Until recently, the ivory-billed woodpecker was like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster -- a famed creature that for years eyewitnesses claimed to see but that science could not substantiate. This impression runs through "The Grail Bird" (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), a new book by Tim Gallagher, an editor at the Lab of Ornithology at Cornell who played a primary role in the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker, once considered extinct.
Cornell's third annual Dump & Run collection began this week on May 9. Students moving out after a hectic finals week can dump items they no longer want or cannot fit into their cars or suitcases into Dump & Run collection boxes located all over campus. Staff, faculty and community members are also encouraged to donate. Dump & Run accepts almost all donations: non-perishable food, clothing, shoes, books, electronics, kitchenware, toiletries, decorations, school supplies and more. Items not accepted are trash, foam mattress pads, underwear and socks.
Each year, CASE, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, singles out universities for awards in several areas of communications, alumni relations and fund-raising. In this year's CASE Circle of Excellence competition, Cornell Alumni Magazine received a gold medal in the Best Articles of the Year category for the feature story "Dr. Eponymous" by Brad Herzog '90, published in the March/April 2004 issue. Herzog is a regular contributor to the magazine and the author of several books. The article is a profile of Henry Heimlich '41, MD '43, the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver.
What is, typically, the most challenging part of an EzraNet project? Surprisingly, it's not the construction. It's not meeting the wide-ranging needs of multiple departments in the same building. It's not even the painstaking work of mapping out, reviewing and revising network plans. It's finding space for the telecommunications rooms.
Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) announces that a new version of the e-mail program Eudora is now available for Windows users. With its improved user interface, version 6.2.1 also fixes a security hole that could enable a specifically crafted mail message to cause Eudora to crash or to execute virus-like code simply by opening or previewing the message. If you use Eudora to access your e-mail through uPortal.Cornell, you've already been prompted to upgrade. (If you haven't yet accepted, do so.)
A "Masters in Excellence" weekend, held May 6-8 on campus, featured a symposium commemorating 350 years of Jewish history in America (and 140 years of Jewish history at Cornell) and was capped with a regale May 8 that featured the chief rabbi of the State of Israel, HaRav Yona Metzger, as speaker. It is believed to be the first visit by an Israeli chief rabbi to a U.S. university campus.
Albert Einstein was not only a great physicist, but also a lover of violin music. As part of a celebration of the World Year of Physics, which has been timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the publication of three of Einstein's most significant discoveries, the Cornell Department of Physics will present a combined lecture and concert Saturday, May 14, from 2:30 to 4 p.m. in Barnes Hall on the Cornell campus.
A series of events sponsored by Cornell University's Department of Physics and Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP) and other Cornell outreach programs along with the Tompkins County Public Library and the Ithaca Sciencenters are helping mark the World Year of Physics, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's revolutionary scientific breakthroughs in the year 1905.
A. Martin Petrovic, professor of turf grass in the Department of Horticulture at Cornell University, is the winner of a 2005 Environmental Quality Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The awards honor individuals and organizations "for their outstanding efforts to protect the environment in New York."
Cornell University has announced the creation of a scholarship for deaf, hearing impaired and/or people fluent in American Sign Language that will provide free tuition for Cornell Outdoor Education (COE) class offerings. Qualified Cornell students, community members and members of the general public are all eligible for this new scholarship. The Moving Hands Scholarship is the result of a gift from the Figure Foundation of Bethel, Maine. It is an outgrowth of an earlier, successful scholarship providing free tuition to members of the deaf community for wilderness first-aid training at COE.
Cornell students will head next week to the nation's capital to compete as semifinalists in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) First Annual P3 (People, Prosperity, Planet) Award.
