India's attorney general, the Hon. Soli Sorabjee, will give two talks at Cornell this week that are free and open to the public. Combating international terrorism in East Asia while protecting human rights is his overall subject. Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 12:15 p.m., he will give a talk titled "Tackling Terror and Other Human Rights Issues" as part of the South Asia Seminar at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, G08 Uris Hall. He also will speak Thursday, Oct. 2, at 6 p.m. on "Judicial Protection of Human Rights" at Cornell Law School, in G90 Myron Taylor Hall. (September 29, 2003)
Michael Burawoy, who rolls up his sleeves to conduct sociological research on labor from the factory floor, will give Cornell University's 2003 Polson Memorial Lecture Oct. 3. His talk, "Public Sociology in a Global Context," will be followed by a panel discussion. The lecture, at 3 p.m. in the Memorial Room of Willard Straight Hall on campus, is free and open to the public. Burawoy is a professor of sociology at the University of California-Berkeley and president-elect of the American Sociological Association (ASA). In his research in the United States and in Europe, he uses the extended case-study method, which involves intensive participant observation. An example of this method can be found in his book, The Radiant Past: Ideology and Reality in Hungary's Road to Capitalism (Chicago University Press, 1992), for which he worked for a year as a furnace operator in a Hungarian steel plant. In other research projects, Burawoy has worked in a Hungarian champagne factory, spent a year as a personnel officer at a Zambian copper mine and toiled for 10 months as a machine operator on Chicago's South Side. (September 29, 2003)
Ceremonies on Sept. 11, 2003, at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine gave a name to the school's program to study cancer in humans as well as animals -- the new Isidor I. and Sylvia M. Sprecher Institute for Comparative Cancer Research. The institute name acknowledges a major gift from Isidor Sprecker, a 1939 DVM graduate of the college, and his wife, Sylvia, a teacher and author. The Spreckers changed the spelling of their name to clarify its pronunciation but have preserved the original spelling, Sprecher, for their gifts. An earlier gift from the Spreckers added their name to that of an 1800s governor of New York state, creating the Roswell P. Flower-Isidor I. and Sylvia M. Sprecher Library and Resources Center. (September 29, 2003)
Cornell University's annual Agribusiness Economic Outlook Conference will be held Tuesday, Dec. 9, from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Registration will begin at 9 a.m. in the foyer of the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, on the Cornell campus. William Lesser, chair of Cornell's Department of Applied Economics and Management (AEM), will open the session. Speakers will include two Cornell associate professors of AEM, Steven Kyle, who will provide the national perspective on the economy and agriculture, and Gregory Poe, who, with Nelson Bills, professor of AEM, and Peter Wright, senior extension associate in animal science, will focus on "Agriculture and the Environment." (September 26, 2003)
Teenagers from all over New York state are talking their heads off on topics from beef cattle to babysitting. They have been competing for a place in this year's 4-H State Public Presentations, a public-speaking event to be held Saturday, Oct. 4, at noon in Morrison Hall on the Cornell University campus. Middle school and high school students have been giving talks and demonstrations at the local and regional levels, and those with the best gift of the gab have advanced to the state event at Cornell, where they will represent their counties. The speaking competition will award gold, silver and bronze medals to winners in the demonstration, speech, illustrated talk and dramatic interpretation categories. Participating will be 67 presenters from 38 counties with each county allowed to send up to three presenters in three categories. (September 26, 2003)
The world's largest single-dish radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory is focusing on a largely Spanish-speaking audience by creating an Office for the Public Understanding of Science. It will be headed by a native of Uruguay, Daniel Altschuler.
ARECIBO, P.R. -- Sixto González has been named director of Arecibo Observatory, the home of the world's largest and most-sensitive single-dish radio telescope. His appointment is effective Sept. 29. He is the first native-born Puerto Rican to head the observatory. Since 2001 González has been assistant director for space and atmospheric sciences at the telescope facility. He succeeds Daniel Altschuler, who will become the first director of the observatory's Office for the Public Understanding of Science (OPUS), which will provide a multicultural focus for education and public outreach activities in Puerto Rico. (September 26, 2003)
The force of global economics is changing the agricultural landscape in New York state, the Northeast region and the United States. These changes have created uncertainties for the American agricultural economy, according to a white paper released Sept. 19 by Cornell University agricultural scientists and economists. "We are seeing more and more large farms, and there are billions of dollars in subsidies for large, commercial farms. If there were an economic shake-up in agriculture and if the big farm holdings could not sell their goods, the United States would become protectionist immediately," says Thomas Lyson, Cornell's Liberty Hyde Bailey professor of development sociology and one of the paper's authors. "I think it is very precarious." (September 24, 2003)
"Americans have an ugly history of executing poor children. In the United States, we have been killing our children for more than three centuries," argues an award-winning Cornell University historian. To illuminate some important, but forgotten, history, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, professor of history, human development and gender studies, uses the prism of a single historical case in a new book, Kansas Charley: The Story of a l9th Century Boy Murderer (Viking, 2003). (September 24, 2003)
Cornell University Professor Urie Bronfenbrenner, among the world's best-known psychologists, has been publishing articles and books for 60 years on what really matters in the development of human beings. Now he has pulled his ideas together and published a new book that traces the historical development of his groundbreaking bioecological model of human development and detailing how it can be applied via programs and policies. Making Human Beings Human: Bioecological Perspectives on Human Development (Sage Publications, 2004) is Bronfenbrenner's culminating work and statement that he hopes will shape the future of his field. Bronfenbrenner, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Human Development and of Psychology at Cornell, is a co-founder of the federal Head Start program and is widely regarded as one of the world's leading scholars in developmental psychology, child-rearing and human ecology -- the interdisciplinary domain he created. (September 24, 2004)