News

Advanced options
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6

Discipline: All
Byline: J. Edward Anthony
Media source: All
Department/program: All

Looking down on a campus with buildings, green lawn, and a lake in the distance

Article

Staff changes will support interdisciplinary research

by : J. Edward Anthony , Cornell Chronicle

The establishment of a new leadership position in the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation (OVPRI) is among the steps announced Oct. 13 to sustain successful strategies and initiatives in support of collaborative, interdisciplinary research at Cornell. Julia Thom-Levy, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named associate vice provost for…

Abstract shape pattern in shades of gray

Article

Shapes of Mathematical Elegance

by : J. Edward Anthony , Cornell Chronicle

Like a language, math evokes ideas that exist independently of any particular set of symbols. In algebra, for example, a polynomial usually appears as numbers and letters strung together by plus and minus signs, such as x2 + xy + y2. Algebraic expressions are such a familiar way of denoting polynomials that it’s easy to lose the distinction between the concept and its representation, as with…

Lines of giant ceramic jars sunken into the earth

Article

The Emperor’s Closet—Power and Storage

by : J. Edward Anthony , Cornell Research

  “In a complete stranger’s house, I could probably find a toothbrush pretty easily,” says Astrid Van Oyen, Classics. “The spatial specificity in our houses tends to be echoed by the material objects we store in that space.” Dishes go in a kitchen cabinet, pajamas in a bedroom dresser. “In Roman houses, in the time of the Roman Empire, that wasn’t the case,” she explains. “It would be a…

Two people write in marker on a clear wall

Article

Electric-Powered Organic Chemistry

by : J. Edward Anthony , Cornell Research

Song Lin, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, starts with simple chemical components that are widely available. From those basic ingredients, he finds ways to generate complex organic molecules for use in medicine and industry. “It’s almost like playing with Legos,” Lin says. “You have to build a complex structure starting from simple materials. It’s a strategy game.” As part of his strategy, in…

Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Article

Africans, African Americans, and the History of Slavery

by : J. Edward Anthony , Cornell Research

Kenya is where Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Literatures in English, first encountered what it meant to be Black in the United States—in his father’s library, reading James Baldwin and Richard Wright and issues of Ebony and Jet. Mukoma was born in Illinois to Kenyan parents in 1971. His family moved back to Kenya when he was still a baby. Returning to the United States for college in…

Sand dune under a blue sky

Article

The Ordered Patterns of Chance

by : J. Edward Anthony , Cornell Research

Mathematician Lionel Levine researches the abelian sandpile—a mathmatical model that captures aspects of the real world but with simpler rules; in this Cornell Research article, Levine calls it a "toy universe."“Many things in nature are much more ordered than you might expect from a description of the laws of physics,” observes Lionel Levine, Mathematics. Levine has a knack for finding order…