by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
On July 12, a United Nations tribunal ruled on an arbitration case involving contested territory in the South China Sea. Government professors Allen Carlson and Jessica Chen Weiss, both on the faculty of the China-Asia Pacific Studies (CAPS) Program, reflected on the verdict.
“I’ve always been really interested in astronomy, so I was curious what kinds of careers there might be in the field,” said Sophia Delpapa, a high school senior from Ontario County who attended the recent 4-H Career Explorations event on campus, sponsored by the state 4-H foundation, part of Cornell Cooperative Extension.
The Cornell Summer School in Theory explored contemporary international debates in media studies, visual studies, literary studies, philosophy and contemporary art.
Researchers in the collaboration between the Colleges of Arts & Sciences and Engineering will work on technologies and new tools to reveal the inner workings of the brain.
Cornell will host the Conference in Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon 15), an international meeting for researchers taking experimental approaches to the study of human speech sounds, July 13-17.The conference theme, “Speech Dynamics and Phonological Representation,” will address sounds in human language as part of a linguistic, cognitive and communicative system.
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.
Sofia Aumann ’19 could have felt completely overwhelmed as a high school freshman when she uncovered the complicated issues behind human sex trafficking as she worked on a research project.
NASA’s Cassini and Huygen’s missions have provided a wealth of data about chemical elements found on Saturn’s moon Titan, and Cornell scientists have uncovered a chemical trail that suggests prebiotic conditions may exist there.
In the class Introduction to Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, it’s not uncommon for the professor to don colorful props as students vote electronically on which ones would make her the most attractive bird to potential mates.The point?“That got a lot of laughs, but I’m sure no one in the audience will forget about sexual selection anytime soon,” said Justin Zhu ’17, a biology major concentrating in molecular biology.
Uthara Suvrathan, a visitng Hirsch Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Materials Studies, recently led her class (ARKEO/ANTHRO 2140, "Fantastic Frauds and Myths in Archaeology") in a Nazca Lines activity on the Arts Quad. The Nazca Lines are ancient, gigantic (several are over 300m long) geoglyphs drawn on a desert in Peru.
On July 4, the veil over Jupiter’s mysteries will be ripped away with the arrival of NASA’s Juno mission, and Jonathan Lunine will be there to watch it happen.Like cosmic archaeologists, astronomers will use Juno’s instruments to understand what went into the icy planetesimals that Jupiter swept up after it formed.
Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy and director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute, has been name the inaugural recipient of the Barrie Jones Award by The Open University (OU), United Kingdom, and the Astrobiology Society of Britain (ASB). The award will be presented in a ceremony on July 7 at the OU campus.
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.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Forty-one years after graduating, on May 22 Charles ("Chip") Aquadro was presented with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from St. Lawrence University, his alma mater, in recognition of his achievements in science.
Although Jonathan Culler’s “Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction” has been translated into 22 languages including Tamil and Macedonian, a French version had never been available.
America has been talking about racial segregation and its effects for decades. Now another kind of separation is grinding away at America’s neighborhoods: income segregation, where people are separated by their wealth, or lack of it.
Professor Emerita of English Carol V. Kaske, who taught at Cornell for 40 years, died June 15 at Cayuga Medical Center. She was 83.A respected and influential scholar, she specialized in English literature of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. She first taught at Cornell in 1963, was named a full professor in 1992 and retired in 2003.
For students who have many interests across diverse disciplines, the College Scholar Program in the College of Arts & Sciencs may fit their needs. This year’s graduating class of College Scholars recently presented their final research projects, focused on topics such the anthropology of food and China’s naval development.
If you’re expecting to hear from aliens from across the universe, it could be a while.Deconstructing the Fermi paradox and pairing it with the mediocrity principle into a fresh equation, Cornell astronomers say extraterrestrials likely won’t phone home – or Earth – for 1,500 years.
Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future(ACSF) has given $1.5 million from its Academic Venture Fund to a record 14 new university projects. This marks the third consecutive year ACSF has granted more than $1 million.
"This is an exciting moment for Jewish studies,” said Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, in her introduction to a Reunion Weekend panel on “Jewish Studies at Cornell, Today and Tomorrow,” held June 10 in the Physical Sciences Building.The panel included Jonathan Boyarin, Jewish Studies Program director, and Kim Haines-Eitzen, incoming director of the Religious Studies Program.
By tweaking just one or two genes, Cornell researchers have altered the patterns on a butterfly’s wings. It’s not just a new art form, but a major clue to understanding how the butterflies have evolved, and perhaps to how color patterns – and other patterns and shapes – have evolved in other species.The genes in question are especially interesting because they have been “co-opted” – they previously did some other job at a different place in the development process.
Stephanie Czech Rader '37, a chemistry graduate who became a U.S. spy in Europe at the end of World War II and died Jan. 21, was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit before her burial June 1 at Arlington National Cemetery.
Isaac Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government Emeritus and Jason Frank, professor of government, write in their recent New York Times opinion piece that the popular musical “avoids an equally pronounced feature of Hamilton’s beliefs: his deeply ingrained elitism, his disdain for the lower classes and his fear of democratic politics.”
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Researchers from varied disciplines are tackling the topic of inequality — asking questions about its sources and its impacts, as well as the policies and movements under way to reduce it.
The Atlantic Philanthropies, created by Charles F. Feeney ’56, made its very first grant in 1982 to Cornell University. By the end of this year, the foundation will conclude its grant-making, realizing the full impact of the foundation’s largesse within its founder’s lifetime and fulfilling Feeney’s commitment to “Giving While Living.”
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Math matters in important ways, and each year Cornell’s Department of Mathematics sponsors a public lecture to illustrate just how much. This lecture takes place during the national Mathematics Awareness Month, with the goal of increasing public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. This year’s lecture, held April 29 in Malott Hall, featured assistant math professor Lionel Levine on “The Future of Prediction.”
We are constantly bombarded with linguistic input, but our brains are unable to remember long strings of linguistic information. How does the brain make sense of this ongoing deluge of sound?
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
On May 22, Ithaca High School (IHS) seniors presented the mathematics research projects they did as part of the Senior Seminar, a course for Ithaca High School (IHS) students who have completed most or all of the IHS math classes. The seminar meets at the high school and is taught by three graduate mathematics or applied mathematics students each year, to introduce high-school students to three mathematics topics they normally would not see until college.
"Barbarians Rising,” a new History Channel series, dramatizes the stories of nine of history’s greatest warriors as they fight for freedom – and to ensure accuracy the filmmakers turned to Barry Strauss, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies.
Maggie Wong ‘16 signed up for Chinese classes when she came to Cornell so that she could more effectively communicate with her grandparents.Four years later, she’s using some of the classes she took in Asian studies and her language-learning abilities as she heads to a year-long internship with an international non-profit in Cambodia.
From left, government faculty members Gustavo Flores-Macias and Sarah Kreps with graduate students Colin Chia, Minqi Chai & Caitlin Mastroe.Six doctoral students from the Department of Government presented papers and met fellow PhD students and faculty interested in issues of global security during a workshop May 23-25 in Sweden.
Doctoral student Tonia Ko was one of nine classical composers to win a Student Composer Award May 16 from Broadcast Music, Inc. The awards are given to composers age 15-27 who are recognized for their superior musical compositional abilities. The students are awarded scholarship grants, which help them with their musical education.
In recent years, Cornell has amassed an impressive stable of experts in an emerging field for modern times: The ecology and evolution of infectious disease.
College of Arts and Sciences faculty member Sarah Murray received the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists, and Linda Nicholson received the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Academic Advising Award in the College of Arts and Sciences at a May 28 trustee-faculty dinner which recognized universitywide teaching and advising and newly tenured faculty.
Two of the country’s foremost constitutional scholars – Michael Klarman and Michael Dorf – offered their thoughts on the history of the U.S. Constitution at a panel during the May 26 Klarman Hall dedication.Interim President Hunter Rawlings, Cornell president emeritus and professor emeritus of classics, opened the panel he moderated with reflections on James Madison, America’s “greatest scholar-president.”
“Me, my partner and [Flaubert’s] ‘Sentimental Education’ were on vacation in the south of France. And it wasn’t pretty,” said literary theorist Paul Fleming during the May 26 “Transformative Humanities: Faculty Reflections on Life-Changing Creative Works” panel celebrating the dedication of Klarman Hall.
Deputy Provost John Siliciano presented Cornell faculty members Sahara Byrne, (Kit-Yee) Daisy Fan, María Cristina García and James P. Lassoie with 2016 Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Awards May 28 at a trustee-faculty dinner.
In the face of scientific dogma that faults the population decline of monarch butterflies on a lack of milkweed, herbicides and genetically modified crops, a new Cornell study casts wider blame: sparse autumnal nectar sources, weather and habitat fragmentation.
