approval for Fludeoxyglucose F18 injection ([18F]FDG) is the second such approval in the country for this type of radiopharmaceutical application, and the first in the New York--tri-state area.
Richard Trumka, a third-generation coal miner from Pennsylvania who rose to become a leader of the AFL-CIO, the most powerful union the United States, will be this year's pre-Labor Day speaker at Cornell University. Trumka's public lecture, "What's at Stake: the Future for Working Families," on labor, the economy and the 2004 election, will take place Thursday, Sept. 2, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. in 105 Ives Hall. The talk, which is sponsored by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), is free and open to the public. (August 30, 2004)
The tricks eyes play on the mind will be revealed and explained in a Sept. 14 lecture by master illusionist Al Seckel at 7:30 p.m. in Cornell University's Call Alumni Auditorium. Titled "Your Mind's Eye: The World's Most Powerful Illusions" and sponsored by the Cornell Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, the lecture is open to the public, free of charge. Advance tickets are available from the Willard Straight Hall ticket office or the neurobiology department office, W363 Mudd Hall, (607) 254-4340. (August 30, 2004)
The fastest-growing segment of the natural food market, organic dairy products, is getting a boost from a Cornell University-U.S. Department of Agriculture program that studies experiences of upstate New York milk producers as they make the transition from conventional to organic farming.
For the first time since New York state began judging milk quality and flavor, a dairy has won a perfect 100 score to earn the 2004 Gold Medal. The dairy, Niagara Milk Cooperative (Wendt's Dairy) of Niagara, N.Y., will receive the award this morning (Aug. 30) in the Empire Room at the New York State Fair Dairy Day awards breakfast at 8:30 a.m. "Before this, no dairy has ever earned a perfect score," said Kathryn Boor, Cornell University professor of food science, who administers the milk judging. "Wendt's did everything right. They were perfect in all categories. Wendt's had exceptional hygiene, the processing equipment worked perfectly, and they brought in good milk to process. This shows they have done everything just right." (August 30, 2004)
Cornell University Police will be supporting National Stop on Red Week 2004, Aug. 30-Sept. 6, by employing selective traffic enforcement measures on campus, including extra patrols. National Stop on Red Week is dedicated to educating American motorists about the dangers of running red lights. It is sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and the American Trauma Society. Its motto is "The light is red for a reason: So stop!" (August 27, 2004)
Cornell President Jeffrey S. Lehman today (Aug. 26) issued the following statement: "I am deeply troubled and concerned about allegations that a landlord in Ithaca has grossly violated the privacy of his tenants, a number of whom are Cornell students. The safety and wellbeing of our students is of the highest importance to us. (August 26, 2004)
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)
