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Byline: David Nutt

James Turner, the founding director of Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center and a a professor emeritus of African and African American Politics and Social Policy in the College of Arts and Sciences,

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James Turner, a ‘giant’ of Africana studies, dies at 82

James Turner, the founding director of Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center and a pioneer of the multidisciplinary approach to exploring the African diaspora, died Aug. 6 in Ithaca.
Book cover: Sonorous Desert

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Desert sounds offer lessons in solitude and community

In a new book, Kim Haines-Eitzen explores the rich range of desert sounds and what they can teach us about place, the past, solitude and community.
Book cover: Adventure Capitalism

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Think twice before founding that free-market utopia

In a new book, Raymond Craib writes that libertarian attempts to escape regulation and build communities structured entirely through market transactions often have calamitous consequences for local populations.
Wei Wang, in a blue shirt and black plastic-framed glasses, sits in a lab looking at an instrument while he adjusts another instrument with his right hand.

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Artificial cilia could someday power diagnostic devices

The technology could enable low-cost, portable diagnostic devices for testing blood samples, manipulating cells or assisting in microfabrication processes.
The sun shining over a field next to a powerplant spewing huge clouds into the air.

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Spongy material captures carbon dioxide in cavities

The materials are made from sugar and low-cost alkali metal salts, so they would be inexpensive enough for large-scale deployment.
Stop motion images of a dragonfly turning over in flight

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Dragonflies use vision, subtle wing control to straighten up and fly right

As one of the oldest insect species on the planet, dragonflies are an early innovator of aerial flight.
Shiny spikes organized into a sphere

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Mechanism ‘splits’ electron spins in magnetic material

Cornell researchers have discovered a technique that could eventually lead to the development of more energy-efficient magnetic memory devices.
Spots of orange light against a dark background

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Light-infused particles go the distance in organic semiconductors

Prof. Andrew Musser and his team have found a way to tune the speed of polaritons' energy flow, using an approach that could eventually lead to more efficient solar cells, sensors and LEDs.
A.R. Ammons

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‘Ammons & the Falls’ highlights poet’s ties to Ithaca landscape

The April 26 celebration will include the unveiling of a new display of Ammons’ poem “Triphammer Bridge," a screening of an episode of “Poetry in America," and more.
Circular logo that says John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation around the outside and 1925 on the inside

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Musicologist and poet awarded Guggenheim fellowships

Alejandro L. Madrid, professor and chair of music, and Valzhyna Mort, associate professor of literatures in English, were honored as fellows.
Three people look at an artifact on a lab table

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Cross-college researchers unravel mummy bird mystery

What began as a passion project for a master’s student in archaeology, has become a cross-campus fascination that encompasses everything from ancient burial rituals to the lost history of donated artifacts, the totemic power of animals, and even Egyptian beer.
Book cover: The War that Made the Roman Empire

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Historian delves into the battle that shaped the Roman Empire

In his new book, “The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium,” historian Barry Strauss offers a more accurate, nuanced narrative of the conflict and the fascinating personalities at its core.
Orange pill bottle, spilling green pills

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Electrosynthesis energizes sustainable drug development

A Cornell-led collaboration used electrochemistry to stitch together simple carbon molecules and form complex compounds, eliminating the need for precious metals or other catalysts to promote the chemical reaction.
Person looks carefully at physics lab equipment

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Gender bias in lab groups not rooted in personal preference

The finding shows there is potential for instructional interventions that could correct the gender inequity in physics labs.
Book cover: The Queerness of Home

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Historian delves into LGBTQ life and the American home

The intimacy of domestic space was a crucial aspect of LGBTQ life in the postwar era, according to historian Stephen Vider, who explores that history in his new book.
Book cover: The Economic Weapon

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Economic sanctions evolved into tool of modern war

Economic sanctions have long been considered a nonviolent deterrent, but ironically they have become a tool of modern warfare, according to a new book by Nicholas Mulder, assistant professor of history.
Field of semiconductors

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Semiconductor demonstrates elusive quantum physics model

With a little twist and the turn of a voltage knob, Cornell researchers have shown that a single material system can toggle between two of the wildest states in condensed matter physics.
Two squares: one green and pink graph, the other rainbow

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3D semiconductor particles offer 2D properties

Cornell researchers have found that 3D semiconductor particles have 2D properties, which can be leveraged for photoelectrochemical processes that boost solar energy conversion technologies.
Campus buildings, cloudy sky, lake

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Three Cornellians named Schwarzman Scholars

Shaheer (Shawn) Haq ‘21, Daniel James II ’22 and Xiaochen (Brian) Ren ‘22 were elected to join the seventh cohort of Schwarzman Scholars, a program that nurtures a network of future global leaders.
 Voting sticker help up by a smiling person

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Modeling suggests friendships may lead to lopsided elections

Have you ever thought about not voting because your candidate’s victory seems assured? Think again.
 Roberto Sierra

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Sierra wins Latin Grammy for guitar sonata

Composer Roberto Sierra won for “Music from Cuba and Spain, Sierra: Sonata para Guitarra.”
Board game with black and white pieces

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Weak coupling shows flaw in strange metal model

Planckian metals have the potential to power high-temperature superconductors, quantum computers and a host of other next-generation technologies.
man looking at a piece of charcoal

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New timeline clarifies Indigenous history in Mohawk Valley

A collaboration between the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory and the New York State Museum in Albany has established a more precise timeline for some of the most iconic archeological sites in the Mohawk Valley.
book cover

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Book explores Nigerian women’s political activism

"The Great Upheaval: Women and Nation in Postwar Nigeria,” explores the years immediately following World War II, which were pivotal for women in Nigeria.
album cover

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Concerto highlights individual voice and the sound of community

“The Oberlin Concertos,” released Sept. 17, features a composition by Elizabeth Ogonek, which combines voice, piano and percussion.
Lab beakers, one partly filled with liquid

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Chemistry professor helped catalyze Nobel-winning breakthrough

A small contribution from chemistry Professor Tristan Lambert when he was a doctoral student helped catalyze the breakthrough in catalysis that led to the 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Juliana Hu Pegues

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Book explores connections of Alaska’s Native and Asian peoples

Juliana Hu Pegues often heard stories of Asian immigrants as she was growing up, but they never made it into the history books.
whale coming out of water

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Project celebrates the beauty of humpback whale songs

“The Whale Listening Project,” which runs Sept. 23-26, is a four-day immersion in the beauty of whale song and a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the best-selling 1970 album, “Songs of the Humpback Whale,” co-produced by pioneering bioacoustics researchers Roger Payne, Ph.D. ’61, and Katy Payne ’59, a retired research associate with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bioacoustics Research Program.
Colored three-dimensional scan of the hands and footprints

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Hand and footprint art dates to mid-Ice Age

To answer whether this could be the oldest art ever found, the team turned to A&S research scientist Thomas Urban.
 Workers walking with a solar panel

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Scientists harness machine learning to lower solar energy cost

A Cornell-led collaboration received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to use machine learning to accelerate the creation of low-cost materials for solar energy.
bubble wrap

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Polymer enables tougher recyclable thermoplastics

The resulting thermoplastic is strong and flexible enough to be used for large-scale applications such as packaging products.
James Bramble

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Mathematician James H. Bramble dies at 90

James H. Bramble, professor emeritus of mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences, died July 20 at his home in Austin, Texas. He was 90.
 Roberto Sierra

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Sierra symphony highlights Caribbean culture

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra will launch its 2021-22 season on Oct. 14 with the world premiere of “Symphony No. 6,” composed by Roberto Sierra, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Cover art for "The Queer Nuyorican"

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Book explores historical queerness of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

“What’s really interesting about the space and these artists is that there is a queerness that has always been at the cafe, but that has never been used to frame the space.”
Beams of light

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Chaotic electrons heed ‘limit’ in strange metals

"We are finally unlocking the enigma behind the intense motions of electrons in strange metals.”
Mukoma Wa Ngugi

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From Kenya to Cornell, writer Mukoma ranges across genres

Mukoma Wa Ngugi channeled his fascination with Ethiopian "Tizita" songs into his fourth novel, “Unbury Our Dead With Song,” which will be published Sept. 21.
Graphic featuring yellow, red and blue balls

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Small molecule plays outsize role in controlling nanoparticle

A breakthrough imaging technique enabled Cornell researchers to gain new insights into how tiny ligands adsorb on the surface of nanoparticles and how they can tune a particle’s shape.
a colorful orb

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Machine learning tool sorts the nuances of quantum data

An interdisciplinary team of Cornell and Harvard University researchers developed a machine learning tool to parse quantum matter and make crucial distinctions in the data, an approach that will help scientists unravel the most confounding phenomena in the subatomic realm.
Drawing of a black and red zigzag line
Provided This schematic illustration shows the structure of a conjugated polymer, which is essentially a series of clustered molecules strung along a backbone that can conduct electrons and absorb light.

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Magnetic tweezers reveal polymers’ hidden properties

Cornell researchers were able to stretch and twist individual molecules of a conjugated polymer and measure its mechanical and kinetic properties, gaining insights that could eventually lead to more flexible and robust soft electronic materials.
Illustration of blue and grey balls layered over blue diamonds and yellow balls
Provided A Cornell team sought to explore the properties of monolayer iron selenide because, as a high-temperature superconductor, it has the potential to help researchers create novel electrical devices that conduct with zero resistance and, therefore, much greater efficiency.

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Monolayer superconductor exhibits unusual behavior

Cornell researchers have discovered a rare “pseudogap” phenomenon that helps explain how the superconducting transition temperature can be greatly boosted in a single monolayer of iron selenide, and how it might be applied to other superconducting materials.
wooden structure set into the ground
Ministry of Culture - Italy The Noceto Vasca Votiva’s lower and upper tanks, dated to 1444 and 1432 B.C., respectively.

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Researchers link ancient wooden structure to water ritual

Cornell researchers used dendrochronology and a form of radiocarbon dating to identify the ancient origins of the structure in Northern Italy.
Blue and green abstract image

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Superfluid reacts strangely under pressure change

A Cornell-led collaboration identified an unusual behavior of superfluid helium-3 when it undergoes a phase transition between two different superfluid states – a transition that theoretically shouldn’t happen reliably.
Green and red hexagonal patterns

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Superconducting quantum material has an organic twist

An interdisciplinary team of Cornell researchers has created a cohort of new quantum metamaterials that can achieve superconductivity at temperatures competitive with state-of-the-art solid-state materials synthesis.
Klarman Hall exterior

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Mellon grant boosts collaborative projects for equity, social justice

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has approved a grant of $1.2 million to extend the Mellon Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities (AUH) interdisciplinary seminar series at Cornell for three years with a focus on social justice.
Large lab dominated by a blue ring device
Provided The muon g-2 ring sits in its detector hall amidst electronics racks, the muon beamline and other equipment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. This experiment studies the precession (or wobble) of muons as they travel through the magnetic field.

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Elusive particle may point to undiscovered physics

The muon, a tiny particle, has the giant potential to upend our understanding of the subatomic world.
Neil Ashcroft

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Neil Ashcroft, world-renowned theoretical physicist, dies at 82

Neil W. Ashcroft, the Horace White Professor of Physics Emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences and a leading theorist in condensed matter physics, died March 15 in Ithaca. In the late 1960s and first half of the 1970s, he collaborated with David Mermin, professor emeritus of physics, to write “Solid State Physics,” which became the gold standard of textbooks for their discipline.
Orange and yellow origami bird

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Self-folding nanotech creates world’s smallest origami bird

The researchers have generated a throng of nanoscale machines and components, each seemingly faster, smarter and more elegant than the last.
 person throwing a disc

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Professor chases plastic all the way to Ultimate Hall of Fame

“There’s a state of awe, an expansiveness. Because in that moment, you expanded your conception of yourself.”
 Three people in academic robes

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Celebrating December grads after ‘a semester like no other’

On Dec. 19, nearly 1,500 Cornell students celebrated their winter graduation in a virtual recognition ceremony viewed around the world – the first such event at Cornell, and a fitting end to what President Martha E. Pollack called “a semester like no other at Cornell.”
 model of a molecule: colored balls joined by grey lines

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‘Roaming’ molecular fragments captured in real time

Sometimes atoms, like pets and adventuresome hikers, slip loose and wander off into the wild. Their final destination isn’t known, and their trajectory can be all over the map. It’s not so easy to track their path.