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James Krumhansl, Cornell physicist, dies at age 84

James A. Krumhansl, a professor of physics emeritus at Cornell University who led the scientific community's opposition to the superconducting supercollider in the 1980s, died May 6 in Hanover, N.H. He was 84. It was while Krumhansl was president-elect of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1987 that he testified before Congress that the supercollider should not be built if the cost would penalize superconductivity research funding. Although Krumhansl, who became president of the APS in 1989, was not speaking for the society, his words carried great weight with Congress, which in 1993 halted the project after14 miles of tunneling were completed and two billion dollars spent. (May 12, 2004)

Demise of Finger Lakes cicadas is indicator of how urbanization is devastating about-to-emerge 17-year brood

Any day now, Brood X, the largest, most prolific brood of 17-year cicadas, will emerge from the ground and cut a swath across the Eastern seaboard. But many won't even make it to the surface: While the cicada nymphs have been developing into adults underground, their habitats have been paved over by parking lots, enormous shopping malls and large tracts of homes. (May 12, 2004)

Lighting-efficiency experts to counsel New York consumers May 19 in distance-learning event at 10 Cooperative Extension offices

New York state consumers can discover ways to improve lighting efficiency in a special distance-learning event Wednesday, May 19, at 7 p.m. at 10 Cornell Cooperative Extension sites throughout the state. The event will feature interactions with experts in residential and small-business lighting energy efficiency. The Energy Town Meeting, sponsored by Cornell University and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), will allow consumers to watch presentations over an Internet broadband connection and then ask questions of the experts. (May 11, 2004)

Women with diabetes at high risk for cardiovascular disease, yet prevention, diagnosis, and treatment is inadequate

New York, NY (May 10, 2004) -- Women with diabetes are at greater risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) than men with diabetes and persons without diabetes -- yet prevention and treatment of CVD in women with diabetes is inadequate, according to an article authored by a NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center physician-scientist and published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine.The risk of heart attack is 150 percent greater in women with diabetes than in women without diabetes, but only 50 percent greater in men with diabetes versus men without the disease. Women with diabetes are also more likely to have hypertension than are men with the disease.

Head-cooling device prevents brain damage in oxygen-deprived infants, says new study

A head-cooling device called CoolCap prevents brain damage in some oxygen-deprived newborn babies, providing the first evidence in humans that many birth-related neurological problems can be reversed.

On Mother's Day, a hopeful finding for single mothers and their children from a Cornell researcher

Mothers can be a positive influence in their children's lives, whether or not they are single parents. A new multiethnic study at Cornell University has found that being a single parent does not appear to have a negative effect on the behavior or educational performance of a mother's 12- and 13-year-old children. What mattered most in this study, Cornell researcher Henry Ricciuti says, is a mother's education and ability level and, to a lesser extent, family income and quality of the home environment. He found consistent links between these maternal attributes and a child's school performance and behavior, whether the family was white, black or Hispanic. (May 06, 2004)

U.S. student engineers, back from world's poorest communities,bringing stories of hope to New York City on May 12

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- No longer the "me generation," American engineering students are actively taking on some of the world's toughest problems. A Cornell University-based national engineering service organization will bring stories of students and professional engineers working to improve the lot of some of the world's poorest communities, many in the developing world, to New York City next week. The group, Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), will host students and supporters from across the United States at the Mezzanine Conference Room, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, at 5:30 p.m. May 12. The event, which will be both fund-raiser and a call for volunteers, will feature students recently returned from Bosnia, South Africa and Nigeria describing their community-service engineering projects that have made a big difference in people's lives by enabling self-help, making the projects sustainable. (May 06, 2004)

Tri-Institutional Research Program executive director is chosen to lead Cornell's College of Human Ecology

Lisa Staiano-Coico, executive director of the Tri-Institutional Research Program (TIRP) and vice provost for medical affairs at Cornell University, has been selected as dean of the College of Human Ecology at Cornell. Since 2003, Staiano-Coico's work as executive director of the New York-based TIRP has put her at the helm of an alliance encompassing New York City's Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College, as well as Cornell's main campus in Ithaca. Established in 2000 with a $160 million gift, TIRP's collaborative research is focused in three areas -- chemical biology, computational biology, and cancer and developmental biology -- with tri-institutional graduate training programs offered in chemical biology, computational biology and medicine. (May 06, 2004)

Leading writers and journalists to speak at Cornell May 10 at student-organized conference on communicating science

Graduate students at Cornell University want to make their campus and their surrounding communities more aware of the power of science and the role that science and technology play in decision-making in Washington and the world at large. To spread this awareness, they have invited leading authors and journalists to a one-day conference on campus, May 10, on science communication. The students and their faculty adviser, Cornell professor of applied mathematics Steven Strogatz, author of the recently published book Sync and a well-known science communicator himself, are inviting all interested people on and off campus to attend the conference. The featured writers, including Ivan Amato, author of Stuff: The Materials the World is Made Of, and journalists Rick Weiss (a 1974 Cornell graduate) of The Washington Post and Robert Krulwich of ABC News, will describe the problems and rewards of successful science communication. The conference will be held in Sage Hall B-09, beginning at 10 a.m. There is no charge. (May 05, 2004)

Cornell undergraduates learn about lives of migrant workers in new course that emphasizes person-to-person contact

Cornell University undergraduates can take courses in everything from canine genetics to elementary Pali (the language of Theravaada Buddhist texts). To this rich assortment add one on migrant farmworkers, a course believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation. "The course is intended to provide a very broad and eclectic perspective on the world of migrant, rural laborers, primarily from the Caribbean and mainland Latin America who work in central and upstate New York," says Ray Craib, assistant professor of history and the primary coordinator of the course. (May 5, 2004)

Applicants sought for Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship Program for '04-'05

The Cornell Public Service Center is currently seeking applications for the fourth annual Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship Program. This initiative enables the Cornell Public Service Center to initiate collaborative relationships between Cornell University and the local community, and it allows the center to award $5,000 to each selected fellow. (May 4, 2004)

Paradise frost: Cornell creates ice cream, 'Bailey's Creme with Henry's Crunch,' for agriculture college's centennial celebration

It took 100 years to develop, but this multi-flavored melange was worth the wait. To celebrate the centennial of Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), the university's dairy has created an ice cream it calls Bailey's Creme with Henry's Crunch. Its flavor is Irish cream and it is combined with dark chocolate flakes, caramel and peanuts. The ice cream will be unveiled -- with free samples -- on May 12 following an afternoon parade across the campus to celebrate the college's centennial. (May 4, 2004)