Charles E. Palm, Cornell dean of the College of Agriculture from 1959 to 1972 and the university's first Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Agricultural Sciences, died Feb. 25 at the Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca. He was 84. As a true leader and innovator in many scientific and academic fronts.
A new study of upstate New York's economy by three Cornell University faculty members confirms that the region continues to lag behind much of the rest of the nation and, as a result, is losing its best and brightest young people to regions with more better-paying jobs in vibrant urban centers. The only bright spots in the otherwise bleak report are higher education and health care. The report quantifies how the region has never fully rebounded from the deindustrialization that began in the 1970s and continues to the present. Today, upstate remains far behind the national average in income and job growth, with average wages rising little more than 2 percent from 1980 to 2000, compared with 15 percent in the rest of the nation. However, the report also shows that jobs in the region are beginning to diversify -- a positive change. The researchers call for concerted state policy efforts backed by federal support to spur further economic health. (March 18, 2004)
Events this week include piano improvisations in Bailey Hall, coffee and birds at the Lab of Ornithology, Judy's Day at Cornell Plantations, and a regional cancer and environment forum. (Sept. 17, 2009)
Chemical biologists at Cornell have pioneered a new imaging technique that offers researchers a new way to observe the working of therapeutic drugs within single cancer cells.
Cornell astronomers, observing what they call "the most boring, average galaxy" they could find, have discovered some unusual mechanics: counter- rotating stars in a spiral galaxy.
Mann Library is on the verge of selling its 100th Library in a Box, formally called The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library. The equivalent of an entire room's worth of print journals all compressed onto CDs provides some 2.2 million pages of academic articles to 100 institutions in 50 developing countries, from Vietnam, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to Senegal, Ethiopia and Malawi to Honduras, Bolivia and Peru.
An interdisciplinary, regional conference entirely organized and conducted by Cornell graduate students will be held on campus May 7-9 in Room 401 Warren Hall. The Second Annual Great Lakes Graduate Conference in Political Economy.
Catherine Oertel, a postdoctoral fellow in materials chemistry at Cornell and an organist herself, is researching what is corroding Baroque-era organs in churches and cathedrals across Europe.
Some of the hottest debates raging in America today hinge on the extent to which governments can, or should, regulate human relationships. Should states hold parents accountable for their children's crimes? Restrict no-fault divorces? Prohibit same-sex marriages? Addressing such questions, commentators often lament the loss of propriety that prevailed early in this century, when more families were intact, more morals adhered to.
Cornell has established an Office of Distance Learning to explore ways to extend the boundaries of the university through the use of communication technologies.