Give My Regards To. . .
These Cornellians in the News
Jessie Comba '09, Katherine McEachern '09, and Ryan Walter '09, winners of Udall Scholarships, given to students interested in public policy and health care.
Parbir Grewal '10 and Anna Owczarczyk '09, winners of Goldwater Scholarships for excellence in math, science, and engineering.
Professor of American Institutions Ted Lowi, winner of the American Political Science Association's 2008 James Madison Award, recognizing a career of scholarly excellence.
Professors Barbara Baird, PhD '79 (chemistry and chemical biology), John Guckenheimer (math), Carol Krumhansl (psychology), and Peter Lepage (physics), elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Black Students United, winner of Cornell's 2008 Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony, for its sponsorship of an event that brought together nine student organizations to discuss diversity.
Sherman Cochran, professor of Chinese history, awarded the Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies for his 2006 book Chinese Medicine Men.
Martin Fisher '79, recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability for helping improve farming techniques in Africa by inventing a pump that lets farmers produce and harvest crops year-round.
R&D
More information on campus research is available at www.news.cornell.edu
Female firefighters are still struggling for equality, says ILR professor Francine Moccio and colleagues. They interviewed 175 women before issuing the first-ever report on the subject in April.
Studying how the brains of autistic children behave when viewing faces, Weill Cornell psychologist Nim Tottenham has found that they are more likely to recognize people and distinguish emotion when they focus on the eyes. The work could offer hope for early intervention.
The enzyme NADPH-oxidase may be the key to preventing Alzheimer's disease. Weill Cornell neurologist Costantino Iadecola tested the enzyme in mice and found that the disease might be controlled—or even reversed—through antioxidant therapy.
Providing lower-income families with Internet access could boost the economy, says management professor Jeff Prince. A study of 18,439 Americans revealed a persistent "digital divide," with the rich more connected to the Internet than the poor.
A 69-million-year-old crab with an oversized right claw is prompting researchers to rethink how the crustaceans evolved and adapted to their environments. Paleontologist Greg Dietl hopes that his discovery of the fossil in a Mexican museum will lead to studies on current habitat loss and climate change.
Bacteria in the gut of Australia's surgeonfish can produce tens of thousands of copies of their genome—which is why they have become roughly one million times bigger than other bacteria such as E. coli, says microbiologist Esther Angert. The work on Epulopiscium sp. was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A horse virus from 1973 stored in the freezer of Cornell's Baker Institute is being studied to learn more about human viruses. Associate professor of virology Gary Whittaker believes that understanding the structure of Influenza H7 could help prevent the next pandemic in humans.
Nanoscale images of soil from several continents reveal striking differences that are helping researchers better understand its composition. An article in April's Nature Geoscience by soil and crop sciences professor Johannes Lehmann says that further research may help scientists predict the reaction of soil to climate change.
Weill Cornell professor of microbiology and immunology Luis Quadri is developing anti-infectives that may help treat bacterial illnesses such as tuberculosis and leprosy. The work is vital due to the emergence of strains resistant to traditional antibiotics.