A research team at Cornell University has succeeded in converting nitrogen into ammonia using a long-predicted process that has challenged scientists for decades. The achievement involves using a zirconium metal complex to add hydrogen atoms to the nitrogen molecule and convert it to ammonia, without the need for high temperatures or high pressure. (February 18, 2004)
People lie, research has shown, in one-fourth of their daily, social interactions. But according to Cornell University communications researchers, people are most likely to lie on the telephone. In fact, the researchers say, phone fibbing is even more likely than when people use e-mail, instant messaging or even speak face-to-face. (February 18, 2004)
Acclaimed contemporary Israeli novelist Ronit Matalon will read from her work Sunday, Feb. 22, at Tompkins County Library and will be at Cornell University Monday, Feb. 23, to deliver a talk, "Writing, Desire and Two Billion Hungry People." Both events are free and open to the public. The Feb. 22 reading is at 2:30 p.m. in the library's Borg Warner Room. The Feb. 23 talk at Cornell is at 4:30 p.m. in White Hall, Room 106. "Ronit's visit offers the Cornell community a window onto the vibrancy of Israeli literature and culture," said Deborah Starr, an assistant professor in Near Eastern studies. "Her talk will also offer insights into the role of public intellectuals in Israeli society." (February 17, 2004)
When Thomas W. Simons Jr. participated in a Peace Studies Program seminar at Cornell University in 2002, he made such a powerful impression on students and faculty that it was only natural to invite him back to campus again as soon as possible. Now Simons, former United States Ambassador to Poland and Pakistan, has returned for a two-week visit as the first Provost's Visiting Professor at Cornell, and he will deliver a lecture titled "Islam, 9/11 and Iraq" Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 5 p.m. in Alice Statler Auditorium of Statler Hall on campus. The talk is free and open to the public. (February 17, 2004)
Dr. Joseph Fins, professor of medicine in psychiatry and chief of the Medical Ethics Division at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, will deliver a talk titled "Back to the Future: Cultures of Death and Dying in America," Thursday, Feb. 19, at 4 p.m. in the Guerlac Room. of the Andrew Dickson White House on the Cornell campus. The keynote presentation inaugurates the Society for the Humanities at Cornell's inter-disciplinary colloquium, "Humanism at the Cross-Roads," a collaboration among faculty members at Cornell's Ithaca campus and the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. (February 17, 2004)
Columbia University Professor Manning Marable, an eminent historian and one of the most influential interpreters of the black experience in America, will be visiting the Cornell University campus to deliver the 2004 Martin Luther King Jr. guest lecture as well as a Sage Chapel sermon. Marable's talks, listed here, are free and open to the public. Sunday, Feb. 22, 11 a.m., Sage Chapel: "When the Spirit Moves: Black Faith and the Struggle for Freedom." Monday, Feb. 23, 4:45 p.m., Sage Chapel: Martin Luther King Jr. speaker, "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dream Deferred." (February 16, 2004)
The ninth annual convocation of the Cornell Commitment, March 5, on the Cornell University campus will feature a public talk by Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). Williams will give an address titled "The Power of One: An Individual's Impact on Social and Political Change," during the convocation, which begins at 7:30 p.m. in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall. (February 16, 2004)
Keith "Wonderboy" Johnson and the Spiritual Voices out of New York City will headline the 28th annual Festival of Black Gospel at Cornell University, Saturday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Hall on campus. Admission for the performance is $4. Saturday's concert is just one of the features of this year's festival -- Friday, Feb. 20, to Sunday, Feb. 22 -- which include a three-on-three basketball tournament, the concert by the featured artists, the annual Mass Choir and a Sunday service. (February 16, 2004)
Combining the bright laser light of multiphoton microscopy with specially developed dyes and a phenomenon called second-harmonic generation, biophysicists at Cornell and Université de Rennes, France, have made high-resolution images of millisecond-by-millisecond signaling through nerve cells.
New York, NY (February 12, 2004) -- Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have discovered that injecting a growth factor called PDGF-AB along with bone marrow cells into the heart can cause new heart cells to grow in scar tissue. The research, conducted in an animal model, has just been published in the "Online First" section of Circulation Research (March 19 print and online issue).The finding may one day lead to better treatments for heart attack, which can cause portions of the heart to die and form scar tissue. Many researchers are trying to use stem cells -- which are immature cells found in bone marrow -- to replace cells that are dead or damaged after a heart attack.
SEATTLE -- Most agronomists look to their laboratories, greenhouses or research farms for innovative new cropping techniques. But Jane Mt. Pleasant, professor of horticulture and director of the American Indian Program at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., has taken a different path, mining her Iroquois heritage for planting and cultivation methods that work for today's farmers. Mt. Pleasant studies what traditionally are known as the "three sisters": beans, corn and squash. These staples of Iroquois cropping are traditionally grown together on a single plot, mimicking natural systems in what agronomists call a polyculture. Though the Iroquois technique was not developed scientifically, Mt. Pleasant notes that it is "agronomically sound." The three sisters cropping system embodies all the things needed to make crops grow in the Northeast, she says. (February 11, 2004)
If today's global statistics of more than 3 billion malnourished people are worrisome, try projecting 50 years into the future, when Earth's population could exceed 12 billion and there could be even less water and land, per capita, to grow food.
