All materials found in nature – even the most “perfect” diamond – contain defects, since the atoms inside them are never arranged in perfect order.Such structural disorder causes complex force distributions throughout the material. Measuring these forces is critical to understanding the material’s behavior, but these force measurements have been impossible to perform through conventional…
When cells die, whether through apoptosis or necrosis, the DNA and other molecules found in those cells don’t just disappear. They wind up in the blood stream, where degraded bits and pieces can be extracted.This cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is degraded due to its exposure to enzymes in the blood but is nonetheless a powerful monitoring tool in cancer, pregnancy and organ transplantation. One fairly…
A professor, a postdoctoral researcher and a graduate student hop onto a trampoline.No, it’s not the opening line of a joke. It’s a setup for the explanation of new Cornell-led research involving the wonder material graphene. A group led by Roberto De Alba, graduate student in physics, and Jeevak Parpia, professor and department chair of physics, has published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology…
The enzyme sirtuin 6, or SIRT6, serves many key biological functions in regulating genome stability, DNA repair, metabolism and longevity, but how its multiple enzyme activities relate to its various functions is poorly understood.
A team of Cornell researchers, led by Hening Lin, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, has devised a method for isolating one specific enzyme activity…
In the early 1970s, in the basement of Clark Hall, the Cornell team of professors David Lee and Robert Richardson, along with then-graduate student Douglas Osheroff, first observed superfluid helium-3. For that breakthrough, the catalyst for further research into low-temperature physics, the trio was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in physics.Twenty years later, another Cornell-led team – working in…
Jason Lefkovitz invited his high school history teacher, David Miles, to join him at the 28th annual Merrill Presidential Scholars Convocation luncheon.He also invited Ronald Ehrenberg, the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics, as each of the 33 Merrill scholars was asked to bring to the event two teachers who have made a great impact on their lives, academic…
Once a popular pastime, bee hunting involves capturing and feeding wild bees, then releasing and following them back to their hive.The practice is little-known today, but bee expert Thomas D. Seeley – the Horace White Professor in Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences and author of several books on honeybees – has just published a book that offers insights into the history and science of…
The human heart is a remarkable muscle, beating more than 2 billion times over the average life span.But the heart’s efficiency can decrease over time. One major contributor to this decreased function is cardiac hypertrophy – a thickening of the heart muscle, resulting in a decrease in the size of the left and right ventricles. This makes the heart work harder and pump less blood per cycle than a…
Four members of Cornell’s Class of 2017 have been named recipients of 2016 Barry Goldwater Scholarships, the premier undergraduate award of its type, given annually for merit in the fields of mathematics, science and engineering.Winners from Cornell – the only Ivy League school with four recipients – are Shivansh Chawla, chemistry and chemical biology; Robert Lee, chemical and biomolecular…
Like the gravitational forces that are responsible for the attraction between the Earth and the moon, as well as the dynamics of the entire solar system, there exist attractive forces between objects at the nanoscale.
These are the so-called van der Waals forces, which are ubiquitous in nature and thought to play a crucial role in determining the structure, stability and function of a wide…
Just as the single-crystal silicon wafer forever changed the nature of electronics 60 years ago, a group of Cornell researchers is hoping its work with quantum dot solids – crystals made out of crystals – can help usher in a new era in electronics.The multidisciplinary team, led by Tobias Hanrath, associate professor in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering,…
Hands and feet are two examples of chiral objects – non-superimposable mirror images of each other. One image is distinctly “left-handed,” while the other is “right-handed.” A simple drinking glass and a ball are achiral, meaning the object and its mirror image look exactly the same.In science, chirality is a fundamental concept in a number of disciplines, including medicine. In the 1950s and…
Cornell assistant professors Yimon Aye and David Mimno have been named recipients of fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which supports early career faculty members’ original research and broad-based education related to science, technology and economic performance.Aye is the Howard Milstein Fellow and an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, as…
Cornell professors Charles “Chip” Aquadro, Laura Harrington and Sean Nicholson are recipients of this year’s Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellowship, in recognition of outstanding teaching and mentoring of undergraduate students, President Elizabeth Garrett announced Jan. 29 at the Cornell Board of Trustees meeting in New York.“Chip, Laura and Sean are superb, committed educators who inspire our…
Building on nearly two decades’ worth of research, a multidisciplinary team at Cornell has blazed a new trail by creating a self-assembled, three-dimensional gyroidal superconductor.Ulrich Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering, led the group, which included researchers in engineering, chemistry and physics.The group’s findings are detailed in a paper published in Science Advances,…
We’ve all seen the Febreze air fresheners, which employ a derivative of corn starch to trap invisible air pollutants in the home and remove unwanted odors.A team of Cornell researchers has used the same material found in Febreze, cyclodextrin, to develop a technique that could revolutionize the water-purification industry.The team is led by Will Dichtel, associate professor of chemistry and…
