Cornell University is to become a site in an innovative national earthquake research system linking 15 of the nation's leading engineering schools. A $2.1 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is enabling Cornell to develop a state-of-the-art facility, scheduled to open in October 2004, to test the effects of earthquake-caused damage to the nation's lifelines. These are structures, from bridges to pipelines to communications conduits, that form parts of complex networks of vital resources and services. The Cornell laboratory, a collaboration with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), will become a link in an NSF-funded chain of testing and research sites called the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). The facility is under construction in the Winter Lab in Thurston Hall at Cornell's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. (April 30, 2003)
New York, NY (April 24, 2003) Scientists at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center have found that an increase in global temperatures due to global warming may be a contributing factor in the decline of birth rates. A new study, which appears in the June issue of the Journal Medical Hypotheses, compared global air temperatures from 1900 to 1994, and the corresponding birth rates from nineteen industrialized nations, including the United States.Birth rate decline has been historically attributed to social, cultural, and economic changes, such as increases in the cost of living, postponement of marriage and child bearing, and the increased use of contraception and legalized abortions. This study, led by Dr. Harry Fisch, associate attending physician in the department of urology at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and associate clinical professor of urology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, is the first to suggest that an environmental factor, specifically rising global temperatures, may also have contributed to the decline in human fertility.
Most hotels made no changes to safety and security staffing or procedures in the year following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, possibly because they already were in good shape. Exceptions: modest improvements to staffing and procedures were made at hotels in New York, New Jersey and the central southwest. The news is from a national survey of hotel managers conducted at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. (April 30, 2003)
Black women in the United States should be the focus of more HIV/AIDS education because they strongly influence the quality and survival of their families and communities, says a Cornell University expert on AIDS who is co-editor of a new book on the topic. Two-thirds of HIV/AIDS cases in the United States occur among black Americans, and AIDS is the second-highest cause of death among black American women, ages 18 to 44. (April 25, 2003)
Cornell University will host a conference, "Reconciling Rural Poverty Reduction and Resource Conservation: Identifying Relationships and Remedies," in Warren Hall on May 2 and 3.
A room with a view -- a green one, that is -- can help protect children against stress, according to a new study by two Cornell University environmental psychologists.
Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, will deliver a talk, "Harvesting Change: Farm Workers' Rights 40 Years After the Founding of the UFW," Tuesday, April 29, at 7 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Hall auditorium. The event, hosted by the Farm Worker Advocacy Coalition at Cornell, is free and open to the public. Huerta is the most prominent Chicana (Mexican-American woman) labor leader in the United States. She is co-founder and first vice president of the United Farm Workers union. For more than 30 years she has dedicated her life to the struggle for equal rights for migrant farm workers. Honored with countless community service, labor, Hispanic and women's awards, Huerta has been called a role model for Mexican-American women. (April 24, 2003)
A National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported program that employs Cornell University graduate students to teach in public schools in return for free tuition and financial support has selected 10 new fellows for the coming year. The program, Cornell Scientific Inquiry Partnerships (CSIP), each year selects 10 Cornell graduate students to work with teachers in public K-12 schools, both teaching and developing curriculum materials, for 15 hours a week. In return, each fellow receives free Cornell tuition, plus an annual stipend of $21,500 (rising to $27,500 in 2003-2004) and paid health insurance. Recently the NSF renewed Cornell's funding for the program for a further three years. (April 22, 2003)
Steven J. Schuster has joined the Cornell University Office of Information Technologies as director of information technology security. His tenure began April 1. (April 21, 2003)