Suppose the computer from the starship Enterprise or the HAL 9000 from "2001, A Space Odyssey" had been scanning intelligence data four years ago. Perhaps it would have made the connection humans missed between terrorists and flight schools.
Kimberly Taylor, J.D. '05, can barely remember a time when she wasn't planning to become a lawyer. "My father is an attorney, [so] the legal profession always seemed like a natural career path for me," she explained. Judging by her performance as a student at Cornell's Law School, it looks like she was right. Born and raised in Hawaii, Taylor attended Yale University, where she received a bachelor's degree in political science. She also served as Yale student body president and was an active member of Yale's Mock Trial and International Relations associations.
Through the combined efforts of East Hill area residents and Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) management staff, TCAT's Route 93, a Cornell nighttime service route, will continue to operate through the summer months. The service will run Monday through Saturday nights, using the current bus schedule. Route 86 will be eliminated as of May 31.
Cornell researchers think they understand the mechanism that several bird species use to bias the sex ratios of their offspring toward female. By experimenting with domestic chickens, they have determined that the presence of higher-than-normal levels of the hormone progesterone during the first meiosis produces significantly more females.
The 2005 conference of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) will take place Sunday and Monday, May 22 and 23, on campus. Its title and theme is "Assessing Public Higher Education at the Start of the 21st Century." The presentations are free and open to the public.
A Cornell researcher has won a prestigious Burroughs-Wellcome Fund Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award, given to a young researcher whose work focuses primarily on the interaction of pathogens with their human hosts. John Parker, assistant professor with the Baker Institute for Animal Health in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, won one of the 11 awards given this year.
On three evenings last week, when most students were cramming for exams and writing papers, a handful came together to raise awareness about the slaughter of innocent civilians in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where genocide on the scale of that in Rwanda 10 years ago is taking place. Sponsored by the Darfur Action Group, a student group on campus, "Documenting Darfur" featured back-to-back three-hour showings of films and videos about the tragedy, on May 9, 10 and 11 in 165 McGraw Hall.
Salah Hassan has been appointed to a five-year term as director of Cornell's Africana Studies and Research Center effective July 1, the Office of the Provost announced May 12. Hassan, chair of the Department of History of Art and associate professor of African and African Diaspora art history and visual culture, has served as the center's acting director for two years, overseeing the renovation and expansion of the facility that was celebrated with a formal dedication ceremony April 29.
About 1 percent of Cornell's Fungi of China Collection, as interpreted through the lens of Department of Plant Pathology photographer Kent Loeffler, is on display at Mann Library through Aug. 31.