Thousands of volunteers have a new assignment from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology – documenting the impact of West Nile virus while counting birds for the 2002-03 season of Project FeederWatch.
Excessive noise, such as jet aircraft flying overhead, impairs children's reading ability and long-term memory, a Cornell University environmental psychologist and his European colleagues conclude in a study of schoolchildren living near airports. "This is the first long-term study of the same children before and after airports near them opened and closed. It nails down that it is almost certain that noise is causing the differences in children's ability to learn to read," says Gary Evans, an international expert on environmental stress, such as noise, crowding and air pollution. (October 7, 2002)
Working wives in late midlife are five times more likely to retire early to care for ill or disabled husbands than wives who are not caregivers, according to a new study by Cornell University sociologists. However, the study found, when men are caregivers, they are slower to retire than those who are not taking care of their wives. (October 4, 2002)
Cornell University engineering graduate Irwin Jacobs '54, founder and chief executive of telecommunications giant Qualcomm, will deliver the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Distinguished Lecture Thursday, Oct. 10. The lecture is the first in a series to commemorate the centennial of the establishment of the local chapter of IEEE. His talk will focus on "The Third Generation of Wireless Communications." The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be at 5 p.m. in 101 Phillips Hall on the Cornell campus. (October 3, 2002)
CHICAGO -- Prominent national architects and city planners will lay out their visions of public places and private spaces in the 21st century at a conference, "Public Places, Private Spaces and People's Lives," in Chicago on Oct. 4-5 sponsored by the President's Council of Cornell Women, a Cornell University alumnae group. One of the highlights of the meeting will be a presentation by New York architect Jill Lerner, co-chair of the Civic Alliance Memorials Committee and the New York Visions Memorial Committee, an open process to develop a plan for the memorials at the World Trade Center site in New York. She will speak Friday afternoon on the debate over rebuilding the trade center or building a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The conference also will address many other issues -- from urban development and public policy to America's new communities. (October 3, 2002)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A Cornell University astronomer told a House of Representatives space subcommittee today that Washington should spend $125 million for a new type of ground-based telescope that could detect hundreds of asteroids and numerous comets that pose a potential threat to the Earth from space over the next century. Reporting on a government-commissioned review of solar system exploration by some of the nation's leading scientists, he said that the new wide-field telescope is needed to produce a weekly digital map of the visible sky in order to track space rocks called near-Earth objects (NEOs), the great majority of which have yet to be discovered. There is, he said, a 1 percent probability of an impact with Earth by a 300-meter-diameter (350 yards) body in the next 100 years, resulting in many deaths and widespread devastation. (October 3, 2002)
The publication of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in April 1953 by a pair of Cambridge biologists named James Watson and Francis Crick set the stage for a revolution in the way we study living organisms.
Carl E. Wieman, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, will discuss a new form of matter that occurs at record cold temperatures in a nontechnical talk on the Cornell University campus Oct. 9. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be given at 7:30 p.m. in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall. Wieman, a Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, will be presenting the second of his two Bethe Lectures at Cornell. (October 2, 2002)
To commemorate its centennial, Cornell University's Department of Food Science will hold a symposium, "Building on a Century of Excellence: Food Science at Cornell University," on Oct. 13-15. The symposium opens Oct. 13, at noon, in 204 Stocking Hall on campus with poster presentations. At 3 p.m. there will be an overview of the past century's work and achievements, discussed by David K. Bandler, Cornell emeritus professor of food science. (October 2, 2002)
One of the most important exhibits in the history of Cornell University's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art will be on display from Oct. 12 through Jan. 12, 2003. "The David M. Solinger Collection: Masterworks of Twentieth-Century Art" includes the promised gift of nine masterpieces of modern art to the museum's permanent collection from Betty Ann Besch Solinger, Lynn Stern and the family of the late David M. Solinger, Cornell Class of 1926. The exhibition includes 98 works of art, including a monumental nude by Pablo Picasso, nine watercolors by Paul Klee, major sculptures by Alberto Giacometti and Alexander Calder and "much, much more," said Frank Robinson, the Richard J. Schwartz Director of the museum. (October 2, 2002)
Michael C. Ruettgers, executive chairman of EMC Corp., will speak at Cornell University Wednesday, Oct. 9, at 5 p.m. in Barnes Hall auditorium. As CEO of EMC from 1992 to 2001, Ruettgers presided over enormous growth, driving the company to become the world leader in computer information storage systems. He was named one of the world's top 25 executives by Business Week and one of the best CEOs in America by Worth magazine. His company, which has built a reputation for being fanatically devoted to customer service, was named "world's most customer-centric company" in Fast Company magazine. Ruettgers' talk, "Managing Trust: The Acid Test of Leadership," is part of the Johnson Graduate School of Management Park Leadership Speaker series and is free and open to the public. (October 2, 2002)
The Tompkins County Sheriff's Office and Cornell Police are conducting a joint investigation to find a graduate student from Cornell University who has been reported missing. Ritesh S. Shetty, 24, who resides at 114 Summerhill Drive in the town of Ithaca, was reported missing to Cornell Police Sept. 26 by his housemates, after they had not seen him for several days. A native of Bombay, India, he is a graduate student in chemical engineering who has been studying at Cornell since the fall of 1999. (September 30, 2002)
