A two-day international conference at Cornell March 28 and 29 examines what many see as a major stumbling block to the success of future African development -- gender equality and women's access to higher education. CEPARRED (the Pan African Studies and Research Center in International Relations and Education for Development), based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, is sponsoring the conference in collaboration with Cornell's Poverty, Inequality and Development Initiative (PIDI). "Women and Higher Education in Africa: Engendering Human Capital and Upgrading Human Right to Schooling," is free and open to the public. (March 26, 2002)
Lessons from a world-renowned economist and a leading hospitality executive are the focus of Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC) this April 4-7, reflecting a shift in what's being emphasized in education at the world's premier hotel school. The gala gathering at Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, now in its 77th year, will feature a range of educational events, including talks by economist Alfred E. Kahn on the state of the economy, and Jonathan Tisch, CEO of Loews Hotels and chair of the Travel Business Roundtable, on the hospitality industry post-Sept. 11. (March 26, 2002)
Edward M. Scolnick, president of Merck Research Laboratories (MRL) and executive vice president for science and technology of MRL's parent, Merck & Co. Inc., will give a public talk, Wednesday, April 3.
Angela King, adviser on gender issues and the advancement of women to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is the keynote speaker at a major international symposium on the AIDS pandemic March 29-30 in 700 Clark Hall on Cornell University's campus. It is free and open to the public. "AIDS Symposium, 2002: Global Problem, Shared Responsibility" begins Friday at 7 p.m. with the talk by King, who also is U.N. assistant secretary-general. The event's key sponsors are Cornell's Institute for African Development, Latin American Studies Program and South Asia Program. The symposium follows a Cornell conference March 28-29 on a related topic, women's need for access to higher education in Africa. (March 25, 2002)
To shed light on the ethical debates sparked by Patrick Tierney's book Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon , Cornell University will host a three-day public conference April 5-7, 2002 that includes speakers from the Yanomami tribes of Brazil and Venezuela as well as leading anthropologists and cultural-rights activists. Organizers hope the conference will provide an important missing element of this ongoing debate about the ethics of native research -- namely, the Yanomami themselves. The conference, "Amazon Tragedy: Yanomami Voices, Academic Controversy and the Ethics of Research," begins Friday, April 5, at 3:15 p.m. in the David H. Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall (March 25, 2002)
Cornell University Police will operate a sobriety checkpoint on campus between March 25 and May 4. This checkpoint was originally scheduled for the weekend of March 8 but was postponed due to bad weather. (March 25, 2002)
The University Lecture Series at Cornell presents the following free public talks: Friday, March 29, at 4 p.m. in the A.D. White House Guerlac Room: Marcia Landy, professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and a leading authority on cinema, visual culture and politics, will deliver a talk, "The Dream of the Gesture: Todd Haynes' Films and the Body of/in Cinema." Haynes, a filmmaker, is director of "Poison," "Safe" and "Velvet Goldmine." Thursday, April 4, at 4:30 p.m. in Kaufmann Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall: Herbert Tucker, professor of English literature at the University of Virginia, will deliver a lecture, "Sweet to Tongue and Sound to Eye: The Virtual Orality of Rossetti's Goblin Marketing." Christina Rossetti's poem "Goblin Market," published in 1862, is one of the most frequently and variously interpreted works in its genre. (March 25, 2002)
"Biocomplexity in the Environment: A 21st Century Odyssey" will be the topic April 16 for Rita R. Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), when she will be the 2002 Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecturer at Cornell.
The role of the hormone estrogen in protecting the female heart from enlargement and ultimate failure has been partly explained by studies with genetically engineered mice, according to researchers at Cornell and Vanderbilt universities. Authors of the report in the latest issue of Nature (March 21, 2002), "Oestrogen protects FKBP12.6 mice from cardiac hypertrophy," used the newly developed mouse "model" for an enlarged heart muscle to help explain estrogen's important role in preventing female cardiac hypertrophy -- extreme stress on the heart that is an early sign of congestive heart failure. However, the researchers say, much more research is needed into the complex causes of heart-muscle enlargement, a condition that leads to cardiac hypertrophy. (March 22, 2002)
Good decisions can be made at warp speed -- if you know how to bypass biases and embrace the opportunity that pressure offers -- say a Cornell University business school professor and a Wharton consultant in a new book. Described by Harvard Business Review as a "comprehensive, well-balanced guide" to decision-making, the book Winning Decisions (Doubleday Currency, 2002) by Professors J. Edward Russo and Paul Schoemaker takes decades of groundbreaking research on how people make decisions and delivers a four-step framework for making good decisions quickly. (March 21, 2002)
New York, NY (March 18, 2002) - Despite having a potentially life-threatening condition, a large proportion of patients with hypertension (high blood pressure) are unaware of the full importance of systolic blood pressure (the upper number in a blood pressure reading) in the control and prevention of disease, according to a study presented today at the 51st Annual Scientific Sessions of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta."Improved recognition of the importance of systolic blood pressure has been identified as a major public health challenge," said primary investigator Susan A. Oliveria, Sc.D., M.P.H., Assistant Professor of Public Health at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and Assistant Attending Epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "Yet this survey indicates that many patients lack the basic knowledge about the importance of systolic blood pressure that would help them achieve better blood pressure control and reduce the potential for more serious conditions."
