Nice weather -- if you're The Swamp Thing. Ithaca-area residents absorbed a record-breaking total of 49 days of rain for the months of June, July and August -- and that was with a relatively dry June. The previous record of 46 days of rain in the three months was set in 1947. (August 31, 2004)
Okko Behrends, one of Europe's foremost experts in classical Roman law and a Cornell A.D. White Professor-at-Large, will explore the origins of the Roman legal influence during a public talk.
Richard Trumka, a third-generation coal miner from Pennsylvania who rose to become a leader of the AFL-CIO, the most powerful union the United States, will be this year's pre-Labor Day speaker at Cornell University. Trumka's public lecture, "What's at Stake: the Future for Working Families," on labor, the economy and the 2004 election, will take place Thursday, Sept. 2, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. in 105 Ives Hall. The talk, which is sponsored by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), is free and open to the public. (August 30, 2004)
The tricks eyes play on the mind will be revealed and explained in a Sept. 14 lecture by master illusionist Al Seckel at 7:30 p.m. in Cornell University's Call Alumni Auditorium. Titled "Your Mind's Eye: The World's Most Powerful Illusions" and sponsored by the Cornell Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, the lecture is open to the public, free of charge. Advance tickets are available from the Willard Straight Hall ticket office or the neurobiology department office, W363 Mudd Hall, (607) 254-4340. (August 30, 2004)
The fastest-growing segment of the natural food market, organic dairy products, is getting a boost from a Cornell University-U.S. Department of Agriculture program that studies experiences of upstate New York milk producers as they make the transition from conventional to organic farming.
For the first time since New York state began judging milk quality and flavor, a dairy has won a perfect 100 score to earn the 2004 Gold Medal. The dairy, Niagara Milk Cooperative (Wendt's Dairy) of Niagara, N.Y., will receive the award this morning (Aug. 30) in the Empire Room at the New York State Fair Dairy Day awards breakfast at 8:30 a.m. "Before this, no dairy has ever earned a perfect score," said Kathryn Boor, Cornell University professor of food science, who administers the milk judging. "Wendt's did everything right. They were perfect in all categories. Wendt's had exceptional hygiene, the processing equipment worked perfectly, and they brought in good milk to process. This shows they have done everything just right." (August 30, 2004)
Cornell University Police will be supporting National Stop on Red Week 2004, Aug. 30-Sept. 6, by employing selective traffic enforcement measures on campus, including extra patrols. National Stop on Red Week is dedicated to educating American motorists about the dangers of running red lights. It is sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and the American Trauma Society. Its motto is "The light is red for a reason: So stop!" (August 27, 2004)
Cornell President Jeffrey S. Lehman today (Aug. 26) issued the following statement: "I am deeply troubled and concerned about allegations that a landlord in Ithaca has grossly violated the privacy of his tenants, a number of whom are Cornell students. The safety and wellbeing of our students is of the highest importance to us. (August 26, 2004)
Cornell University officials and staff are offering support services to students who have been affected by alleged incidents of unlawful surveillance by a landlord for rental housing in Ithaca. Susan Murphy, vice president for student and academic services, has convened a crisis management task force to handle issues of emergency housing, finances and legal issues, as well as to provide psychological support. (August 26, 2004)
With equipment so sensitive that it can locate clusters of electrons, Cornell University and University of Tokyo physicists have -- sort of -- explained puzzling behavior in a much-studied high-temperature superconductor, perhaps leading to a better understanding of how such superconductors work. It turns out that under certain conditions the electrons in the material pretty much ignore the atoms to which they are supposed to be attached, arranging themselves into a neat pattern that looks like a crystal lattice. The behavior occurs in a phase physicists have called a "pseudogap," but because the newly discovered arrangement looks like a checkerboard in scanning tunneling microscope (STM) images, J.C. Séamus Davis, Cornell professor of physics, calls the phenomenon a "checkerboard phase." (August 26, 2004)