Life Sciences News

• Nitrogen loss threatens desert plant life, study shows | Cornell Chronicle feature | 11/05/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Professor Jed Sparks and lead author Carmody McCalley, a graduate student, warn that temperature increases and shifting precipitation patterns due to climate change may lead to further nitrogen losses in arid ecosystems.
• Cornell researcher uses stimulus money to study spinal cord injury recovery | Cornell Chronicle feature | 11/04/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  With a grant of almost $700,000 from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Ronald Harris-Warrick hopes to find ways for spinal cord injury victims to get back on their feet by studying the neural networks for locomotion in rodents.
• Half of U.S. children -- and most black children -- will use food stamps, Cornell study reports | Cornell Chronicle feature | 11/03/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Food stamps are important indicators of poverty and risk of food insecurity, "two of the most detrimental economic conditions affecting a child's health," says Cornell Professor Thomas A. Hirschl.
• Library collaboration with China strengthens scholarship | Cornell Chronicle feature | 11/03/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Cornell University Library and Tsinghua University Library in China cemented a formal collaboration during an Oct. 29, 2009 ceremony on Cornell's campus.
• 'Temporal telescope' compresses optical signals | Cornell Chronicle feature | 11/03/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Cornell researchers have developed an ingenious method to time-compress optical signals. The process could enable optical communication systems to carry many more bits per second.
• Cornell receives nearly $850,000 to improve specialty crops | Cornell Chronicle feature | 11/02/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  CALS researchers aim to arm farmers with blight-resistant varieties and crop management strategies to beat Phytophthora blight, as well as other issues that affect specialty crops.
• Cornell team investigates how to starve tumors | Cornell Chronicle feature | 11/02/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Cornell researchers will create tiny 3-D models of tumors to mimic conditions necessary for tumor angiogenesis -- the development of vascular systems by tumors.
• Web site will link Latin American researchers with opportunities | Cornell Chronicle feature | 11/02/2009 Chronicle feature
  CienciAmérica (Science of the Americas), a new Web site where Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking scientists can interact, will be developed and hosted at Galileo University in Guatemala, with material collected and formatted at Cornell.
• Battling cancer with engineering: National Cancer Institute funds Cornell-led $13 million research center | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has funded the Center on the Microenvironment and Metastasis, which will be headquartered at Cornell. The center will focus on using nanobiotechnology and other related physical science approaches to advance research.
• Being a doctor can be 'really disgusting,' but rewards are unsurpassable, says Weill neurosurgeon | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/09 Chronicle feature
  
  Dr. Michael Kaplitt has developed a new technique to reduce symptoms of Parkinson's disease that involves injecting a gene-laden virus into the part of the brain responsible for dopamine production.
• Cornell Plantations breaks ground on its welcome center | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  The sustainably designed Cornell Plantations Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center is is built into Comstock Knoll at the Mullestein Winter garden and will be completed in 2010.
• Cornell's VIVO concept will expand to connect researchers nationwide | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  A $12.2 million, two-year grant from the NIH's National Center for Research Resources will support the creation of VIVOweb, a multi-institutional version of Cornell Library's VIVO that will connect biomedical researchers to foster alliances.
• Crash, bang, rumble! Bringing noise to virtual worlds | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Cornell computer scientists Doug James and graduate students Jeffrey Chadwick and Steven An have developed a practical method to generate the crashing and rumbling sounds of objects made up of thin "harmonic shells."
• Jonathan Butcher delivers young investigator lecture | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Butcher was invited to give the Rita Schaffer Memorial Lectureduring the BMES 2009 annual meeting in Pittsburgh, Oct. 7-10. Butcher talked about engineering breakthroughs that could complement genetic programs for combating cardiovascular disease.
• New center to bring CU agricultural innovations to China | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  A Sept. 24 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Cornell and the Department of Science and Education of China's Ministry of Agriculture facilitated the creation of the Sino-U.S. Ray Wu Agricultural Technology Innovation Center at Cornell.
• Pinstrup-Andersen named No. 1 Dane for fighting poverty | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  Per Pinstrup-Andersen has been named "the most important Dane in the world" in combating poverty in developing countries by an independent panel for Udvikling (Development), Denmark's leading development magazine.
• Researchers discover mechanism that prevents two species from reproducing | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Cornell researchers have discovered a genetic mechanism in fruit flies that prevents two closely related species from reproducing, a finding that offers clues to how species evolve.
• Stimulus funds to pay for equipment at nanoscale facility | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  The Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) has received $1.38 million in federal stimulus funds to help with equipment upgrades.
• 'The Mathematics of Sex' asserts that women opt out of math fields for flexibility | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/27/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Although females earn a large portion of bachelor's degrees in all fields of science, including math-intensive fields, disproportionately fewer women enter graduate school in these fields, and fewer women who earn Ph.D.s apply for academic jobs.
• NIH awards more than $2 million to Cornell for studying women in sciences | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/22/2009 Chronicle feature
  Two Cornell research teams have each received National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants to identify factors influencing the careers of women in biomedical and behavioral sciences and engineering.
• Conference on cooperation, cheating, group decision-making yields insights | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/21/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Better understanding of honeybee interactions could have implications for understanding why people act selfishly in a communal system, said Kern Reeve, one of the presenters at the conference "Cooperation: Self Interest and Mutual Interest."
• Harold Craighead wins research honor from UPenn | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/21/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  The University of Pennsylvania's Nano/BioInterface Center has presented its annual Award for Research Excellence in Nanotechnology to Harold Craighead. His most recent research includes the use of nanofabricated devices for biological applications.
• AguaClara breaks ground on new water plant to serve 2,000 | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/20/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  AguaClara, a program in civil and environmental engineering in which students design municipal drinking water plants that operate without requiring electricity, has celebrated the groundbreaking of its fifth full-scale facility.
• New technique for making thin electronics supported by stimulus funds | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/20/2009 Chronicle feature
  The National Science Foundation's Materials World Network program is supporting Cornell scientists who have invented a reliable way of processing organic devices with a patent-pending process called orthogonal lithography.
• Study reveals how 'world's toughest bacterium' survives lethal radiation | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/19/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  A new study by Cornell researchers reveals that nitric oxide plays a key role in D. radiodurans' recovery when exposed to ultraviolet radiation (UV).
• Tuberculosis researcher gets boost from stimulus funds | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/15/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  By better understanding the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium's physiology, David Russell hopes to develop therapies that use biological pathways to kill the pernicious bug.
• Cornell Library forges landmark collaboration with Columbia's library | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/12/2009 Chronicle feature
  The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $385,000 to the libraries at Cornell and Columbia University to develop a new partnership that has the potential to become the most expansive collaboration to date between two major research libraries.
• Belmonte uses video games to explore facets of autism | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/12/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Unlike much of the current research on autism, which isolates and tests a single domain, Belmonte designed the user-friendly video games with embedded tasks that test childern with autism along with their unaffected siblings across multiple domains.
• Jamie Lloyd hunts for new planets, seeking clues on solar system's origin | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/12/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  The Cornell assistant professor of astronomy works on instrumentation that searches the night skies for planets outside our solar system, called extrasolar planets or exoplanets.
• NPR's 'Science Friday' taps Cornell ornithologists, veterinarians for live show | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/12/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Bird migration and insights into being a veterinarian were the topics that Ira Flatow addressed Oct. 9, 2009 in his two-hour show, National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation: Science Friday," broadcast live from Bailey Hall before nearly 1,000 people.
• Rover team works to get Spirit unstuck, as Opportunity trucks along toward massive crater | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/12/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  In the past several weeks, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory finished experimentation on methods to get the rover unstuck. This has involved many hours of maneuvering a test rover back on Earth in a manufactured patch of soil.
• Why do human populations differ? Fruit fly study aims to provide genetic answers | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/12/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Charles Aquadro, Cornell professor of molecular biology and genetics, was recently granted almost $700,000 in federal stimulus funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to continue this 20-year line of research.
• Even if jail(ed) birds sing, can they really remember? | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/09/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  Caged birds may still sing, but being in captivity for just a few weeks can reduce the volume of the hippocampus by as much as 23 percent, according to a new Cornell study by psychology graduate student Bernard Tarr and professor Tim DeVoogd.
• Nobel laureate Ada Yonath used Cornell synchrotron for early work on ribosome crystals | Cornell Chronicle feature | 10/09/2009 Chronicle feature
  
  CHESS officials are pleased to note how their National Science Foundation facility, and the National Institutes of Health-funded MacCHESS, made a contribution to Ada Yonath's Nobel Prize-winning work.