Why do autistic children avoid eye contact? What makes airline pilots steer the wrong way between the runway and the terminal? How did an International Space Station astronaut help explain why the horizon moon appears larger than the zenith moon? And whatever happened to the scientific discipline, the psychophysics of climate? More than two dozen questions like these, some nearly as old as the Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP) itself, might finally find answers when researchers gather for the organization's 101st meeting, March 18-20, at Cornell University's Ithaca campus. (March 12, 2004)
Farmers caught in the middle -- between the recent federal ban against "downer" animals in the human food chain, as ordered by the United Stated Department of Agriculture, and rising costs for disposing of cattle that can't walk to slaughter -- now have a practical and economical alternative, according to waste-management experts at Cornell.
As gay couples rush to the altar and the White House backs a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages, a poll by Cornell University researchers shows that voters who favor gay marriage tend to be young, educated and earn a comfortable living. And they tend to watch CNN. Voters who oppose gay marriage are usually older, less educated, vote Republican and are not as wealthy. And they tend to watch Fox News. (March 11, 2004)
More than half the urban teenagers surveyed in a study by a Cornell researcher say they feel disconnected from their community. The reasons for this come, in part, from feeling discriminated against by unknown adults on the streets, in businesses and by the police.
Cornell and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have signed an agreement committing the two institutions to collaborate on the planning for a 25-meter infrared telescope high in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.
The Cornell Board of Trustees will meet in Ithaca, March 10-12. The full board will have a brief open session beginning at 9 a.m. Friday, March 12, in B09 Sage Hall on the Cornell campus.
A $7.5 million grant to Cornell from Fred Kavli and the Kavli Foundation of Oxnard, Calif., will endow the newly established Kavli Institute for Nanoscale Science, foundation and university officials announced.
When the European Union was established in 1992 from the framework of the European Community, Europe became a geographical space where territory, membership and identity keep shifting, according to a Cornell University sociologist.
For the first time, physician-scientists at the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility (CRMI) of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have taken a breast cancer patient's ovarian tissue that was frozen for six years, reimplanted it under her abdominal skin, and obtained an embryo from eggs collected from the tissue.
Ira Mellman, the Sterling Professor of Cell Biology and Immunobiology, and chair of the Department of Cell Biology at Yale University's School of Medicine, will present a seminar, "Generation and Maintenance of Epithelial Cell Polarity," Friday, March 12, at 4 p.m. in Cornell University's Biotechnology Building, Room G10. The lecture is free and open to the public. The seminar is part of Cancer Biology Lectures, a formal series of seminars by outstanding cancer researchers hosted by the Cornell University/Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Partnership and Cornell's Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. (March 08, 2004)