Sophocles' tragic play Antigone may not be on The New York Times' suggested summer reading list, but it is required reading for more than 3,500 incoming freshmen.
The Cornell Biodiversity Laboratory, an education/research field station at Punta Cana on the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic, has been expanded and renamed the Punta Cana Association on Sustainability and Biodiversity. The newly formed consortium of academic and nonprofit organizations will accommodate the growing number of such organizations interested in using the field laboratory and the expanding environmental resources and facilities at Punta Cana. (February 25, 2003)
Like the film "Fantastic Voyage," physicians at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center can now take a journey through a patient's body.
Mark Bain, an aquatic biologist and associate professor of natural resources at Cornell University, has been named director of the university's Center for the Environment (CfE). Effective Feb. 24,. Bain succeeds Acting Director Max Pfeffer, professor of rural sociology, who was named associate director of the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station in 2001. Announcing the appointment, Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said: "Mark brings to the Center for the Environment a fresh perspective on the integration of research, education and outreach that our college endorses and values. His extensive knowledge of environmental policies and issues are essential for the promotion of a sustainable relationship between the environment and a quality life for people here and around the world." (February 24, 2003)
The Tompkins County Sheriff's Department announced Feb. 23 that a body recovered from the Six Mile Creek Natural Area in the town of Ithaca has been identified as that of Ritesh S. Shetty, 24, a Cornell University graduate student who had been missing since Sept. 26, 2002. The body was found Feb. 20 in a densely wooded area by a hiker on snowshoes. The death has been ruled a suicide. (February 24, 2003)
A ruling by the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) on Feb. 20 is likely to create regional monopolies that could stifle innovation and growth of open broadband telecommunications, according to Alan McAdams.
When a serious illness strikes, people often ask why there is no effective drug to treat it. What they don't know, says Cornell University Professor Bruce Ganem, is that while important new biotechnology drugs, particularly in the field of genomics, are emerging every day, investors often lack the tools to evaluate them as startup business ventures.
Kevin Martin, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, is "an unlikely hero" for opposing changes in the regulation of local phone companies, according to Cornell economist Alan McAdams.
While the vision-impaired Hubble Space Telescope needed optical doctoring from shuttle astronauts, vision researchers back on Earth were wondering if the human eye was clever enough to fix itself. Now a neurobiology study at Cornell University suggests that internal parts of the eye indeed can compensate for less-than-perfect conditions in other parts -- either developmentally (during the lifetime of one individual) or genetically (over many generations). (February 17, 2003)