Two Cornell University graduate students and a researcher have won a top prize in the 2003 Collegiate Inventors Competition for building an utlra-small electronic generator. Their award of $25,000 was presented at a ceremony at the New York Public Library, Manhattan, on Oct. 23. The three are applied physics student Keith Aubin, mechanical engineering student Robert Reichenbach and research associate Maxim Zalalutdinov. Their advisers on the project, Harold Craighead, Cornell professor of applied and engineering physics, and Jeevak Parpia, Cornell professor of physics, shared a $5,000 prize. (October 27, 2003)
Sometimes familiarity does not breed contempt: A Cornell University behavioral scientist has found that female wolf spiders prefer mates that are comfortably familiar. However, the researcher has discovered, a male wolf spider unlucky enough to attempt to mate with an unfamiliar female probably is doomed to be killed and eaten by the female. October 24, 2003)
Cornell University microbiologists, looking for bioremediation microbes to "eat" toxic pollutants, report the first field test of a technique called stable isotopic probing (SIP) in a contaminated site. And they announce the discovery and isolation of a bacterium that biodegrades naphthalene in coal tar contamination. Although naphthalene is not the most toxic component in coal tar, the microbiologists say their discovery might eventually help to speed the cleanup of hundreds of 19th and 20th century gasworks throughout the United States where the manufacture of gas from coal for homes and street lighting left a toxic legacy in the ground. (October 24, 2003)
Cornell alumnus John Carberry, director of environmental technology for DuPont, will deliver the 10th Raymond G. Thorpe Lecture in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering on Thursday, Oct. 30.
A limited number of general admission tickets are still available for actor and comedian Bill Cosby's performance at Cornell University, Friday, Oct. 31, at 8 p.m. in the university's Barton Hall. Cosby is appearing at Cornell as part of the university's annual First-Year Family Weekend. Tickets for Cosby's Barton Hall show will remain on sale at Cornell's Willard Straight Hall ticket office (255-3430) until they are sold out. The ticket office is open weekdays, 9 a.m. -5 p.m. General admission tickets are $30 each. (October 24, 2003)
Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management is among 15 business schools that earned high marks this October from the Aspen Institute and the World Resources Institute for giving graduate business students a solid training in social-impact and environmental-management issues. The fourth such report by the two groups since 1998, "Beyond Grey Pinstripes 2003: Preparing MBAs for Social and Environmental Stewardship," challenges business schools to better arm graduate business students with skills critical for effective leadership in a changing world. The report highlights 15 schools that are either "cutting-edge" or "with significant activity" in the teaching of such skills. It includes data reported from 100 business schools in 20 countries. (October 23, 2003)
For agricultural scientists in developing countries, scientific seclusion soon will give way to inclusion, thanks to an online system developed at Cornell University's Albert R. Mann Library for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The system, announced Oct. 14 at FAO headquarters in Rome, is the second major online portal for scientific literature aimed exclusively at the developing world. Called Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), the system will provide scientists in developing nations with free access to more than 400 journals in agriculture and related science. The Rockefeller Foundation and other donor agencies fund the project. Scientific publishers are providing the content without charge. (October 23, 2003)
ARECIBO, P.R. -- An asteroid that has eluded astronomers for decades turns out to be an unusual pair of objects traveling together in space, a planetary scientist using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Arecibo Observatory radio telescope and his colleagues report. The asteroid Hermes was re-discovered last week after being lost for 66 years. Now Jean-Luc Margot, a researcher in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, has determined that the asteroid is in fact two objects orbiting each other. The two objects together would cover an area approximately the size of Disneyland. (October 23, 2003)
The National Science Foundation today announced an award of $322,000 to Cornell to train teachers in science and mathematics to work in some of the neediest school districts in New York state.
The distinguished psychiatrist Herbert Meltzer, a 1958 Cornell University graduate, will present a University Lecture on Oct. 23 at Cornell on the subject of "Molecules and the Mind: The Impact of Psychopharmacology on Self and Society." The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is at 4:40 p.m. in 200 Baker Laboratory on the Cornell campus. (October 22, 2003)