The GE Fund, the philanthropic foundation of General Electric Co., has awarded $200,000 to Cornell University to support an integrated range of projects in the fund's Math Excellence initiative over two years.
New York, NY (April 12, 2002) -- A large, randomized study of more than 3,000 New York City schoolchildren has shown for the first time that a school-based prevention program that teaches early adolescents drug refusal skills and other essential behaviors can significantly decrease binge drinking for as long as two years after the initial intervention. The program is the LifeSkills Training (LST) program developed by Weill Cornell Medical College."This is the largest and most rigorous prevention study conducted with inner-city youngsters, and one of the first to examine binge drinking in these youth," said the study's lead investigator, Gilbert J. Botvin, Ph.D., an internationally known expert on drug abuse prevention, who is Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and Director of Weill Cornell's Institute for Prevention Research. Dr. Botvin is also Chief of the Division of Prevention and Health Behavior in Weill Cornell's Department of Public Health and Attending Psychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital's Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Two members of the Cornell University faculty have been awarded Sloan Foundation Research Fellowships. They are Lillian Lee and Andrew Myers, both assistant professors of computer science. The two are among 104 young scientists and economists selected as 2002 Sloan fellows, representing faculty from 53 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The fellowships, totaling $4.16 million this year, allow scientists to continue their research with awards of $40,000 each over two years. Fellows are free to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of most interest to them. (April 15, 2002)
Golan Yona, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University, has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program award to support his research into creating a map of all known proteins.
Carolyn S. Shoemaker, the world's most successful living "comet hunter," will speak at Cornell University Sunday, April 21, at 1 p.m. in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall. The talk is free and is open to the public. The subject of the talk, which is aimed at science educators, will be asteroid and comet collisions within the solar system. The talk is sponsored by NASA's Comet Nucleus Tour (Contour) and the central and southern sections of the Science Teachers Association of New York State. Contour, which is scheduled for launch July 1, is managed by the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University, with Cornell's Department of Astronomy leading the science team. (April 11, 2002)
The fruits of genetic research are about to ripen: Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Inc. (BTI), located on the campus of Cornell University, have discovered a gene that controls ripening in tomatoes. This means that tastier, more-nutritious grocery-store tomatoes are not far behind, say the researchers in an article in the latest issue of the journal Science (April 12, 2002), titled "A MADS-box gene necessary for fruit ripening at the tomato ripening-inhibitor (rin) locus." (April 9, 2002)
Binary asteroids -- two rocky objects orbiting about one another -- appear to be common in Earth-crossing orbits, astronomers using the world's two most powerful astronomical radar telescopes report. And it is probable, they say, that these double asteroid systems have been formed as a result of gravitational effects during close encounters with at least two of the inner planets, including Earth. Writing in a report published by the journal Science on its Science Express web site (April 11, 2002), the researchers estimate that about 16 percent of so-called near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) larger than 200 meters (219 yards) in diameter are likely to be binary systems, with about a three-to-one relative size of the two encircling bodies. To date, five such binary systems have been identified by radar, says lead researcher Jean-Luc Margot, an O.K. Earl postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. (April 9, 2002)
Four Cornell University undergraduates -- two sophomores and two juniors -- are winners of the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. The students are sophomores Peter M. Clark of Flemington, N.J., majoring in biology, chemistry and mathematics, and Matthew Moake of Cedaredge, Colo., majoring in biology; and juniors Adam Berman of Bethesda, Md., majoring in physics, and Yolanda Tseng of San Jose, Calif., majoring in biological engineering. (April 11, 2002)
With the recent delivery of the telescope and scientific instruments for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, the last of NASA's four Great Observatories, to Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Sunnyvale, Calif.
"Diversity Dialogues," a campuswide discussion at Cornell University on diversity in America, is scheduled for April 18 through 30, with events both on campus and in downtown Ithaca.