The second Inside Cornell press luncheon, held May 22 at the Cornell Club in New York City, featured Robert Frank, Cornell professor of economics and a regular contributor to The New York Times Op-Ed Page.

Since the 1980s, Frank has been asking his students to pose questions about the oddities in everyday life and to use basic economic principles to answer them. His latest book, "The Economic Naturalist," is a compilation of examples from Frank and his students explaining such perplexing questions as why there is a light in the refrigerator but not the freezer and why there are Braille dots on drive-up cash machines.

Representatives of Money Magazine, Newsweek and The New York Times, including Times business reporter and Cornell alumna Claudia Deutsch, were among those attending.

Inside Cornell is a quarterly series presented by Cornell's Division of University Communications and its New York City Communications Office and Press Relations Office in Ithaca. The series provides an opportunity for the media to meet and discuss ideas with Cornell experts. The next Inside Cornell luncheon will be in the fall.