The Cornell Public Service Center currently is seeking applications for the third annual Cornell Civic Leaders Fellowship Program. This initiative enables the Public Service Center to initiate collaborative relationships between Cornell and the local community, and it allows the center to award $5,000 to each selected fellow. (May 29, 2003)
Tiny blood vessels, viewed beneath a mouse's skin with a newly developed application of multiphoton microscopy, appear so bright and vivid in high-resolution images that researchers can see the vessel walls ripple with each heartbeat – 640 times a minute.
Cases of listeriosis, the food-borne bacterial disease that kills one of every five of its victims, are not as isolated as once believed. Using DNA evidence to track bacterial strains, a Cornell food scientist and his collaborators have concluded that nearly one-third of the 2,500 U.S. cases annually might occur in geographic clusters at generally the same time.
To explain why there is hope in the adversity of today's world, political strategist James Carville carried 5,000 Cornellians, their families and friends to the magical world of A.A.Milne's Hundred Acre Wood on Saturday, May 24. Speaking at the Senior Convocation in Barton Hall during the university's 135th Commencement weekend, Carville told of once pondering the advice he should give to graduating seniors, and suddenly deciding to draw on the wisdom of children's literature. He had been watching a "Winnie-the-Pooh" movie with his two-year-old daughter, and there was a crisis in the Hundred Acre Wood. Christopher Robin told Pooh, "You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think." (May 24, 2003)
Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University, has been named house professor and dean of the Alice H. Cook House for upper-level students on West Campus, Cornell President Hunter Rawlings announced today. Alice Cook House is the first house being built as part of the West Campus House System for sophomores, juniors and seniors. The groundbreaking and naming for the late Alice H. Cook, a noted professor in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and Cornell's first ombudsman took place at a ceremony April 28. (May 27, 2003)
Cornell Public Affairs Society (CPAS) is leading a wide-scale computer donation campaign to benefit the people of Africa. Society members are asking the greater Ithaca community to donate fully functioning, used computers with a Pentium I -or greater processor, or its equivalent. They have set an ambitious goal of acquiring 200 units by May 31. The computers are destined for African nations, with an emphasis on institutions supporting women in schools, agricultural organizations and training centers, and health agencies. Monitors, mice and keyboards are the only peripherals that can be accepted with the computers. All donations must be in working condition; all software, including the operating system, should be removed prior to donation. (May 19, 2003)
The Cornell University Board of Trustees will meet in Ithaca Thursday, May 22, through Saturday, May 24. The Executive Committee of the board will hold a brief open session at the start of its meeting Friday, May 23, at 7:30 a.m. in Taylor A&B Room of the Statler Hotel on campus.
The gene for an enzyme that is key to natural disease resistance in plants has been discovered by biologists at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) and at Cornell University. The researchers say that by enhancing the activity of the enzyme they might be able to boost natural disease resistance in crop plants without resorting to pesticides or the introduction of non-plant genes. The research, reported in the latest (May 16) issue of the journal i>Cell, describes the discovery of the gene that codes for an enzyme (a protein that carries out a chemical reaction) that is activated when a plant senses it is being attacked by a pathogen. When activated, the enzyme produces nitric oxide (NO), a hormone that tells the plant to turn on its defense arsenal. (May 15, 2003)
New York, NY (May 14, 2003) -- A breakthrough new laser procedure is a safe and effective treatment for the most common ailment experienced by men over the age of 50, Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) or enlargement of the prostate. Almost half of all men over 50 experience some symptoms related to BPH, a condition where the prostate increases in size, gradually pinching the urethra, leading to a host of uncomfortable and painful symptoms.--As one of six clinical research study sites, and the only site in the New York City metropolitan area, the Weill Cornell Brady Prostate Center investigated the new procedure, Photoselective Vaporization of the Prostate (PVP), finding significant and immediate reduction in symptoms (23.9 percent to 2.6 percent) and prostate volume (55.1g to 30.3g) with all patients discharged within 23 hours without significant complications. The study's findings were presented at the recent American Urological Association meeting in Chicago.
Local nonprofits and small businesses in Ithaca and surrounding counties and the Cornell University community are the immediate beneficiaries of this year's Park Service Leadership projects. MBA students selected as Park fellows at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management have been working on the service projects for the past two years. Their aim: to leave something of lasting value in the community, learn leadership skills in the process and make community service a lifelong habit. (May 14, 2003)