Tapan Mitra, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics and a leading economic theorist of his generation, died of cancer Feb. 3 in Ithaca, New York. He was 70.
To make a Dadaist poem, artist Tristan Tzara once said, cut out each word of a newspaper article. Put the words into a bag and shake. Remove the words from the bag one at a time, and write them down in that order.
With big data, machine learning and digital surveillance pervasive in all facets of life, they have the potential to create racial and social inequalities – and make existing discrimination even worse.
Widely considered a classic, Clinton Rossiter’s book, “The American Presidency,” has garnered praise from scholars of political science since its publication in 1956. But one of its greatest accolades came directly from the Oval Office, in a personal letter from John F. Kennedy.
Building on Cornell’s decades of fundamental and comparative research in the immunological sciences, Provost Michael Kotlikoff has announced the creation of a new Cornell Center for Immunology.
The virtual center will combine multiple research efforts across several departments and colleges on the Ithaca campus and strengthen ties to the university’s ongoing immunological research at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
The simulation, “Learning Moon Phases in Virtual Reality,” is part of a multi-phase research study to determine whether the compelling, immersive nature of virtual reality (VR) provides a better learning outcome than conventional hands-on activities. The study – which found no significant difference among hands-on, computer simulation or VR learning – is one of the first to look at the impacts of VR on learning.
A new project will leverage Cornell’s position in central New York to reinvigorate thinking about and engagement with rural communities and landscapes.
David Wilson Henderson, professor emeritus of mathematics, died Dec. 20 in Newark, Delaware, from injuries suffered when he was struck by a vehicle in a pedestrian crosswalk in Bethany Beach, Delaware. He was 79.
According to published reports, Henderson was struck shortly after 5 p.m. on Dec. 19. After being taken to nearby Beebe Medical Center in Lewes, Delaware, Henderson was transported to Christiana Hospital in Newark, where he died the next day.
Rhinoceroses are instantly recognizable by their rumpled gray skin, immense snouts and iconic horns, but not so much their voices.
That could change thanks to the efforts of Montana Stone ’19, who is working to document the vocalizations of Javan rhinos through a collaboration with the Lab of Ornithology’s Bioacoustics Research Program and Indonesia’s Ujung Kulon National Park.
On the cusp of arXiv’s move to Computing and Information Science (CIS) in January, members of Cornell University Library and CIS celebrated 17 years of the scientific research repository’s growth under library stewardship, and wished it continued success.
Aditya Deshpande ’22 performed Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major to win the 16th Cornell Concerto Competition, held Dec. 9 in Barnes Hall. He will perform the concerto with the Cornell Symphony Orchestra at a concert on campus in March.
An avalanche of digital data, combined with sophisticated algorithms to analyze it, heralds a technological transformation as important as the emergence of the internet, said panelists at the launch of the Cornell-r4 Applied AI Initiative, held Dec. 6 at Cornell Tech.
The Cornell-r4 Applied AI initiative will bring together cross-disciplinary scholars and industry experts to help solve business and societal problems.
Two minutes into Jason Schmitt’s documentary “Paywall: The Business of Scholarship,” a pop-up window flashed across the screen, demanding payment. At the free Nov. 29 screening at Cornell Cinema, the gag coaxed uneasy laughs from students, professors and scholars all too familiar with running into paywalls during their research. The screening was followed by a discussion.
In the early 1980s, Peter Gabriel sang “Shock the Monkey.” But about 15 years ago, the English musician became more interested in jamming with apes instead.
Bonobos, specifically.
“I had always been fascinated to see how we might interact musically,” said Gabriel. “I was blown away at the obvious intelligence of the beings that I was sharing the space with.”
A Cornell startup is working toward a day when harmful carbon dioxide in automobile exhaust vanishes into thin air – for good.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has granted $1.7 million to Ecolectro to accelerate production of hydrogen – a green fuel of the future. Ecolectro is based at the McGovern Family Center for Venture Development, a Cornell business incubator.
The opportunity to send a science experiment into orbit drew dozens of children and their families to Space Night at Case Middle School in Watertown, New York, Nov. 9. Student teams from after-school programs in Jefferson County, many of whom worked with scientist advisers at Cornell, presented their proposals for experiments that could be delivered to the International Space Station next summer.
Innovative research with great impact is one of Cornell’s hallmarks, and to recognize some of the best examples of that work, the Office of the Provost has established an annual award that highlights the depth and breadth of the university’s research efforts.
The inaugural Provost Research Innovation Awards recognize midcareer faculty from engineering, the humanities, life sciences, social sciences and physical sciences.
Twenty-six Cornell graduate students have won more than $42,000 in fall 2018 Research Travel Grants, which provide students up to $2,000 to conduct thesis or dissertation research away from campus. In a typical year, 70 to 80 students receive these competitive grants from the Graduate School. More grant winners will be announced in the spring.
Renowned naturalist Wesley Newcomb scoured the Hawaiian Islands in the 1850s in search of living treasure: land snails and their intricate, domed shells. The specimens he assembled in Hawaii and around the world would form a vast collection of mollusks, with numerous species that would become critically threatened and, in some cases, extinct.
After cruising for 205 days over 301 million miles, NASA’s InSight spacecraft – a mission designed to probe beneath the surface of Mars – landed flawlessly Nov. 26 at Elysium Planitia.
Nine Cornell faculty members have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society.
Forget those shepherding moons. Gravity and the odd shapes of asteroid Chariklo and dwarf planet Haumea – small objects deep in our solar system – can be credited for forming and maintaining their own rings, according new research in Nature Astronomy.
How will the rise in sea levels due to climate change affect the fiscal health of U.S. cities? Can virtual reality help architects “try out” a building’s design before construction has even started? How do social processes affect artificial intelligence in high-stakes areas such as sentencing for criminals and job applications? These are a few of the questions Cornell’s social science faculty are exploring this fall, thanks to funding from the Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS). The ISS’s Fall 2018 Small Grant Awards are designed to support faculty as they develop new research and seek external funding.
Is the fabric of our civilization being torn by identity politics, nationalism and populism? Are Americans ignoring character and competence in an “us vs. them” political landscape? Political analyst Jonah Goldberg examined divisiveness in U.S. politics and discuss possible solutions in his talk, “Suicide of the West” Thursday, Nov. 29, at 5:15 p.m. in Klarman Hall’s Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium. His lecture was free and open to the public.
Professor C. Richard Johnson discussed the techniques he innovated using X-rays and algorithms to analyze works of art in his Nov. 9 talk at the A.D. White House, “Studying Vermeer’s Canvases and Rembrandt’s Papers: Two Examples of Computational Art History.”
The symposium identified themes for Cornell’s Global Grand Challenge 2019-20, a yearlong dedication to a topic through new curricular, scholarly and engaged work across campus.
When rains fell on the arid Atacama Desert, it was reasonable to expect floral blooms to follow. Instead, the water brought death.
An international team of planetary astrobiologists has found that after encountering never-before-seen rainfall three years ago at the arid core of Peru’s Atacama Desert, the heavy precipitation wiped out most of the microbes that had lived there.
It’s a little-known fact of U.S. history that in the early 1800s, while most African-Americans were enslaved, freed black men in some states had the right to vote.
Experts in gender and research on plant breeding tools will gather at Cornell Nov. 10 to address that topic in public talks, 9:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in B75 Warren Hall. RSVP here.
