Cornell-based Freedom on the Move (FOTM), a database documenting the lives of fugitives from American slavery through newspaper ads placed by slave owners in the 18th and 19th centuries, has received a $150,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
On Wednesday, the U.S. government ordered China to close its consulate in Houston saying the decision was made “to protect American intellectual property.” The State Department gave its Chinese counterpart three days to suspend its operation, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson who added that China vowed to retaliate.
Protests continue this week in Portland, Oregon in the wake of federal law enforcement being deployed to the city. On Saturday, the protest included the participation of a nude woman who confronted officers wearing nothing but a mask and hat.
The House of Representatives voted this week to ban TikTok from government-issued devices amid concerns that the Chinese-owned social media company’s access to U.S. data poses a national security threat.
NASA is planning to launch its latest rover destined for Mars on July 30, with an anticipated arrival date on the red planet in February 2021. The rover, named Perseverance, will look for evidence of ancient life and collect soil and rock samples at a part of Mars just north of its equator known as Jezero Crater — the site of an ancient river.
The next event in the Democracy 20/20 Webinar series will examine whether the U.S. will be able to hold free and fair elections this fall and how challenges to such elections can be overcome. The webinar will take place on Tuesday, July 21 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. (ET). The event is free and the public is invited; registration is required.
From a mountain high in Chile’s Atacama Desert, astronomers with the National Science Foundation’s Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) have taken a fresh look at the oldest light in the universe. Their new observations plus a bit of cosmic geometry suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, give or take 40 million years.
Youngmin Yi, Ph.D. ’20 is a recent alumna of the sociology program at Cornell from which she holds a Ph.D. Having earned her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College and her doctorate at Cornell, she will be joining the University of Massachusetts Amherst as an assistant professor of sociology.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico (often referred to as AMLO) will join President Trump at the White House on Wednesday amid continued coronavirus concerns and celebrations of the new trade deal between Mexico, Canada and the United States.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today that public schools will not fully reopen for the upcoming school year. New York City students will return to school on a limited basis with only one to three days a week of in-person education and remote learning the remainder of the days.
Martha Haynes, Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy, has been awarded the 2020 Karl G. Jansky Lectureship by Associated Universities, Inc. and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The Jansky Lectureship recognizes outstanding contributions to the advancement of radio astronomy and is being awarded to Haynes “for her influential impact to our understanding of galaxies.”
China passed a law this week on national security for Hong Kong, which is expected to further limit the city’s autonomy and could be used to crack down on those engaging in “secession, subversion against the central Chinese government, terrorism, and colluding with foreign forces.”
Manisha Munasinghe is a doctoral candidate in computational biology from Troy, Michigan. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Michigan State University, she chose to pursue further study at Cornell due to the variety of engaging research and its community of scholars.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration’s effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program was not legal. The decision is a win for those protected by DACA, undocumented children brought to the U.S. at an early age, otherwise known as ‘Dreamers’.
Juneteenth—June 19, 1865— marks the day when the last collective of enslaved people heard the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, TX, a full two years after Abraham Lincoln delivered it.
India and China clashed this week at the border between the two countries in the Himalayan mountains, resulting in numerous reported deaths of Indian and Chinese soldiers.
The Trump administration announced this week that its first in-person campaign rally since the coronavirus lockdown will occur in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19th – a day celebrated by many Americans as the day that marked the end of slavery in the United States.
As protests continue across the United States and around the world in response to systemic racism in policing, activists and political leaders seek out ways to affect permanent change.
Clashes between police and protesters escalated this week across the United States, as public outrage continued over police brutality and systemic racism.
Apple released a new operating system on Wednesday, iOS 13.5, which makes adjustments meant to ease use during the current pandemic — facilitating face ID unlocking while wearing a mask and fixing glitches on Facetime. It also enables support for Exposure Notification, also known as digital contact tracing, which if adopted would alert users to exposure to positive Covid-19 cases without allowing for government-controlled location and data tracking.
On Thursday, China announced it was preparing to enact a controversial national security law for Hong Kong, bypassing the territory’s own legislative process. The announcement was made ahead of the country’s annual National People's Congress meeting, which is set to start on Friday.
Amnon Ortoll-Bloch is a doctoral candidate in chemistry and chemical biology from Colima City, Colima, Mexico. After earning his bachelor’s degree at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, Mexico, he chose to pursue further study at Cornell due to its faculty, research opportunities, and collaborative and supportive nature. What is your area of research and why is it important?
Festival 24, the semiannual student-run theater festival from the Cornell University Department of Performing and Media Arts, is launching online under a new title, Festival 24.0. The Festival, which is normally held at the beginning of each semester, will happen on Saturday, May 9, at 8:00 p.m. EST via Zoom to provide a performance opportunity for students while in-person theater events are suspended.
The COVID-19 virus arrived in Latin America later than Europe and the United States, but it is currently spreading across the region, with peaks expected to come later in May. Brazil, the continent’s most populous country, has the largest numbers of cases so far. This week, the country’s Senate is expected to vote on an economic package for states and cities to compensate for economic losses.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held arguments by phone on Tuesday in a case pitting the Trump administration against the House of Representatives over the latter’s power to enforce a subpoena for former White House Counsel Donald McGahn’s testimony.
Faced with a devastating and unresolved pandemic, governments worldwide are grappling with how to begin re-opening their economies, while protecting the health of their citizens. And many are looking to the smartphones in our pockets as a contact tracing tool to keep tabs on the coronavirus and limit its spread.
Aditi Sahasrabuddhe is a doctoral student in government with a focus on international relations from Goa, India. After earning her bachelor’s degree at Edinburgh University and master’s degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science, she chose to attend Cornell due to the ability to work with faculty across fields, friendliness of those in the field of government, and available resources.
On Monday, President Trump said in a tweet that he would sign an executive order temporarily suspending immigration to the United States in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. The executive order is anticipated to include halting new green cards and work visas.
European Union leaders are meeting on Thursday to discuss how to power the bloc’s economic recovery and help its hardest-hit members weather the current crisis. On the agenda are various proposals to raise a recovery fund, including the option of joint ‘coronabonds’ as well as a stimulus package to address the economic damage caused by the pandemic.
In Monday’s coronavirus press briefing, President Trump said that he has “total authority” to reopen the economy, in contrast to plans being made by governors and local officials across the country to lift restrictions.
With the coronavirus pandemic challenging the wellbeing of people and countries around the world, global financial institutions face the tremendous task of coordinating economic policies and offering relief for the most vulnerable countries. Such effort will be on display this week, as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank hold their annual spring meetings.
On April 8, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he is ending his presidential campaign, all but ensuring that former Vice President Joe Biden will face President Donald Trump in November.
As part of the nation’s record $2 trillion relief bill, Congress has set aside $500 million for the CDC to develop a “public health surveillance and data collection system” meant to track the spread of coronavirus. While it’s not clear what this system will look like or how it will function, it puts Americans on a historic path towards giving up certain privacies for the benefit of public health.
On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was moved into an intensive care unit after his coronavirus symptoms worsened. Johnson, who secured his premiership last December with a landslide victory for the Conservative Party, ran on a populist and pro-Brexit platform. As coronavirus started to spread in the country, Johnson initially opposed lockdown-type measures suggesting that a speedy spread of the virus would create “herd immunity.”
Earlier this week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a state of emergency in major cities across the country in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19. Abe asked people to refrain from going outside in Tokyo and six other prefectures worst hit by coronavirus.
Victoria Pihl Sorensen is a doctoral student in performing and media arts with a concentration on media and feminist studies. After earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and her master’s degree from the City University of New York Graduate Center, she chose to pursue a doctoral degree at Cornell due to its faculty and welcoming community.
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has awarded the 2020 Karl Taylor Compton Medal for Leadership in Physics to Paul Ginsparg, professor of physics and information science and founder of arXiv. The medal and $10,000 prize is presented by AIP every four years to “highly distinguished physicists who have made outstanding contributions through exceptional statesmanship in physics.”
Eun-Ah Kim, professor of physics, has received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create new data science approaches to meet the data-driven challenges of strongly correlated quantum matter (SCQM), Cornell Research reports. This project, undertaken with Kilian Q.
In a review of thousands of peer-reviewed studies, the What We Know Project (WWKP), an initiative of Cornell University’s Center for the Study of Inequality, has found a strong link between anti-LGBT discrimination and harms to the health and well-being of LGBT people.
How do you trick a disciplined opponent with state-of-the-art equipment into entering a killing field? How do you turn an enemy’s strengths into his weaknesses? How do you get inside an enemy’s head?
The rich cultural history of Korea – including powerful percussion and traditional dance – will be featured at the Korean Language Program’s (KLP) 30th anniversary celebration on Friday, Sept. 20, at 6:30 pm. The event will also feature Korean foods, and will conclude with musical performances by Shimtah, E.Motion, LOKO, and Hanchum. The celebration, which will take place in the Rhodes-Rawling Auditorium in Klarman Hall, is free and all are welcome.
Sex workers play a key role in mobilizing social activism in Asia, as Lily Wong will discuss in her lecture on Sept. 10, “Sex Work, Movement Politics, and Affect Labor in the Sinophone World.” Wong will also discuss LGBT activism in Taiwan and cultural belonging in the Sinophone world. The lecture will draw on Wong’s book, Transpacific Attachments, and the entwined histories of Taiwan’s queer activism, sex-work rights movement, and labor justice movements.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revealed magnesium and iron gas streaming from a strange, football-shaped world outside our solar system known as WASP-121b. The Hubble observations represent the first time that so-called "heavy metals"—elements heavier than hydrogen and helium—have been spotted escaping from a hot Jupiter, a large, gaseous exoplanet very close to it star.
A common approach to problem-solving is to split a problem into smaller sub-problems, solve each of the smaller problems, and assemble the answers into a solution to the original problem. This last step is often very difficult, as there are multiple ways of gluing the pieces of the solution together. The mathematical area of K-theory studies the different ways of putting such solutions back together, as well as the relations behind differently-assembled pieces.
