NEW YORK (JUNE 16, 2005) -- In a successful procedure today at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/The Allen Pavilion, a robot for the first time functioned as an independent assistant to the surgical team by handing and retrieving surgical instruments. The robot performed all of its assigned functions properly, a key validation of this important new technology and a dramatic demonstration of the potential for automation in the operating room.The robot, known as the Penelopeª Surgical Instrument Server (SIS), uses innovative technology to identify surgical instruments, hand them to the surgeon, retrieve them and put them back in place. This new robot was designed and developed by Robotic Surgical Tech, Inc. (RST) of New York. The procedure performed was the removal of a benign tumor on the forearm.
SEATTLE -- You know those squishy childrenÕs toys with elasticized bands connecting sticks that bounce back to shape when crushed? It takes some complicated mathematics to figure out how to make such structures. "You need a calculation that will guarantee the stability of the structure," said Robert Connelly, professor and chair of Cornell UniversityÕs mathematics department. "You can find a whole class of these things. If you satisfy the stability condition, then you can build it, and it will always hold its shape." The structures are called tensegrities -- for tension with integrity -- that form interesting geometric shapes, like dodecahedra (made from 12 regular pentagons). Connelly, who builds such toys based on these principles, described them to an audience at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science today (Feb. 14) in Seattle.
David Lelyveld, a historian of South Asia and Islam, has been named executive director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell.
How much children learn in school depends in good measure on the attitudes and values of the surrounding community -- and on how much those values are shared by the children themselves -- education experts agreed at a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Philadelphia.
Just when the recording, music and publishing industries are going all-out to stop people from making their products available on the Internet, a new publishing venture at Cornell University is challenging traditional scholarly publishing by taking the opposite approach: Make the full text of a new book freely available on the Internet, and give readers the option to buy the printed book.
In a new book, The Deep Hot Biosphere, Cornell professor emeritus of astronomy Thomas Gold argues that subterranean bacteria started the whole evolutionary process, and that there's no looming energy shortage because oil reserves are far greater than predicted.
Charles H. Moore, Cornell's director of athletics and physical education for the past four years, will retire when a search for his successor is completed, university officials announced today.
Stephen H. Weiss '57, a presidential councilor and a board-elected member of the Cornell Board of Trustees for 24 years, including eight as chair, died on Wednesday, April 16, at age 72. (April 17, 2008)
A chemistry symposium in honor of the 75th birthday of Harold Scheraga, Cornell University professor of chemistry emeritus, will be held Saturday, Oct. 19, in Baker Laboratory on the Cornell campus.