Kinniya Hospital on the east coast of Sri Lanka was destroyed by the Dec. 26 tsunami, and its 40 patients and hospital staff are missing. It was just one of many buildings poorly prepared for actual disaster. In the weeks and months ahead, scientists and engineers will be studying damage sites all over the island to evaluate the power of the tidal wave and recommend new construction standards to help such buildings withstand the expected stresses. A new Web site at Cornell University is giving researchers the information they need as well as helping relief workers do their jobs on the devastated island. The creator of the site hopes it will serve as a model for the distribution of information in future disasters. (January 24, 2005)
Steven D. Tanksley, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics, is the winner of the prestigious 2005 Kumho Science International Award in Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. The $30,000 prize is the world's largest in the field of plant molecular biology. The prize, awarded by the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology (ISPMB), is for Tanksley's pioneering work in genome mapping, comparative genomics and marker-assisted breeding of crop plants. (January 24, 2005)
At its meetings in New York City Friday, Jan. 21, and Saturday, Jan. 22, the Cornell University Board of Trustees approved a set of planning parameters for the 2005-06 budget that calls for a 4.3 percent tuition increase for most students in the endowed colleges. (January 24, 2005)
The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University has opened a search for a new director of the Cornell Migrant Program and is welcoming e-mailed nominations or inquiries at . (January 21, 2005)
A melody of staccato piano notes sings out from the speakers of Victor K. Wong's desktop computer. But it is not a melody made by Bach, or Liberace, or even Alicia Keys. It is the melody of color. Wong, a Cornell University graduate student from Hong Kong who lost his sight in a road accident at age seven, is helping to develop innovative software that translates color into sound. (January 21, 2005)
Cornell University Vice President Tommy Bruce has issued the following statement on the proposal by Northwest Airlines to bring new air service to Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport.
If there ever were a teachable moment when it comes to tsunamis, physics and fault lines, that moment is now. And Cornell University graduate student Evan Variano is making sure it's not lost. In the wake of the devastating Asian tsunami, he's taking a lesson plan he has developed -- and a portable teaching device -- to high schools in the Ithaca and Rochester areas. (January 18, 2005)
A Cornell University research group has made a sweet and environmentally beneficial discovery -- how to make plastics from citrus fruits, such as oranges, and carbon dioxide. In a paper published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (Sept. 2004), Geoffrey Coates, a Cornell professor of chemistry and chemical biology, and his graduate students Chris Byrne and Scott Allen describe a way to make polymers using limonene oxide and carbon dioxide, with the help of a novel "helper molecule" -- a catalyst developed in the researchers' laboratory. (January 17, 2005)
The Cornell University Board of Trustees will hold its first meetings of 2005 at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, Jan. 21 and 22. (January 18, 2005)
Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences, launched a monthlong trip in Asia by signing a memorandum of understanding with Dr. S.A. Patil, vice chancellor of the University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad, India, on Jan. 11. It is the third such agreement that CALS has established with universities in southern and western India. (January 17, 2005)
Cornell University's Department of Astronomy is inviting the general public and the media to witness, on NASA-TV, the historic first landing of the Huygens probe on the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, at an open house tomorrow, Friday, Jan. 14. (January 13, 2005)
Cornell University researchers have created a video simulation of the deadly Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami that shows in graphic detail how the massive wave system spread outward from the epicenter of an undersea earthquake northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia. The simulation makes it clear how the tsunami struck the coastlines of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India with such devastating force, then continued as far as East Africa. (January 12, 2005)
