The Alumni Association of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University will honor eight alumni at the association's annual alumni awards banquet Friday, Oct. 13.
Cornell biologists have shown how tiny molecular motors carrying target proteins help orient the spindle-like apparatus that transfers genetic material from the nucleus of a mother cell to the daughter. The research explains an essential mechanism in the birth of a new cell, and how failures of molecular motors can have dire consequences for new cell formation.
Sixteen years of hard work and setbacks have taught Professor Emeritus Richard B. Fischer what it takes to make the bluebird of happiness happy: Location, location, location. And a few amenities.
The genetic mechanism that through millennia of evolution has created plump and juicy fruits and vegetables could also be involved in the proliferation of human cancer cells. Plant biologists and computer scientists at Cornell University have essentially made a direct genetic connection between the evolutionary processes involved in plant growth and the processes involved in the growth of mammalian tumors.
Surveying aquatic life from the Great Lakes to small ponds, ecologists at Cornell and the Institute of Ecosystem Studies have found that food-chain length — the number of mouths food passes through on the way to the top predators — is determined by the size of an ecosystem, not by the amount of available food energy.
As unpleasant as it is, the nausea and vomiting of "morning sickness" experienced by two-thirds of pregnant women is Mother Nature's way of protecting mothers and fetuses from food-borne illness and also shielding the fetus from chemicals that can deform fetal organs at the most critical time in development.
In this shrink-wrapped, vacuum-packed, pre-cooked world, Cornell University is striving to keep a strong agricultural connection active in the minds of 21st century children. The university's Agriculture in the Classroom program has developed the New York "Kids Growing Foods" school-garden program, and this spring grants are being awarded to 34 elementary schools in the state to establish or maintain these gardens.
New York's other World Series team, the Sapsuckers from the Laboratory of Ornithology, are scanning the skies of the Garden State in hopes that 2000 will be the year they finally take top honors in the World Series of Birding.
Cornell President Hunter Rawlings announced on April 27 that he will submit to the Executive Committee of the Cornell Board of Trustees his nomination of Susan A. Henry, dean of the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon University, as the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Cornell's New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
