Using a carbon nanotube, Cornell University researchers have produced a tiny electromechanical oscillator that might be capable of weighing a single atom. The device, perhaps the smallest of its kind ever produced, can be tuned across a wide range of radio frequencies, and one day might replace bulky power-hungry elements in electronic circuits. Recent research in nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) has focused on vibrating silicon rods so small that they oscillate at radio frequencies. By replacing the silicon rod with a carbon nanotube, the Cornell researchers have created an oscillator that is even smaller and very durable. Besides serving as a radio frequency circuit element, the new device has applications in mass sensing and basic research. (September 15, 2004)
Cornell's Albert R. Mann Library now has a one-stop computer workstation that allows the visually impaired to convert text to Braille, scan a document and convert the text to speech, or scan a page and magnify it many times.
With almost a century of experience, 93-year-old Elsie Frost McMurry, professor emerita at Cornell, played dress detective for 16 years, researching and writing in longhand thousands of manuscript pages for her study of American dresses from the 1800s.
F. Sherwood Rowland, will inaugurate the Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lectureship at Cornell April 20 and 21 with lectures on science and public policy.
A two-day international conference at Cornell March 28 and 29 examines what many see as a major stumbling block to the success of future African development -- gender equality and women's access to higher education. CEPARRED (the Pan African Studies and Research Center in International Relations and Education for Development), based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, is sponsoring the conference in collaboration with Cornell's Poverty, Inequality and Development Initiative (PIDI). "Women and Higher Education in Africa: Engendering Human Capital and Upgrading Human Right to Schooling," is free and open to the public. (March 26, 2002)
Cornell is establishing a lecture series to honor two of the nation's most eminent mathematicians, David Blackwell of the University of California at Berkeley and Richard Tapia of Rice University.
Samuel Bodman, the recently nominated U.S. deputy secretary of commerce, told an audience of prominent engineers and researchers last Friday that Washington is not doing enough to fund physical sciences, math, chemistry, physics and engineering.