Nearly 2,500 students, educators and business leaders from around the world gathered at Cornell this weekend for the 17th annual Net Impact Conference, “Advancing Sustainable Global Enterprise: Changemakers, Innovators, and Problem Solvers.”

Since Vladimir Nabokov’s death in 1977, a Swiss bank vault has guarded 138 pencil-written note cards that the writer of Lolita fame instructed to destroy. Thirty years later, copies of these cards, the unfinished draft of Nabokov’s last novel The Original of Laura, will be available today at the Cornell Store, one day prior to the global release date.

This is the first article in a series that examines the final reports released by the task forces in Cornell’s Strategic Planning process.

The final report for the task force of College of Agriculture and Life Sciences was released just 10 days ago, but it has already turned heads for the bold changes it advocates.

The Workers United Union and Cornell Organization for Labor Action were planning to protest as General Electric’s CEO was to give his keynote address in the 2009 Net Impact Conference at Cornell, but the rally was called off after COLA’s secretary Chad Gray ’10 met with General Electric’s global human resources manager and convinced G.E.

After erasing two early deficits and entering halftime with a 20-16 advantage, it appeared Cornell was going to send its 16-member senior class out on a high note Saturday afternoon in its final game at Schoellkopf Field. A 19-yard scamper into the end zone by Columbia’s senior quarterback, M.A. Olawale, with 1:51 left in regulation cemented a 30-20 road victory for the Lions. However, it was the six interceptions suffered by Cornell quarterbacks on the afternoon that sealed the Red’s fate.

Coming off of a solid performance at Heps at the end of October, the cross country teams headed to the NCAA Northeast Regional Championships at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. on Saturday. As the teams reflect on their performances, there are some mixed reviews: the men were able to secure seventh place, led by junior Nate Edelman with a time of 31:18 for ninth place overall in the field. The women performed in a similar fashion, placing sixth overall and led by senior Stephanie Pancoast, who put up a final time of 22:40 for 12th place overall in the field.

University administrators say they will carefully monitor the transformation of the undergraduate biology major and elimination of introductory classes that will go into effect next semester.

For the men’s hockey team, it seems like there’s just something about Yale. The No. 12 Bulldogs won all three contests between the two teams last season, including a 5-0 rout in the ECAC Hockey championship game. And despite the No. 3 Red’s hot start to the season, Yale outskated Cornell once again on Friday in New Haven, Conn., and came away with a 4-2 win. The Red took out its frustration the next night in a 6-0 thrashing of Brown.

Fifty percent of all non-immigrant American children will use food stamps at one point in their lives, according to a Cornell researcher who co-authored a study on childrens’ food stamp use in this month’s issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, a monthly professional journal published by the American Medical Association.

Driving back to Ithaca from Brown University (where we saw Emma Watson!), it is painful not to second guess what might have been Friday night against Yale. We can only imagine the team feels the same way.