Boyce D. McDaniel, the Cornell University physicist and Manhattan Project scientist who gave the atomic bomb its final check before the first test at Trinity site in July 1945, died of a heart attack May 8 in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 84. McDaniel's faculty career at Cornell spanned 56 years. But his professional start was sudden and dramatic. In 1943, as a newly fledged Ph.D., McDaniel was hired, at $250 a month working 10- to 15-hour days at a secret facility in Los Alamos, N.M., to conduct nuclear physics research on a device nicknamed "the gadget." The device was the atomic bomb, and McDaniel had been hired as a protégé of Robert Bacher, one of several Cornell physicists assigned to the Manhattan Project. The young McDaniel would play a critical role on physicist Robert Wilson's cyclotron research team, which helped identify the amount of the isotope uranium-235 (U-235) needed to create the atomic fission to detonate the world's first nuclear weapon. (May 15, 2002)
Look, Professor, no wires! More and more colleges are installing wireless networking, so that a student sitting in a lecture hall, a classroom or even outside the building can pop open a laptop computer and connect to the Internet at high speed.
The Cornell University Institute for Animal Welfare has been established to foster discussion and research on issues concerning animals in agriculture, laboratories and the wild.
Peggy Mamet '59 is active in the Hermione-Lafayette Association, which is fundraising to build a life-size replica of the Marquis de Lafayette's 18th-century fighting frigate. (Sept. 20, 2007)
Although migratory birds could bring the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza to the United States this year, the most dangerous entry point for the virus, many experts believe, is the bird-trade industry.
"The entrance of…
Master of financial engineering students are putting theory into practice during their third and final semester of coursework at Cornell Financial Engineering Manhattan. (Nov. 10, 2008)
This holiday season, go out on a limb -- give the gift of graft. Without leaving home next spring, gardeners can learn to graft multiple fruit varieties onto a single fruit tree, create unusual growth forms and apply these skills to propagate plants that do not root easily.
Some 500 Internet message boards are bringing together adolescents who injure themselves -- with cuts, carvings, scratches or burns. It is a world that is invisible to adults but of increasing importance to teenage social lives. …
As the Medicaid system moves into a managed care model on a state-by-state basis, the entire medical structure in this country will change dramatically and the potential consequences "could be monumental," warns a Cornell University health economist.