The Essentials

“What I have in mind rather is providing a way for a larger proportion of industrial workers, including part-time workers, to make comfortable homes for themselves in the country, where they may perhaps grow a portion of their own food supplies …”

This 1931 letter lays out Eleanor Roosevelt’s ideas for Depression-era workers, which she affirmed through her support for Cornell’s College of Home Economics.

Roosevelt, who died 47 years ago this month, played an integral role in the development of the college from the 1920s to the 1940s.

In celebration of the Home Economics centennial anniversary in 2001, Cornell Library digitized highlights from its collection of Roosevelt materials. Go online to view photographs, a telegram and personal correspondence, or visit the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections to see the items in person.

– Gwen Glazer

Image courtesy of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

If you buy this cute plush bear and toss it out on the ice at the Cornell men’s hockey game Nov. 28 at Madison Square Garden, the bear will be autographed by team members and then donated to Cops, Kids & Toys.

In addition, money raised from the purchase of this exclusive bear will be donated to the Franziska Racker Center and The Finger Lakes Cancer Resource Center in Ithaca.

The Fourth Annual Teddy Bear Toss is sponsored and coordinated by the Cornell men’s ice hockey team. It’s how the red-hot team – with help from its fans – can make a Big Red difference. The bear is $5.99 and is available online.

- Susan S. Lang

The other day, teaching assistant Matthew Sweeney, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, was talking about price discrimination in a section for the course Intermediate Microeconomics.

“Matt led a discussion of a story by the AP on how the San Francisco Giants baseball team is experimenting with ‘dynamic pricing’ – changing ticket prices based on factors such as day of the week, opposing team, even starting pitchers and weather,” wrote the professor for the course, John Cawley, in an e-mail. “To foster discussion, Matt asked the students to envision themselves in the Giants’ front office, and think about whether fans might be angry about this policy.”

The discussion got one of the students, Daniel Novick ’12, thinking about the issues, and it prompted him to propose another way that teams could increase ticket revenue without alienating fans as much. It turns out that Novick is a columnist for The Hardball Times, so he has posted his idea in his column.

“I think it shows how Cornell graduate students can have an impact on Cornell undergraduates,” wrote Cawley, “and also how the Internet allows Cornell undergrads to share what they learn at Cornell with others.”

– Susan S. Lang

Last Friday, Oct. 30, Risley’s Great Hall was overtaken by a hoard of skeletons. But there’s no reason to fear the apocalypse – it was only Dia de los Muertos. In collaboration with MEChA de Cornell, and featuring performances by Ballet Folklórico de Cornell, Risley Dining brought back the age-old tradition of Day of the Dead, complete with traditional food, music and face painting.

The Day of the Dead is chiefly a Mexican holiday, with roots dating back to Aztec custom. It is typically celebrated Nov. 1, coinciding with the Catholic holiday of All Saints’ Day. Similar to other holidays at this time of the year, like Samhain and Halloween, it is believed that on this day it is easier for dead souls to visit the land of the living. Families gather to pray and remember those who have passed on in the previous year and to honor their deceased relatives. Often families will build alters in hopes that the souls of their loved ones will visit.

Risley focused on the Mexican tradition, complete with customary comidas (foods) and pasteles (desserts) and decorated the dining hall with sugar skulls. But this kind of tradition is actually celebrated much more widely than was once thought – in many Latin American countries, and even as far away as the Czech Republic and the Philippines.

– Jennifer Wholey

The ovaries of your average fruit fly are many things. Functional, for example. Complex. Very small. And vital for species survival.

But beautiful?

Well, judge for yourself. Graduate student Heather Flores’ photos of fruit fly ovaries were selected as winners in the NYSTEM Stem Cell Awareness Day Image Contest announced by Gov. David Paterson on Stem Cell Awareness Day, Sept 23.

The images will be included in a 2010 calendar that demonstrates the visual beauty of stem cell science. The complete calendar is available for downloading in PDF format.

“I always enjoy taking images of ovaries because they are very aesthetically pleasing to me,” said Flores. “I often find myself taking extra pictures just because they look nice and not necessarily because they will aid in my data collection.”

Left picture: A picture of an ovary from the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, with a mutation in the bag of marbles gene, which is required for germline stem cells to differentiate. Since these flies lack this gene, their stem cells cannot differentiate and accumulate, leading to a tumorous ovary. Each of the green cells with a red dot in them is a single stem cell. Typically, there should only be two to three stem cells.

Right picture: In this picture, the researchers artificially introduced a copy of a fully functional bag of marbles gene into the ovary of a D. melanogaster fly with a mutated bag of marbles gene. The functional gene rescued the mutation, allowing the germline stem cells to differentiate and undergo mitotic divisions.

- Krishna Ramanujan

Some students organize bake sales to raise funds for social causes; others seek sponsors to run a marathon or climb a mountain. Ilya Brotzky ’10 is doing both and much more. He and eight other Cornell students (more are welcome) plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania this January to raise money and awareness for obstetric fistulas.

As leader of the Fistula Free Climb, Brotzky, originally of Siberia, says the group hopes to raise $100,000 for OperationOF.org.

The students also will volunteer in Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center’s fistula ward before and after the climb.

“Obstetric fistulas are lesions that occur during child labor that cause the mother to lose control of her bowels and constantly leak urine and stool. She ends up living alone because no one can tolerate the smell and must beg for a living,” says Brotzky, who says he was inspired by a July 26, 2007, Cornell Chronicle article about Seth Cochran ’00, M.Eng. ’01, who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to help raise $40,000 for cleft lip surgeries in the developing world.

(Cochran also is involved with ending obstetric fistula worldwide.

Most of the students are either Cornell Tradition or Meinig Family Cornell National Scholars, who can each use up to $2,000 from the programs to help cover trip costs.

So far, the group has raised $1,200. Upcoming fundraisers:

Level B Event: Wednesday, Oct. 28, 9 p.m.

Concert: Friday, Nov. 6, at Theta Delta Chi fraternity, 7 p.m.

Auction: Saturday, Nov. 14, at Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, 7 p.m.

For more information, check out Brotzky’s blog.

- Susan S. Lang

RefWorks is one of the most popular citation management tools online, and Cornell Library has now made it available for alumni for the foreseeable future.

Through RefWorks’ new plan to allow alumni to use its service, members of the Cornell community now have access to their accounts as long as the library is a subscriber. Researchers at all levels, from undergraduates to post-doctorates, use RefWorks to gather sources, manage research information, create bibliographies and build personal databases. The newly expanded access allows them to keep those databases for all their research endeavors after they leave Cornell.

Check out the library’s RefWorks site, Ask a Librarian or e-mail for more information about alumni access.

- Gwen Glazer

Thanks to the first annual New York Youth Institute, held Sept. 19 by Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ International Programs and the World Food Prize, a high school student in the New Visions in Life Sciences program at Cornell and her mentor at Cornell, Michele Sutton, have just returned the Global Youth Institute, Oct. 15-17, in Des Moines, Iowa, where they hobnobbed with Nobel and World Food Prize laureates and more than 600 global leaders from 65 countries.

The event was the World Food Prize’s annual international symposium. Zoe Anderson, a senior at Trumansburg High School, was selected from 26 high school students that attended the New York Youth Institute, which was designed to develop student leaders in the global fight against hunger.

At the Global Youth Institute, Anderson served as one of 120 delegates (and one of four from New York) from around the world and with Sutton, attended the World Food Prize Award ceremony, the Borlaug Dialogue and listened to Bill Gates deliver his first major address on agriculture and announce $120 million in grants to help the world’s poorest farmers.

“This was a life-changing experience [for Anderson],” said Sutton, “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a high school student to share her own ideas about such complex issues with those leaders in a position to solve them. I think Zoe has returned inspired to change the world. … If it weren’t for Cornell, Francine Jasper [who organized the New York Youth Institute] and her International programs department, it wouldn’t have happened.”

- Susan S. Lang

Crispy? Sweet? Maybe with a hint of sour? The Cornell Orchard Store is now selling Honeycrisp (going fast), Sweet 16 (just a few), Gala, Ginger Gold, Jonamac, Macoun, McIntosh, NY 674 (now named Autumn Crisp), Shizuka – and coming soon are Cortland, Empire and more.

The Orchard Store also has a good crop of wine grapes available, including Finger Lakes Riesling, Seyval Blanc, Foch, Pinot gris, Chardonnay, Lemberger, Cabernet franc and Concord, as well as some hybrids that could go into a blended white or red. The store will even press the juice for you.

The store also sells:

• cider;
• such heritage apple varieties as Blue Permain, Chenango Strawberry, Maiden Blush, Northfield Beauty;
• grapes, pears, plums, potatoes, squash, sweet corn, gourds and pumpkins;
• Cornell maple syrup from Cornell’s Arnot Forest and Uihlein Sugar Maple Research and Extension Field Station;
• wool blankets from the Cornell Sheep Program, maple products, local honey;
• T-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, aprons, totes and mugs with the orchard’s logo; and
• Finger Lakes and New York state-produced specialty food and gift items.

The store sells apples usually until mid-April. In the winter, choice apples are preserved in a Cornell-developed controlled atmosphere (CA) room – a sealed cold room where the oxygen level is dramatically reduced to slow fruit aging and preserve fruit firmness, acidity, sugars and vitamin C.

Fruit with the CA label has higher nutritional and sensory quality than regular cold-stored fruit of the same age, according to Cornell pomologists.

Questions? Call or e-mail: 255-4542 or orchards@cornell.edu.

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

Location: Rt. 366 (709 Dryden Road) across from the Vet School.

– Susan S. Lang

Next time you sit down to a tasty meal of sushi spread out on fine china, followed up with a cup of java, think about how much Asia has integrated itself into your life.

Asia-originated themes are omnipresent, showing up in societies around the world for centuries thanks to the free flow of people, materials, images and ideas across physical and virtual boundaries. With that in mind, the Cornell Library created an exhibition, “Asia Plural,” that draws together materials from the library’s collections and beyond to demonstrate how widespread and circular that information flow can be.

The exhibition is on display in Kroch Library through mid-November. Stop by during regular library hours to check it out.