CUNY Newswire

Baruch College was recently awarded the 2013 Educational Fundraising Award, an honor given by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) to superior fundraising programs at educational institutions across the country.

With Governor Andrew Cuomo’s post-Sandy admonition—“Anyone who thinks there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns is denying reality”—still reverberating in the news, Steve Pekar (Earth & Environmental Sciences) joined more than 100 scientists, policy experts, environmentalists, explorers, heads of NGOs, filmmakers, and business and political leaders participating in Al Gore’s marathon webcast devoted to climate change, 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report.

The American Physical Society (APS) has awarded the 2013 Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science to Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering Robert Alfano. The prize recognizes outstanding contributions to basic research using lasers to advance knowledge of the fundamental physical properties of materials and their interaction with light. The award is endowed by the NEC Corporation, an information technology and network solutions company, and provides a stipend of $10,000.

Dr. Sheldon Weinbaum, Distinguished Professor of Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering Emeritus in The City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering, has just joined a very exclusive club. With his election in April as a 2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (the Academy), he becomes one of just five living persons with membership in the Academy- and the three U.S. National Academies: Academy of Sciences, Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine.

Cynthia Lee Wong, a Performing Arts Professor in the Weissman School of Arts & Sciences at Baruch College, was recently named the 2013 New Voices composer.

Bella is the first Medgar Evers College Environmental Science Student in 10 Years to Move Directly from a Bachelor’s Degree Program into a Ph.D. Program Brooklyn, NY – Senior Delisha Bella is the first student in 10 years to graduate from Medgar Evers College with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Environmental Science and a [...]

Waiting in long lines is about as appealing to most Americans as getting a root canal or being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. A team of students from The City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering has developed an online “virtual queuing” system that can save people time and has won kudos from CCNY students and administrators alike. The team, NextQ, won the $50,000 first prize in CCNY’s third annual Kaylie Prize entrepreneurship competition, which was announced following the final round May 21.

My most recent post was about the worthiness of so-called “demarcation” problems, such as reflections on what distinguishes science from philosophy, the latter from theology, and the former from pseudoscience. My interest in this field has been rekindled because of a long time collaboration with my colleague Maarten Boudry, which has resulted in a forthcoming edited book on the topic, to be published in July by Chicago Press.

A study published online today finds that the private insurance companies that participate in Medicare under the Medicare Advantage program and its predecessors have cost the publicly funded program for the elderly and disabled an extra $282.6 billion since 1985, most of it over the past eight years. In 2012 alone, private insurers were overpaid $34.1 billion.

New York University physicists have uncovered how energy is released and dispersed in magnetic materials in a process akin to the spread of forest fires, a finding that has the potential to deepen our understanding of self-sustained chemical reactions.

A team of researchers from Columbia University, City University of New York, the University of Central Florida (UCF), and Tohoku University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan, have directly observed a rare quantum effect that produces a repeating butterfly-shaped energy spectrum, confirming the longstanding prediction of this quantum fractal energy structure, called Hofstadter’s butterfly. The study, which focused on moiré-patterned graphene, is published in the May 15, 2013, Advance Online Publication (AOP) of Nature.

Peel-and-place Bodywell Chip drastically reduces the body’s absorption of radio frequency waves coming from mobile devices.

Palaeontologists working in Tanzania have discovered the oldest known fossils from two major primate groups — Old World monkeys, which include baboons and macaques, and apes, which include humans and chimpanzees. The study, published online today in Nature1, reveals new information about primate evolution.

Researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and City University of New York have invented a proprietary new formulation called VisikolTM that effectively clears organisms to be viewed under microscopes. Visikol can be used in place of chloral hydrate, which is one of the few high-quality clearing solutions currently available but which is tightly regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) due to its use as a narcotic.

The 161st annual meeting of Alumni Association of The City College of New York will take place 7 p.m. Thursday, June 6 in The Great Hall, Shepard Hall, 160 Convent Ave., on the CCNY campus. The program includes service award presentations to CCNY faculty, administrators and alumni, a panel discussion celebrating the 75th anniversary of CCNY’s Department of Psychology and a presentation on highlights of the 2012 – 2013 academic year by CCNY President Lisa S. Coico.

Two summers ago, Philomina Kane, 16, and the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, was one of seven participants in The City College of New York’s annual IUSL Photonics Training Program. The program offers high school students an opportunity for applied research in photonic science and technology. This fall, Ms. Kane enters Princeton University grateful to her CCNY experience for setting her on a path that she hopes will lead to a career in biomedical engineering.

In a world increasingly dependent upon interconnected computer systems, cybersecurity cannot be ignored. Dr. Ernest McDuffie directs the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), a federal program with a portfolio that ranges from teaching people how to protect themselves on the Internet to preparing people for careers as cybersecurity professionals. Last month, he was keynote speaker for the 12th annual NOAA-CREST Day at The City College of New York.

Monday, May 20, 2013 (Bronx, NY) – United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will deliver the keynote address at Eugenio María de Hostos Community College’s 42nd commencement ceremony, to be held in New York City Center at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, June 7, 2013. The College will confer degrees on approximately 800 students. “I [...]

City College of New York Assistant Professor of Physics Cory Dean, who recently arrived from Columbia University where he was a post-doctoral researcher, and research teams from Columbia and three other institutions have definitively proven the existence of an effect known as Hofstadter’s Butterfly.

Eight outstanding City University of New York students – recognized for research on subjects including cancer, immunology, cardiovascular disease, genetics, neuroscience, autism spectrum disorder, nuclear physics and the physical interactions of dye molecules – have been awarded Jonas E. Salk Scholarships to study in the medical field in 2013, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has announced.