Category: General

In upstate New York, right off Lake Ontario and halfway between Buffalo and Syracuse, sits my alma mater, the University of Rochester. The U of R, or UR as most call it, has been one of those hidden gems that we all knew was an excellent institution, but never made a huge splash in the college rankings scene. However, the University got a bout of great news yesterday, and the official press release is reprinted below.

University of Rochester Named To Two Top College Rankings

Two highly respected national magazines have ranked the University of Rochester among the nation’s top 25 institutions.

The University of Rochester was one of only 25 schools named a “New Ivy” in the 2007 Kaplan/Newsweek “How to Get into College Guide.” The elite list, produced for the very first time, includes institutions whose first-rate academic programs and top students rival traditional Ivy League schools. The rankings are based on admissions statistics as well as interviews with administrators, students, faculty, and alumni.

The University of Rochester also placed 21st on The Washington Monthly College Rankings list. The list, presented for only the second time by the political magazine, includes institutions that The Washington Monthly believes are “benefiting the country.” The rankings take into account how a school contributes to social mobility by helping the poor improve their economic standing. Other criteria include the institution’s support for research in the humanities and in the sciences and its promotion of an ethic of service to country.

About the University of Rochester

The University of Rochester (www.rochester.edu) is one of the nation’s leading private universities. Located in Rochester, N.Y., the University’s environment gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty. Its College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering is complemented by the Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, and Schools of Medicine and Nursing.

The Ivy League is an “athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education located in the Northeastern United States.” Sure, it may not sound all that exciting, but Ivy League schools are generally among the top 20 colleges in rankings and boast having the top 1% of endowments worldwide. Lacking the comprehension of any other well-regarded ranking systems, being known as Ivy League is a universally understood and well-regarded distinction.

Now, enter the “New Ivies”. These schools, with the U of R included, are a result of an increase in worldwide demand for excellent educations on both big and small campuses that provide great academics and first-rate faculties.

You can read the whole “New Ivy” article and see which other schools earned the distinction on Newsweek’s site.

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, nonaddictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2006, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only “America” in the western hemisphere) and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Disclaimer: No trees were harmed in the sending of this message, however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced for a brief period.

I had to reprint this gem from the Readers Report section of the November 14, 2005, issue of BusinessWeek. Yes, this man is an idiot:

How To Stop A Hurricane In Its Tracks

Noting the various schemes you mention to “tame hurricanes” (“Herding hurricanes,” Science & Technology, Oct. 24), a simpler and more practical way to deprive hurricanes of energy would be to lower the surface water temperature: Dump several thousand tons of a cryogenic liquid (e.g., liquid oxygen at -297F, or even colder liquid nitrogen or liquid hydrogen) in advance of an approaching hurricane. The U.S. Air Force has some 500 KC-135 tankers, each with a payload of some 80,000 pounds. A dozen tankers converted to carry and drop a cryogenic fluid, each flying, say, five missions, could drop 2,000 tons in front of a hurricane, significantly lowering the surface temperature of the water in its path. Depriving an advancing hurricane of its energy would also avoid the legal and political problems that could result from methods designed just to divert its direction.

William Bailey
Oakton, Va.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Paul Elias posted on the Associated Press newswire this morning with regard to medical research efforts derailed by Katrina, such as the world-famous Bogalusa Heart Study:

About 300 federally funded projects at New Orleans colleges and universities worth more than $150 million including 153 projects at Tulane were affected in some way, according to an initial survey by the National Institutes of Health.

One of the biggest blows is the likely destruction of frozen urine and blood samples from thousands of patients enrolled in the Bogalusa Heart Study, the world’s longest-running racial study of risk factors for heart disease.

Samples collected and frozen since 1973 thawed out when the hurricane knocked out electricity and backup generators failed at a Tulane lab in New Orleans.

“It’s irreplaceable. That’s decades of research,” aid Dr. Paul Whelton, senior vice president for health sciences at Tulane. “It makes you want to cry.”

If the blood and urine samples are damaged or contaminated, future tests can’t be done using them. However, Bogalusa’s chief researcher, Tulane cardiologist Dr. Gerald Berenson said he had analyzed much of the data already collected and saved it on his computer, which was not damaged.

“The Bogalusa Heart Study will go on,” said Berenson who visited New Orleans, but not his lab, on Tuesday. “We’ll just have to pick up the pieces from what we have.”

Tulane cancer specialist Dr. Tyler Curiel was one of the few researchers who decided to ride out the hurricane in New Orleans in an effort to salvage decades worth of research.

After the storm passed, Curiel spent the first few days transferring vials from broken freezers to liquid nitrogen tanks with the help of a flashlight.

He later fled to his in-laws’ house in Denver and then returned to his lab for a day, grabbing whatever he could in an effort to save blood and tissue samples from an ongoing ovarian cancer project.

One thin silver lining to all the lab damage: It appears that no deadly diseases were released from the area’s “hot labs,” where researchers routinely handle and store some of the world’s most dangerous germs.