The hot topic of gay marriage in the United States will be the focus of a debate at Cornell University between two noted advocates on opposite sides of the issue. Elizabeth Birch, attorney and former executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, and Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, will square off on the subject April 6 at 8 p.m. in the Statler Auditorium. The debate is free and open to the public, but tickets are required and they will be available beginning March 16 at the Willard Straight Hall ticket office, on campus. (March 15, 2004)
Cornell University experts predict that the 103rd dragon spawned on campus will emerge from its lair Thursday, March 18, and they have issued a dragon warning and road-closure alert. Vehicular access to central campus will be restricted from 12:30 to approximately 3:30 p.m. Buses could be rerouted or delayed when the dragon emerges from its lair in Rand Hall at approximately 1 p.m. The dragon will travel east on University Avenue, then south on East Avenue, then west on Campus Road. It will lumber through Ho Plaza and enter the Arts Quad, between Uris and Olin libraries, before proceeding to the south side of Rand Hall. (March 15, 2004)
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.