Two years after the New York State Board of Regents removed the option of a local diploma in favor of more-demanding Regents diplomas for all students, 28 percent of the state's school superintendents, not including New York City, are reporting an increase in dropouts, according to a Cornell University survey. The findings were presented as a preliminary draft to the state's education leaders in May, and its final version is being released today (June 19, 2002). Among low-performing school districts, about 45 percent of the superintendents reported an increase in dropouts. Most average- and high-performing school districts reported no change in the dropout rate, according to the survey of superintendents and principals throughout New York state, conducted by John W. Sipple, Cornell assistant professor of education, and Kieran Killeen, an assistant professor at the University of Vermont. The survey included administrators from across upstate New York state. (June 19, 2002)
A newly established national biomedical center at Cornell University is reporting its first major advance: a new way of measuring, or "visualizing," proteins. The new technique will hasten the transformation of the human genome project's blueprints of life into a comprehensive view of the biochemical and physiological circuitry that interconnect to form entire organisms. The technique, which determines the structure of a protein by measuring the distances between atoms in the molecule at greater separations than previously possible, is an important development, says Jack Freed, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell, who is director of the National Biomedical Center for Advanced ESR Technology (ACERT), established at Cornell last year by the National Institutes of Health. "This is in the spirit of seeing the whole forest of the protein, whereas before we have been seeing the trees one after another," says Freed. (June 19, 2002)
The very-low-frequency courtship songs of fin whales and blue whales are the most powerful and ubiquitous biological sounds in the oceans. But the artificial racket created by ships and other human sources could be interfering with whale reproduction and population recovery, marine scientists report in the latest edition (June 20, 2002) of the journal Nature. Scientists from the University of California-Santa Cruz, Cornell University, Mexico's Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur and the California Academy of Sciences studied fin whale courtship songs in frequencies far below the range of human hearing. Natural sounds that low often can travel many hundreds, if not thousands, of miles under water. But so can very-low-frequency, human-made noises that have increased dramatically in the last 100 years of motorized shipping. (June 19, 2002)
Camp $tart-Up‚, a new program held at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University this July 20-27, will offer 17- to 19-year-old women some of the skills they'll need to pursue careers in business or run their own small enterprises.
Erica Pagel, a master's degree student in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has been named an agricultural fellow for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). For a six-month term, Pagel will be working with the senator's Agricultural Advisory Council and will provide expertise on the federal agricultural policy process. As a member of Clinton's legislative staff, Pagel will follow legislation and appropriations related to New York agriculture and serve as a liaison between constituents and the legislative staff. She will return to Cornell at the end of her term to complete her thesis and degree. (June 18, 2002)
A discovery reported in the latest edition of the journal Nature (June 13, 2002) – that fungi on the roots of some trees in the Northeastern United States help supply much-needed calcium in forest soils battered by acid rain – would seem to ease worries about the worrisome form of pollution.
Give Cari Holcomb a pen and she'll draw you a picture. Disabilities may have limited her employability but have not prevented the 28-year-old Tompkins County, N.Y., resident from making artwork all her life, she says. That's why the idea of designing and making brightly colored datebook covers and greeting cards and selling them locally appealed to her. You can now buy Holcomb's dinosaur datebooks for $5 apiece, and soon you will see her cards at the Ithaca Farmers' Market CraftAbility Collective booth run by Challenge Industries, a vocational rehabilitation agency in Ithaca. She and seven other Challenge service recipients with disabilities sell their work there Tuesdays and Saturdays thanks to a new Challenge self-employment program, a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation and a little help from three Cornell University MBA students and a local credit union. (June 18, 2002)
Like the glitter and glare of Las Vegas beckoning tourists to the gambling tables, the orb-weaving spiny spider flashes its colorful back to lure unsuspecting quarry into its web. The discovery of this lethal use of color runs contrary to the long-held belief that in the animal kingdom color is used generally to attract mates rather than to entice prey, says a Cornell University animal behavior researcher "Attraction is all casinos are about. They lure you; they want to get you there. They lure people with bright lights, cheap plane tickets, inexpensive hotel rooms, great shows and great meals," says Mark E. Hauber of Cornell's Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. "The spiny spiders work the same way." (June 14, 2002)
A long-sought goal of scientists has been to shrink the transistor, the basic building block of electronic circuits, to smaller and smaller size scales. Scientists at Cornell University have now reached the smallest possible limit: a transistor in which electrons flow through a single atom.
The Cornell University Board of Trustees Executive Committee will meet in New York City Thursday, June 20. The meeting will be held in the Fall Creek Room of the Cornell Club of New York, 6 E. 44th St. (June 12, 2002)