By wpengine
Cornellians now have a new way to follow the seasons of some of their favorites sports teams. In association with OCSN (the Official College Sports Network) and RealNetworks, the Cornell Athletics website (www.cornellbigred.ocsn.com) will be providing live streaming audio broadcasts of Cornell football games, as well as those of men’s ice hockey, lacrosse, and basketball. The new service, “College Sports Pass,” charges $6.95 per month and requires the use of RealNetworks’ “RealOne” media player. Other features include on-demand video and audio clips, live stats, and press conference coverage. Additionally, users have access to the live game media from every other member school in the OCSN, which include Ancient Eight rivals Brown, Penn, and Princeton, as well as football and basketball powerhouses such as Oklahoma, Florida, and Duke. “It used to be that such services were administered by several different providers, depending on the college and the sport. Now, all the webcasts of the OCSN schools are done by RealNetworks in Seattle,” said Lisa Amore, the Director of Consumer Public Relations for RealNetworks. “Now, we can provide higher quality and bitrate assurance than there ever was before.” In the past, similar sports packages were available from RealNetworks, enabling users to listen to Major League baseball games and NBA contests. This new service is the first of its kind encompassing such a large number of colleges. “OCSN liked what we were doing with our other sports programs. We had developed a niche in the field of online sports services,” Amore said. “They came to us with a proven audience for college sports. The result of the partnership is the premier internet service for college athletics.” “We were looking to provide a quality level of service that would be the same for each one of our 135 member schools,” said Jeff Craven, President of OCSN. “RealNetworks has the best technical infrastructure and the quality to match consumer expectation.” Originally, Cornell athletic broadcasts were available online for free through Eagle Broadcasting, the independent media distributor that owns several local radio stations, including QCountry and Lite97. “There was a big boom in online services like this,” said Cornell Director of Athletic Communications Laura Stange. “Now, the technology has increased to the point that you have to pay for the best streaming quality. Nobody is offering this for free anymore.” “If you want a high-quality internet media product, you’re going to have to pay,” Amore said. “But most of the fee goes straight back to the individual athletic departments.” In Cornell’s case, the money will directly cover the costs of the broadcasts, yielding little or no profit. “This isn’t a money-making venture for Cornell at all,” Stange said. “This is providing a service. People should be allowed to listen to their sports teams. OCSN had a strong bargaining position [due to the number of colleges under its umbrella] and got us a good and fair [subscription] price.” The Cornell athletic department sees the College Sports Pass as a benefit, but not necessarily for the students. Associate Director of CU Athletic Alumni Affairs John Webster said of the service, “it’s beneficial to the program and will certainly help alumni stay connected with Cornell athletics.” “While students could most definitely find a use for it when the teams are on the road, they can just see the home events in person,” Stange said. “This is really designed for alumni, parents, and friends of the university.” “I think it’s a tremendous way for people to stay connected to the university,” Cravens said. “It’s important for students, it’s important for alumni, and it’s important for Cornell.” Archived article by Per Ostman
By wpengine
Prof. Ronald Hoy, Merksamer Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior was recently awarded the $1 million Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) grant. The award is annually given to 20 research professors from across the nation by the HHMI. The grant money will be distributed over the course of four years with each professor receiving $250,000 a year. The HHMI grant is meant to encourage faculty to “innovate new teaching materials or courses and develop ideas in their discipline that would involve undergrad teaching,” Hoy said. Essentially, HHMI grant allows the recipients more flexibility in their teaching methods. “It affords each professor a lot of freedom, certainly financial freedom. It provides money to buy specialized equipment such as multimedia and high speed digital equipment,” said Hoy. Hoy hopes to benefit students at Cornell as well as at other universities by bridging the gap between the classroom and the laboratory. He plans on doing so by further developing his classes and creating multimedia materials for students outside Cornell to use. At Cornell, he will develop courses in neurogenetics, the study of genetics in behavior, by bringing Drosophila into the classroom. Drosophila, more commonly known as the fruit fly, are “model organisms [for studying] genes that are in all animals,” said Bruce Johnson, a senior research associate in the department of neurology and behavior. Much of scientists’ basic knowledge of human genetics is derived from research done on Drosophila. It is far easier to manipulate the genetics of fruit flies, such as their wings or their eye color, because the results are more immediate since they have a shorter lifespan. Another area that Hoy hopes to develop lectures in is biomimecticks, the study of biomedical engineering. “The idea is to examine how animals and plants have ‘solved’ problems in the world on how to cope and survive,” Hoy said. These principles can then be applied to human society. For example, bats use the principle of biosonar everyday when “they emit little noises and pips and then listen to echoes for guidance. Instead of using light waves, they use sounds to interrogate the environment,” Hoy said. This same principle is the idea behind ultrasound. To spread his teaching beyond Cornell, a “DVD or CD-ROM of a set of lab exercises and lecture enrichment materials” will be produced and can be used by any teacher at any university Hoy said. Hoy and his research associates are already familiar with the process of producing a complete CD-ROM with video clips instead of a written lab manual. In 1999, they received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a lab manual on neurophysiology and they chose to create it in a more visual form in order for it to be more comprehensive and useful to students. “We’ll be extending from that — the same approach, but the content will be quite different. It will have an emphasis on integrating what we know from genetics and molecular biology with neurobiology,” said Robert Wyttenbach, a senior research associate in the department of neurology and behavior. “It speaks very highly of him that he was awarded the Hughes grant on very stiff competition. Despite his high position, he has a remarkable devotion to teaching and the quality of teaching,” said Wyttenbach. Archived article by Diana Lo