Environmental engineers and waste-management specialists at Cornell are offering a new Web-based planning tool, Co-Composter, free of charge to farm managers and composters who want to meet toughened environmental regulations while making the most of excess animal waste.
Cornell University's undergraduate business program in the Department of Applied Economics and Management (AEM) was accredited Jan. 9 by AACSB International, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The course becomes only the second general undergraduate business program in the Ivy League, after the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, to earn accreditation. AEM is a department within Cornell's New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Accreditation provides recognition of the content and quality of its business program. The designation means that a peer group of scholars has examined the undergraduate business program in AEM and has approved it. (January 18, 2002)
New York, NY (January 17, 2002) - A 71-year-old retired businessman from New Jersey is the first patient in the U.S. to receive robotically-assisted coronary artery bypass surgery without a chest incision of any kind. The operation was performed by Dr. Michael Argenziano, director of robotic cardiac surgery, and Dr. Craig Smith, chief of cardiothoracic surgery, as part of a clinical trial sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration at NewYork-Presbyterian's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center on January 15, 2002. Until this point, coronary artery bypass surgery required open-chest surgery, which involves an eight to ten-inch incision made in the chest. Robotically-assisted surgery requires only three pencil-sized holes made between the ribs. Through these holes, two robotic-arms and an endoscope (a tiny camera) gain access to the heart, making surgery possible without opening the chest.This historic operation follows the successes of other robotically-assisted surgeries at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Cardiac surgeons at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center have performed more than 40 robotic cardiac operations including internal mammary artery harvests, mitral valve repairs, and the first robotically-assisted atrial septal defect repair in the United States. The surgical robot, Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci ' Surgical System, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for a number of clinical trials in which NewYork-Presbyterian's New York Weill Cornell Medical Center also participates.
The Cornell University Board of Trustees will hold its first meeting of 2002 at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, Jan. 24 through 26.
The Mind and Memory: Exploring Creativity in the Arts and Sciences course begins this month at Cornell and runs through April. This annual course, the brainchild of Cornell emeritus professor and author James McConkey.
Are America's hotels measuring their performance accurately? No, according to a recent Cornell University study, which shows that industry performance averages, commonly used by hotels throughout the United States, are not reliable as the only gauge of how hotels are doing. The study was conducted by Cathy A. Enz, Linda Canina and Kate Walsh, faculty members at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration, under the aegis of the Hotel School's Center for Hospitality Research in alliance with Smith Travel Research, which supplied data from its database of name-brand hotels in the United States. (January 15, 2002)
D. Merrill Ewert, director of Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE), has been named president of Fresno Pacific University, Fresno, Calif. His appointment is effective July 1. Ewert joined the Cornell University faculty in 1991 as a professor in the Department of Education, where he taught, conducted research and implemented extension programs focused on community-based development. In April 1998, Ewert was appointed director of CCE and associate dean for outreach in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and in the College of Human Ecology. (January 15, 2002)
In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, Cornell University is offering a new course for the 2002 spring semester that will take a wide-ranging look at the issues of terrorism, religious warfare, global conflict and civil liberties. "This new course presents an opportunity to review and discuss issues concerning global development and its relationship to conflict and terrorism," says James E. Haldeman, senior associate director of International Programs in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and one of the class's organizers. (January 14, 2002)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- About 5,000 light years away across our Milky Way galaxy, a highly brilliant star called VY Canis Majoris has long been thought to have smoke in its eyes because most of its light is blacked out by a cloud. Now the mystery of this smoky shroud is partly unveiled. It turns out that the star appears to be blinded not by smoke but by sand and by whiskers, a form of iron. (January 9, 2002)
Cornell will be the home for a new Honeybee Genetics and Integrated Pest Management Center that will study the continuing threat from deadly parasitic mites and Africanized honeybees.