Bruce S. Raynor, secretary-treasurer of UNITE, the pre-eminent textile and apparel union in North America, is the recipient of the 1999 Judge William B. Groat Alumni Award from Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR).
NEW YORK (JUNE 16, 2005) -- In a successful procedure today at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/The Allen Pavilion, a robot for the first time functioned as an independent assistant to the surgical team by handing and retrieving surgical instruments. The robot performed all of its assigned functions properly, a key validation of this important new technology and a dramatic demonstration of the potential for automation in the operating room.The robot, known as the Penelopeª Surgical Instrument Server (SIS), uses innovative technology to identify surgical instruments, hand them to the surgeon, retrieve them and put them back in place. This new robot was designed and developed by Robotic Surgical Tech, Inc. (RST) of New York. The procedure performed was the removal of a benign tumor on the forearm.
SEATTLE -- You know those squishy childrenÕs toys with elasticized bands connecting sticks that bounce back to shape when crushed? It takes some complicated mathematics to figure out how to make such structures. "You need a calculation that will guarantee the stability of the structure," said Robert Connelly, professor and chair of Cornell UniversityÕs mathematics department. "You can find a whole class of these things. If you satisfy the stability condition, then you can build it, and it will always hold its shape." The structures are called tensegrities -- for tension with integrity -- that form interesting geometric shapes, like dodecahedra (made from 12 regular pentagons). Connelly, who builds such toys based on these principles, described them to an audience at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science today (Feb. 14) in Seattle.
The Cornell Southeast Asia Program will host the visit of Indonesia's most accomplished prose writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, to Central New York, April 15-20.
David Lelyveld, a historian of South Asia and Islam, has been named executive director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell.
ITHACA, N.Y. -- A United Nations statute to establish the first permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) received overwhelmingly enthusiastic support from U.N. diplomats convening last summer in Rome and may become international law by the year 2001. An ambitious and timely symposium examining how the new court will work will be held at the Cornell Law School Friday and Saturday, March 5 and 6. Titled "The International Criminal Court: Consensus and Debate on the International Adjudication of Genocide, Crimes against Humanity, War Crimes and Aggression," the forum will take place in the MacDonald Moot Court Room in Myron Taylor Hall. It is being hosted by the Cornell International Law Journal, a student publication, which plans to publish the proceedings in its next issue.
The explosion in court-ordered mediation has created a large and increasing demand for trained mediators, or "neutrals." Judges in most states now have the power to insist that litigants hammer out their differences at the bargaining table, rather than the courtroom.
NEW YORK (Feb. 28, 2005) -- The Patient Self-Determination Act, passed by Congress in 1990, upholds the rights of patients to grant power-of-attorney or "proxy" status to a loved one when it comes to tough decisions on end-of-life care.In most cases, patients leave explicit instructions as to their wishes, should they become incapable of making these decisions themselves. But how tightly do patients really expect proxies to adhere to these instructions, given changes in prognosis? A new study from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center researchers suggests the pact between patient and proxy is much deeper and more flexible than previously thought.
BETHPAGE, N.Y. -- Forget the sand traps and the water hazards. The real battle on Long Island's Bethpage State Park golf course, the site of this year's U.S. Open June 13-16, is making the putting greens free from fungal diseases, cutworms and weevils ---- and safe from the pesticides used to combat them. Turf scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and the Bethpage greenskeepers have been looking for ways to substantially reduce pesticide use on one of the nation's busiest public golf-course complexes. (June 6, 2002)
Attention teachers far and wide: It may not be so much what or how you teach that will reap high student evaluations, but something as simple as an enthusiastic tone of voice.And beware, administrators, if you use student ratings to judge teachers: Although student evaluations may be systematic and reliable, a Cornell University study.