Cornell University Welcome Sign of Realities

Welcome Students and Scholars of Cornell University to Ithaca, New York.

The web site you are now examining are for those individual students, staff and faculty who desire an additional focus of campus life- mainly off - campus, in which to pursue a more realistic examination of your own social and cultural developments.

Campus life has a special protect " IVY ' of academic freedom in which even the most abstractural social, cultural and behavioral expressions are viewed as objective realities.

Nonetheless, once you go off campus and try to extend these expressions you will notice their irrelavancies and predelections of being some what absurb. Here, this site is an attempt to allow a transitional focus, which is supportive in terms of social - cultural - and at times - spirtual stage of development, in order for you as an individual successful life experience, and that it should, in the meantime of your education and its future impact of discovering a career, should be likewise pursued with youthful vigor.

Thus, and with deliberate and very mindful considerations, and indeed they all were intrinsically idealogical deep, this will have very little connections to the formal institutions of Cornell University iteslf. The primre factor, in which everyone should be aware, that in the legal circumstance, though some of the student sponsored events are estranged, the aupicies and agencies of Cornell University, very much like most repsonsiable institutions of higher education, have several internal and external self - impossed restrictions. Off campus activities are extremely garded within the legal circumstances of these restrictions.

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Thus the nature of this site is to allow a larger opportunity window, in as much as when you are in to your Junior year, the social, cultural, and futuritive planning stages will need independent access and self-demonstrations of who you are, which can only be found off campus; though the strings to Cornell University, nonetheless, are important too

Cornell in Competition for Energy Grant

January 10, 2006Energy Department Announces 2007 Solar Decathlon Teams Each of the 20 Schools to Receive $100,000 in Funding

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Energy today announced that 20 teams have been selected to compete in the 2007 Solar Decathlon. The 20 teams selected for the competition will be awarded $100,000 over two years to support the Solar Decathlon’s research goal of reducing the cost of solar-powered homes and advancing solar technology.

“The next generation of leaders will have an opportunity to shine as they compete in the 2007 Solar Decathlon,” said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. “Supplying enough clean, affordable energy to fuel the world’s growing economies is one of the great challenges we will face over the coming years. By helping expand the use of solar energy technologies, the participants will help meet that challenge.”

The following teams have been selected to compete through a proposal system:

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS
Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, MI
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, NY
*Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA
Team Montreal (École de Technologie Supérieure, Université de
Montréal, McGill University), Montreal, CANADA
Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, GERMANY
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras and Mayagüez, PR
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, SPAIN
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO (Winner 2005)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
University of Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, MO
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

*Santa Clara University added as a participant; California Polytechnic State University withdrew from the competition.

The Solar Decathlon is an international competition that brings student teams from universities across the United States, Europe and Canada to compete in designing, building and operating highly energy-efficient, completely solar-powered houses. The teams will assemble their homes on the Mall and will be open to the public. Contest rules require that each house generate enough energy from the sun to operate a household, a home-based business and related transportation needs.

Teams are judged in ten different categories, seven of which focus on energy efficiency; others include design and comfort of the house. The team with the most points – the most energy-efficient and innovatively designed house – wins.

The Solar Decathlon takes place every other year; the 2005 winner was the University of Colorado.

For more information please visit http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar_decathlon/.
Santa Clara University added as a participant; California Polytechnic State University withdrew from the competition
Media contact(s):Tom Welch, 202/586-5806

National Science Foundation Newest Grants - Alert - 1/2007

This is an alert to inform both the students / scholars grads at both Cornell University and Ithaca College of what is most recent in world wide grants, such as the National Science Foundation - so they along with their faculty advisors can advise of future research proposals - who will likewsie take advantage of this information - of what and when to apply, and for future use.

January 9, 2007

Scientists will find improved ways of studying the structure, function and evolution of the genomes of economically important plants, thanks to $14 million in new awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Resources to be developed include genomic sequences, genetic markers, maps and expressed sequence collections. These are much-needed tools for researchers working in areas as diverse as genome evolution and plant breeding.

Awardees will address scientific questions including the role of polyploidy in genome evolution, the genomic basis of speciation, and the relationships between cultivated plants and their weedy relatives.

"If the Plant Genome Research Program has been making the bricks that build a conceptual framework for the genomes of economically important crop plants, these projects will provide the mortar," said James Collins, NSF assistant director for biological sciences. "The impact of genomics in evolutionary, ecological and population studies of crop plants will be far-reaching."
Many crop plants have large, complex genomes that in some cases are "polyploid" - containing multiple genomes. Polyploidy is widespread in plants and animals, and can lead to dramatic changes in gene content and genome organization that are only just beginning to be understood.
A project led by researchers at Iowa State University will develop sequence and map resources to study polyploidy in cotton, while researchers at the University of Missouri will look at the impact of polyploidy on plant form in Brassica species, which includes plants such as canola and Brussels sprouts. Other projects at the University of Georgia and the University of Arizona will develop sequence resources to study genome organization in wheat and rice.

The outcomes from these projects will allow researchers to understand how extra copies of genes function in these plants, and how genomes from different sources can work together in a single plant.

The ever-growing collection of genome sequences is shedding light on the variation between individuals within a species. For example, in a forest of trees or a field of corn, there may be many versions of a particular gene, each with minor sequence differences. These sequence differences can sometimes have dramatic effects on growth and development.

Projects based at the University of California at Davis and Cornell University will catalog variants in pine trees and in maize, respectively, to allow researchers to link genetic variation with changes in gene function. This information could have applications in plant breeding.
More than half of the world's most cultivated crops have relatives that are invasive weeds, competing with the crop for nutrients and water and leading to reduced yields.

One example is red rice, a weedy form of rice that reduces the yields of cultivated rice by as much as 80 percent and contaminating harvests with its small red-coated grains. A project led by researchers at Washington University St. Louis will examine the regions of the red rice genome associated with weediness to find out whether it originated from the domesticated crop or if it was introduced as a weed from Asia.

A related project led by investigators at Michigan State University will investigate differences in gene expression in weedy and cultivated radishes to uncover which genes are associated with invasiveness.The outcomes of these projects could lead to a great understanding of how plants become weedy and invasive, and yield possible avenues for better selective control of weeds, scientists believe.

"The outcomes of this new program will tie together studies of the evolution of gene structure, function and regulation across the whole plant kingdom," said Collins.

-NSF-
Media ContactsCheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov
Related WebsitesNSF Plant Genome Comparative Sequencing Program Awards: http://www.nsf.gov/bio/pubs/awards/pgcsp.htm

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, with an annual budget of $5.58 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 1,700 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 40,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes nearly 10,000 new funding awards. The NSF also awards over $400 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

Receive official NSF news electronically through the e-mail delivery and notification system, MyNSF (formerly the Custom News Service). To subscribe, visit www.nsf.gov/mynsf/ and fill in the information under "new users".

Useful NSF Web Sites:NSF Home Page: http://www.nsf.gov/NSF News: http://www.nsf.gov/news/For the News Media: http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsroom.jspScience and Engineering Statistics: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/Awards Searches: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/