Six postdocs at Cornell were honored with an inaugural Postdoc Achievement Award Sept. 17 at the Big Red Barn as part of the kickoff to National Postdoc Appreciation Week.
Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs Cornell carries out all over New York state are helping children get a leg up in a wide variety of fields. From space exploration to computer coding workshops to molecular biology lessons in the field, these programs enhance the educational experience and open up new career possibilities for thousands of students ranging from preschool age up through high school.
Fourteen projects include partners from New York state communities – from Rochester to Ithaca to New York City – while seven projects include international partners.
Numerous artists have been launched into chart-topping, award-winning careers by Mathew Knowles, including both his daughters, Beyoncé and Solange. On Thursday, Sept. 27, Knowles will discuss his first two books, “The DNA of Achievers” and “Racism From the Eyes of a Child,” in a panel at 4:30 p.m. in the Africana Studies and Research Center. A reception will follow. The event is free, and the public is invited.
Linguist and A.D. White Professor-at-Large John Rickford will address race, class and speech in a series of campus events Sept. 17-21 that include public talks and a screening of his 2017 film, “Talking Black in America.”
A new lecture series will feature eminent life scientists whose research transcends traditional boundaries.
With the inaugural lecture Sept. 21, Cornell’s Life Sciences Lecture Series will include four talks over the course of the academic year. The speakers are all interdisciplinary, internationally renowned and are excellent communicators.
The 2018 Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) Biennial kicks off Sept. 14-15 at 8 p.m. at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts with “A Meditation on Tongues,” conceived and directed by guest artist Ni’Ja Whitson and performed by The NWA Project.
Whitson’s dance and multimedia adaptation of Marlon T. Riggs’ 1989 video portrait of black gay identity, “Tongues Untied,” opens a series of fall performances on the Biennial theme, “Duration: Passage, Persistence, Survival.”
Seasoned documents and artifacts are starting fresh digital lives through the Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences, which is funding seven projects this year. Launched in 2010, the program supports faculty members and graduate students in creating online collections vital for their own and for general scholarship.
For couples hoping for a baby via in vitro fertilization, chances have improved. A process that once took hours now takes minutes: Cornell scientists have created a microfluidic device that quickly corrals strong and speedy sperm viable for fertilization.
Did America’s founders intend it as “one nation under God?” Does the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion extend to freedom from religion?
A pioneering network-science scholar whose work reshaped the scientific understanding of the dynamics of social influence will give a talk Sept. 13, sharing insights gained over 20 years of research into the field he helped create.
Renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, who serves as a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on sustainable development goals, will present a lecture, “Reclaiming America’s Democracy,” on Sept. 12 at 7 p.m. in Statler Auditorium, Statler Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
The lecture will focus on the importance of civic engagement in the American context and its implications for sustainable global development.
Particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) produce massive amounts of data that help answer long-held questions regarding Earth and the far reaches of the universe. The Higgs boson, which had been the missing link in the Standard Model of Particle Physics, was discovered there in 2012 and earned researchers the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics.
Cornell Cinema will host a special screening of “RBG,” a multidimensional portrait of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54, at 7 p.m. Sept. 17 in Willard Straight Theatre, which will include an introduction by Government Professor Gretchen Ritter, who will also lead a post-screening discussion.
Some research just has to be done on-site, said historian Mostafa Minawi, and he should know.
Thanks to an ANAMED fellowship, he spent seven months in Sudan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Somalia and Djibouti, tracking down details for his new book on Ottoman/European/Ethiopian competition over the coast of Somalia. The most surprising thing he found, he said, was how alive that history still is in some areas.
Art historian Cheryl Finley provides the first in-depth look at how the 18th-century slave ship schematic became an enduring symbol of black resistance, identity and remembrance.
On June 12, 1982, an estimated one million people marched through the streets of New York City to protest the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. They had a simple proposition: immediately freeze the development and deployment of nuclear weapons. Then, they argued, we can begin the hard work of eliminating them altogether.
Cornell Botanic Gardens opens its annual Fall Lecture Series with author George Hutchinson, the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture in the College of Arts and Sciences, delivering the 2018 William and Jane Torrence Harder Lecture Wednesday, Aug. 29, at 5:30 p.m. in Call Auditorium. The lecture will be followed at 7 p.m.
Emeritus professor of physics Donald F. Holcomb, who served two terms as chair of the department and championed the cause of improving physics education, died Aug. 9 in his residence at Kendal at Ithaca.
Robert A. Plane, a professor emeritus of chemistry who served as the university’s eighth provost during the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s, later becoming an innovative Finger Lakes vintner, died Aug. 6 at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The process of attending a show by the Phoenix Players Theatre Group (PPTG) in Auburn Correctional Facility gives attendees a hint of what it’s like to be a prisoner in the maximum security facility.
Historian Joel H. Silbey, the President White Professor of History Emeritus and a member of the Cornell faculty since 1966, died Aug. 7. He was 84.
Silbey was a prolific scholar of American history and political behavior, with a particular focus on the 19th century, and his teaching and scholarly interests included the Jacksonian era, sectional controversy, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and quantitative methods in history.
To root out the scientific complexities between nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria and its close alliance with plants, the National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.1 million Dimensions of Biodiversity grant to the Cornell-affiliated Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI). Unlocking the genetic and ecological detail behind this symbiotic relationship may help reduce agricultural dependence on synthetic fertilizer.
Visiting students representing the next generation of physicists got a taste of life as a researcher during a pair of eight-week summer programs hosted by the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education (CLASSE).
When the United Nations and other international players rebuild war-torn countries, they frequently require that women have greater representation in the country’s security forces. The idea is integrating women helps improve peace and security for everyone.
But critics of these gender-equity reforms often suggest that women harm the cohesion of the police force.
A new technique that combines electricity and chemistry offers a way for pharmaceuticals – including many of the top prescribed medications – to be manufactured in a scalable and sustainable way. The procedure for this technique is outlined in a new paper published Aug. 2 in Nature Protocols.
High-temperature superconductors have remained a scientific mystery for more than 30 years. Their electrical resistance, which increases linearly with temperature, has been particularly puzzling, spawning hundreds of theories.
Image: Conceptual installation by Colombian-born sculptor Doris Salcedo at the 2007 exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. Photo credit: Gilberto Dobón, Wikimedia Commons
Some of the 14 participants in this year’s Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP) at Cornell said their week of intensive study, July 21-29, taught them how to read critically, paying attention to the perspectives of the authors, their intended audiences and the historical contexts that informed their writings. Others noted the relevance of ancient works to present times.
A National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) committee has endorsed the idea of building an electron-ion collider (EIC) in the United States, for the purpose of expanding understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter.
Andrej Singer, assistant professor of materials science and engineering and David Croll Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow, will lead a three-year project funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science that will attempt to create new quantum states of matter.
In a recent research paper published in Nature, a group led by physics professors David Muller and Sol Gruner claimed a world record for electron microscope resolution using a high-powered detector and a technique called ptychography. Their technique was shown to measure down to 0.39 ångströms or 0.039 nanometers (one-billionth of a meter).
A project to develop topical therapies for skin diseases associated with DNA damage and another to investigate bone-binding polymers to relieve bone-on-bone pain for those with severe osteoarthritis are two of nine projects awarded 2018-19 Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) grants.
Sustainability science is getting a big boost from the humanities. And the social sciences. And the arts.
Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future has named seven social sciences, humanities and arts (SSHA) fellows for the 2018-19 academic year. The annual fellowships are awarded to faculty from across the university whose work broadens and deepens sustainability research.
Fuel cells could someday power numerous devices – automobiles and mass transit systems, buildings, and virtually any type of portable electronic device.
Unlike batteries, which eventually run out of power (and thus need to be recharged), a fuel cell will continue to generate electrical energy as long as it has a fuel – usually hydrogen – and oxygen or some other oxidant necessary for the complete electrochemical reaction.
A new book by Sarah Kreps, associate professor of government, argues that part of the reason for America's current long-running wars is the lack of a war tax – a special levy historically paid by the American people during times of war.
On July 26, astronomer Steve Squyres will explain the exciting science behind the proposed Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) mission. His talk, at 7 pm in Klarman Hall’s Rhodes-Rawling Auditiorium on the Cornell campus, is free and the public is invited.
“Carol was a bright light in our department and our college. Her brilliance and expertise was only matched by her kindness and generosity,” said Ella Diaz, associate professor of English and Latina/o studies. Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, called Warrior “one of the rising stars of our faculty.”
The Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future’s Academic Venture Fund (AVF) supports collaborations that cut across disciplines to address today’s greatest sustainability challenges. In 2018, the fund awarded $1.5 million to a range of projects that will provide sustainable solutions around the world, from the Finger Lakes to the Pamir Mountains in Central Asia.
In new research, psychologists found that study participants, on average, were more than twice as likely to call male professionals – even fictional ones – by their last name only, compared to equivalent female professionals. This example of gender bias, say researchers, may be contributing to gender inequality.
![German map showing the Gulf of Aden around 1860. Credit: By August Heinrich Petermann (Somaliland and Aden: Images from the Past) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://as.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/styles/1_1_thumbnail_forced/public/field/image/Aden_gulf_1860-450px.jpg?itok=womrXDs2)
Visiting students representing the next generation of physicists got a taste of life as a researcher during a pair of eight-week summer programs hosted by the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education (CLASSE).
