The 2000 census showed that 56 million people live in rural America, accounting for about 20 percent of the U.S. population. Rural America is going through substantial change. A new book, Challenges for Rural America in the 21st Century, examines rural people and communities and the disadvantages they suffer in quality-of-life measures.
There are as many versions to an event as there are witnesses, said James Turner, Cornell professor of Africana Studies and moderator for a panel discussion April 19 on the Willard Straight Hall takeover of 1969.
Two years ago a 14-year-old boy in Genoa, N.Y., stood atop a mound of corn while unloading a tractor-trailer on the family farm. Suddenly the truck's unloading trough opened and he was engulfed by grain, and sank as if in quicksand. John Ducey, chief of the Genoa Fire Department, recalls that the boy "had swallowed and breathed in corn" and it appeared that "his time was about done."
Scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are asking the public to help monitor the impact on native birds of invasive species, such as the house sparrow, by participating in a citizen-science project called The Birdhouse Network.
The U.S. government is causing economic harm through its ownership or support of firms and services that compete with private enterprise, such as the U.S. Post Office, Fannie Mae and Amtrak, says a new book edited by a Cornell University professor. The government-affiliated and quasi-government services benefit from competitive advantages over private firms that foster a wide range of potentially harmful effects to the economy and taxpayers, says the book, Competing with the Government: Anticompetitive Behavior and Public Enterprises (Hoover Institution Press, 2004). The editor and author of two of the four chapters is R. Richard Geddes, an associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell. The other chapter authors are David E. M. Sappington of the University of Florida and National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and J. Gregory Sidak and Peter J. Wallison, both of the American Enterprise Institute. (April 21, 2004)
ARECIBO, P.R.. -- The Arecibo Observatory telescope, the largest and most sensitive single dish radio telescope in the world, is about to get a good deal more sensitive. Today (Wednesday, April 21) the telescope got a new "eye on the sky" that will turn the huge dish, operated by Cornell University for the National Science Foundation, into the equivalent of a seven-pixel radio camera. (April 21, 2004)
A conference titled "Affirmative Action and Higher Education in 2004 and Beyond" will take place Friday, April 23, at Cornell University. Legal scholars, sociologists and lawyers from Cornell and other universities will look at such issues as what the Supreme Court meant in its rulings last summer when it disallowed allotting points for race in a University of Michigan undergraduate admissions case, but seemed to permit considering race as a factor in a graduate admissions case at Michigan. Since that time, admissions offices across the country have been working to comply with the law, while still pursuing racial equality and diversity in the classes they admit. The conference seeks to share some of their strategies and answer questions that have arisen since the ruling. (April 20, 2004)
Three Cornell University faculty members are winners of prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship awards for 2004. They are among 185 artists, scholars and scientists from the United States and Canada selected from more than 3,200 applicants for this year's 80th annual competition totaling $6,912,000. The winners from Cornell in include two members of the Department of English and a member of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. They are Edwin A. (Todd) Cowen, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; Roger Gilbert, professor of English; and Douglas Mao, associate professor of English. (April 20, 2004)
Industry's productivity losses from employee absenteeism due to illness have been well and frequently documented. Now researchers have documented another productivity headache increasingly affecting employers: on-the-job slowdowns by workers with a variety of medical complaints, from hypertension to arthritis. Economists have coined a new word to describe the productivity-loss problem: presenteeism. (April 20, 2004)
A labyrinth is not a maze but a spiral-like, purposeful path that meanders to a center and provides personal and spiritual benefits, advocates say. This spring, the Cornell University community will be introduced to the concept of labyrinths and their use for walking meditations. A special exhibit, "Labyrinths for Peace," will open Friday, April 23, in Room 3330 of the Carol Tatkon Center in Balch Hall, with an opening reception and refreshments at 3:30 p.m. and presentations beginning at 4 p.m. Speakers at the event will include: David Gallagher, the executive director of the national Labyrinth Society, founded in 1998, who will discuss the origins and history of labyrinths around the world; Janet Shortall, associate director of Cornell United Religious Work (CURW), who will recount her experience with the labyrinth concept; and Wai-Kwong Wong, a psychotherapist at Gannett: University Health Services, who will discuss the psychological and health benefits of walking a labyrinth. The Tatkon Center exhibition will be in place through May 22. (April 19, 2004)
Anu Rangarajan, Cornell University associate professor of horticulture, has been named director of the university's Small Farms Program. She succeeds R. David Smith, Cornell associate professor of animal science, who has been appointed interim director of the New York Farm Viability Institute. The Small Farms Program helps New York farmers and small-farm organizations through research, education and extension. It provides workshops in professional development, a reference Web site and a Cornell Cooperative Extension grant program for innovative small-farm projects. In 2003 the program launched the Small Farm Quarterly, which now reaches 63,000 farm and rural families across the Northeast. (April 19, 2004)
