Michael Disare ’17 spent the summer as one of five undergrad researchers in Cornell’s Aye Lab, working with methods that are completely novel.
Disare and his colleagues at the lab work on studying signaling pathways in cells, and how specific molecules, like oxidants, affect those pathways.
“It’s the crossroads between chemistry and biology,” he says. “It’s almost like using chemistry…
Cornell Cinema's fall season includes a diverse array of special events and showings for movie fans of all genres.Cornell Cinema offers a classic movie going experience in the vintage Willard Straight Theatre and is considered one of the best campus film exhibition programs in the country, showing a wide variety of films every month, including recent hits, cult favorites, classics, world cinema…
Mostafa Minawi,Cornell University assistant professor of history and director of the university’s Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative, says sending Syrian refugees to other Gulf countries because it is where they’d have a more ‘natural’ home makes the false assumption that race or ethnicity is more important than nationalisms.Minawi is co-organizer of an upcoming international conference…
This National Geographic story about how mate selection changes the brains of male prairie voles features research by Assistant Professor of Psychology Alexander Ophir. He discovered that while single male prairie voles could recognize other males, all single females seemed to look and smell alike to them. After bonding with a mate, male prairie voles seemed to distinguish female prairie voles as…
As a leader in research at the intersection of computer/information science and the social sciences, Cornell has helped to define and create the field of computational social science.On Sept. 11-12, Cornell will host a conference showcasing cutting-edge research in the field and featuring alumni and other noted scholars in the discipline.“This conference comes at an important time, just as we’re…
Engaged Cornell has awarded its inaugural Engaged Curriculum Grants to 18 projects initiated by faculty across the university. The grants, totaling $930,299, support work that places community-engaged learning at the heart of the Cornell student experience.One such project is a cross-disciplinary minor in crime, prisons and justice. Students will take five courses in the new minor and will serve…
Lori Khatchadourian, Cornell assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies and co-director of the Project for the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies, says that Islamic State forces destruction of the ancient Temple of Baalshamin at Palmyra is motivated by the desire for media attention – and the best offense is to deny such media.Khatchadourian says: “ISIS’s perverse…
Lucinda Ramberg, assistant professor of anthropology and feminist, gender, & sexuality studies, recently received three honors for her book, "Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion" (Duke University Press, 2014).Ramberg's work was honored as the winner of the 2015 Clifford Geertz Prize in the anthropology of religion, given by the Society for the…
Sergio I. Garcia-Rios, assistant professor of government and Latino Studies, writes about Donald Trump's resent scuffle with Univision anchor Jorge Ramos in this piece for Time."For many Latinos, Spanish news media represents both a trusted source of information, as well as a socializing vehicle," Garcia-Rios writes. "Ramos is leading this effort, asking tough questions to politicians about the…
The three co-founders of Novomer, a startup company based on Cornell research, have received the 2016 Kathryn C. Hach Award for Entrepreneurial Success from the American Chemical Society (ACS), the society has announced.Company Vice President Scott Allen, Ph.D. ’04; founding CEO and board Chairman Anthony Eisenhut ’88; and Geoffrey Coates, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, received the…
If you happen to watch Nicolas Cage's new movie "The Runner" and stay for the credits, you'll see the name Andrea Fiorentini '16.Working on the film's postproduction has been just one of the benefits of Fiorentini's internship the past two summers through the alumni-run Cornell in Hollywood program, which helps Cornell students learn about careers in the entertainment industry, find internships…
This story in National Geographic tells of researchers at Cornell and other universities who recently published a guide to help astronomers detect alien apocalypses — whether it’s the chemical signature of a world filled with rotting corpses, the radioactive aftermath of nuclear warfare, or the debris left over from a Death Star scenario where an entire planet gets blown to bits.“One of the…
Sturt Manning, professor of Classics, writes in this piece for CNN about efforts to erase the rich history of Palmyra."The Palmyra oasis is a strategic location, unfortunately almost awaiting attention and thus disaster," Manning writes. "Usually ISIS justifies destruction by claiming representative art to be idolatrous and pre-Islamic religious objects or structures sacrilegious. It seeks to…
Gabriela Walters '15 Majors: Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies & EconomicsHometown: Acton, MAWhy did you choose Cornell?As a high school senior I knew I needed to be in large and diverse school with a lot of different opportunities, academic and extra-curricular. Cornell University, with its many, many departments and student groups, was the place to find that.What is your main Cornell…
Following last year’s successful 150 Events series, the Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA) will continue its new tradition of student-led theater, film and dance performances in its 2015-16 season.The season begins with the traditional Festival24, Aug. 29 at 7 p.m. in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts' Flexible Theatre. Students will spend 24 hours (starting Aug. 28) writing…
To understand the past – and, often, the present – we group people together, attributing the same characteristics to individuals in a group as we do to the group as a whole, especially when it comes to religion.Éric Rebillard challenges this approach in a new book, co-edited with Jörg Rüpke, titled “Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity.”During late antiquity, some…
Like many good mysteries, it began with innocent curiosity. Michael Fontaine was on paternity leave and, wanting “a small project” to occupy him between baby duties, thought he’d write about “Mater-Virgo,” a 17th-century play by Lutheran pastor Joannes Burmeister, based on a work by the Roman playwright Plautus.But the last known copy of the play was looted from the Berlin Library during World…
Some hidden Cornell treasures soon will be available to scholars around the world, thanks to the Cornell University Library and the College of Arts and Sciences’ Grants Program for Digital Collections, which this year awarded four grants.One such treasure is the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection, which includes more than 10,000 items of apparel, flat textiles and accessories dating from the…
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Cornell government professors commented on the market volatility in China and the Chinese government’s response.Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of government and faculty member of Cornell’s China and Asia Pacific Studies Program, is the author of “Cities and Stability: Urbanization, Redistribution, and Regime Survival in China.”Wallace says:“Don’t worry about the Chinese stock market collapse…
Aby Warburg – whose early 20th-century emphasis on the power of recurrent images was eerily prescient of contemporary thought – died before he could finish his “Mnemosyne Atlas,” consisting of large panels of collages tracing the history of art.Now, nearly 90 years after Warburg’s death, Cornell University Library, in partnership with Cornell University Press and the Warburg Institute of the…
First-year students arriving on campus this week are members of Cornell’s most racially diverse incoming freshman class since the university began keeping records on race in the early 1980s.Of the 3,219 students in the Class of 2019 enrolling this fall, a record number are students of color – 1,488, or 46.2 percent; and a record number of freshmen self-identify as underrepresented minority…
Ruby Rhoden ’17 expected her arrival at Cornell would be like landing on a new planet, with everything from the social environment to the academics substantially different from where she came from.Rhoden attended an impoverished high school in New York City, where she says the average grade at the school was “C.” Despite receiving a full scholarship to Cornell, she was nervous about how she would…
The Cornell University Department of English will hold a memorial celebration for M.H. Abrams, the Class of 1916 Professor of English Emeritus, in Statler Auditorium, Statler Hall at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12. The celebration is free and open to the public.Abrams, a towering figure in literary and cultural studies, died at the age of 102 on April 21, 2015.Cornell President Elizabeth Garrett will…
Margaret Zientek, one of nine PhD students from Cornell working at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, is featured in this story about women making their way in this male-dominated environment.“I am working on a search for dark matter particles,” she says“There is overwhelming evidence from cosmology that a completely new kind of matter, known as dark matter, exists and that it makes up a…
With doctorates in philosophy and literature under his belt, Laurent Dubreuil has added a new field to his lexicon: cognitive science. After embarking on an intensive study of the subject, fueled by a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, Dubreuil has written a book about the distinction between thinking and thought. Based on his research in experimental psychology, literature and…
Anjum Malik ’16, who hails from Pakistan, was concerned by people’s reactions to the destruction of museums and heritage sites by Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria.“Western colonial empires committed these same acts less than a century ago,” to destroy the cultures of those they were trying to overpower, Malik said, citing as examples the destruction and conversion of heritage sites in India by…
Malaysia is once again in the midst of a serious political scandal, with the allegation that the government-run investment company 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) has been used to funnel approximately US$ 700 million to a personal account of Prime Minister Najb Razak, writes Tom Pepinsky, associate professor of government, in this piece.Media commentary on the scandal is full of superlatives,…
As Ellen Abrams considered math-related topics for her doctoral thesis, she knew the summer after her first year would be a good time to explore the options.So the doctoral student in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) chose a two-pronged approach. For the latter part of the summer, she plans to hole up in a library studying the history of mathematics. But before that, she headed…
If you happen to watch Nicolas Cage's new movie "The Runner" and stay for the credits, you'll see the name Andrea Fiorentini '16.Working on the film's postproduction has been just one of the benefits of Fiorentini's internship the past two summers through the alumni-run Cornell in Hollywood program, which helps Cornell students learn about careers in the entertainment industry, find internships…
For some people, mention a physicist, and they conjure up images of Einstein or Newton – scientists who discover the math of the physical world, theorize the seemingly unexplainable. They watched atoms split and electrons collide. They might even associate the term with the closely cropped NASA engineers cheering from Houston as they achieve what people once believed impossible.Well, Joseph…
The art of kirigami involves cutting paper into intricate designs, like snowflakes. Cornell physicists are kirigami artists, too, but their paper is only an atom thick, and could become some of the smallest machines the world has ever known.A research collaboration led by Paul McEuen, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science and director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale…
LONDON — Alumni recalled snow-packed days when they transformed cookie trays into sleds and sun-filled days sailing on Cayuga Lake, while high school seniors listened carefully, during a recent admitted students reception hosted by the UK’s Cornell Alumni and Admissions Ambassador Network (CCAAAN) in London’s Soho district.The event, co-chaired by Alex Bhak ’89 and Camilla Gersh ’07, both Arts …
Cornell English professor Daniel Schwarz offers “20 Suggestions for Incoming Freshman” in The Huffington Post, detailing nuggets of wisdom that every student – not just freshmen – can benefit from, such as:Keep your career and life goals in mind, and remember why you enrolled at the college and in the program you chose. Experience complements what you learn in classes. Get to know at least one…
Google “Ivy league admissions” and up will pop thousands of sites that list the GPA requirements, SAT scores and stellar list of activities a high school student needs to make their application stand out to admissions counselors. As admissions deadlines loom, these sites are getting more traffic than ever.The typical text goes like this: “A winning Ivy League application needs to present a strong…
As education reporters note each year, March and April are frenzied months for the parents of high school seniors.“I hear you,” is all I say when I’m with parents waiting out March. With some, I hold back, unsure about adding to the conversation.They are the tightly wound, and their talk is oddly anxious and hubristic: “Of course, they will accept her, how could they not?”“Ouch,” I think, and…
People who consider themselves experts in a given topic are more likely to claim knowledge of made-up “facts” about that topic, a new study shows.Researchers conducted a series of experiments to assess how likely people were to believe fictions presented as fact. In one of the experiments, for example, the researchers had 100 people rate their level of knowledge for personal finance by describing…
For C. Riley Snorton, assistant professor of Africana studies and of feminist, gender and sexuality studies in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, winning a coveted National Endowment for the Humanities-Schomburg Center Scholar-in-Residence fellowship is the chance of a lifetime. He will examine a topic that has intrigued him since college, when he first self-identified as a transgender…
Sibling suns – made famous in the “Star Wars” scene where Luke Skywalker gazes toward a double sunset – and the planets around them may be more common than we’ve thought, and Cornell astronomers are presenting new ideas on how to find them.NASA AmesNASA video describes the Kepler satellite's first discovery of a planet orbiting sibling suns in 2011. With the publication of this Cornell research,…
Graduate student Tonia Ko’s career as a young composer and artist has hit a new level, with several recent international honors, concert commissions and performance premieres, including a piece performed on bubble wrap.Ko, 26, was one of nine recipients of the 63rd annual BMI Student Composer Awards, held May 18 in New York City. The winners ranged in age from 14 to 26.“It’s something I applied…
Growing up in Ethiopia in the early 1980s and coming to the United States as a young teenager in 1989, Dagmawi Woubshet witnessed unprecedented expressions of mourning and loss in both countries in response to the AIDS crisis.Woubshet, associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, analyzes these cultures of mourning in “The Calendar of Loss: Race, Sexuality, and Mourning in…
Among them was Naomi Gendler, a senior at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In a few minutes, Gendler summarized her project, “Analysis of Methods to Excite Head-Tail Motion of Bunches within the Cornell Electron Storage Ring.” Her research could help improve the stability of electron beams in particle accelerators.Gendler and the 16 other student presenters came from far and wide, including some…
While most Cornell students headed home for the summer – off to internships, work or play – a group of entrepreneurial undergrads and graduate students are staying in Ithaca for intensive business development as part of the new Life Changing Labs (LCL) summer incubator.Six student teams are working on their businesses in apartments and offices, meeting together at least three times a week in the…
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
The Brock Turner rape case at Stanford triggered a firestorm of criticism; an op-ed by assistant professor of philosophy Kate Manne in the Huffington Post helps to explain why.The case, she wrote, “vividly illustrates…all of the ways we collectively ignore, deny, minimize, forgive, and forget the wrongdoing of men who conform to the norms of toxic masculinity, and behave in domineering ways…
Simultaneously critical and creative, timeless and timely, global and individual, the humanities embrace the complexity of a rapidly changing world and inspire us to seek to understand it.
These 16 new A&S faculty members will contribute to the nexus of big ideas, foundational methods, and colliding and intertwining disciplines found at the center of Cornell.
Cornell researchers have used cutting-edge X-ray technology to noninvasively image fruit flies during and after mating. The study, published online ahead of print June 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes how researchers used the Cornell Biotechnology Resource Center’s high resolution micro-CT (computed tomography) scanner to acquire detailed 3-D datasets of…
For many teenagers, math is just a necessary component of earning a high school diploma. For others, though, math is a passion, a destination in itself.Recognizing this, professors in the Department of Mathematics in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences have created the Senior Seminar, a course for Ithaca High School (IHS) students who have completed most or all IHS math classes. The seminar…
Lori Khatchadourian teaches the Exploring Archaeology mini-course at the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca.The week of June 15-19, professors Adam T. Smith, anthropology, and Lori Khatchadourian, Near Eastern studies, led a mini-course on archaeology at the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca. Nine children ages 5-8 spent five mornings exploring aspects of…
To sort out the biological intricacies of Earth-like planets, astronomers have developed computer models that examine how ultraviolet radiation from other planets’ nearby suns may affect those worlds, according to new research published June 10 in Astrophysical Journal.“Depending on the intensity, ultraviolet radiation can be both useful and harmful to the origin of life,” says Lisa Kaltenegger,…
What does it take to reverse a first impression? Cornell researchers were especially interested in implicit impressions – rapidly and uncontrollably activated positive and negative evaluations of others. Implicit impressions are assumed to be very difficult to revise.The answer, according to researchers Melissa Ferguson and Jeremy Cone: Simple countervailing information isn’t always enough. But …
