s an inauguration gift, the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science (CCAPS), the Department of Astronomy, and the Spacecraft Planetary Image Facility (SPIF) presented President Pollack with a model of Cassini on Feb. 16 in Day Hall, commemorating three decades of Cornell participation in Cassini’s historic mission.
Is the pen really mightier than the sword? Specifically, do laws and treaties have the power to stop armed conflicts before they begin? That is the question on the table at the next Einaudi Center Lund Debate, “Can War Be Prevented by Law?,” March 1 at 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall.
With one small change in interpretive approach, Jill Frank breaks with tradition in her new book, “Poetic Justice: Rereading Plato’s ‘Republic.’” Taking seriously that Plato appears in none of his texts and insisting that nothing that anyone in any of the dialogues says – including Socrates – should be attributed to Plato, Frank aims to shift how Plato is read.
Israel and Egypt were at war in 1968, but every Friday night families across Israel gathered in their homes to watch Arabic-language Egyptian movies; Palestinians did as well. “Arabic Movie,” a documentary directed by Sara Tsifroni and Eyal Sagui Bizawi and shown Feb. 12 at Cornell Cinema, offers a glimpse into this phenomenon of cultural connection that lasted more than a decade, exploring why the films were shown and how they were obtained.
In the new book “Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics,” co-editors Peter Katzenstein and Lucia A. Seybert, Ph.D. ’12, argue for a new approach to international relations.
Assistant professors Brett Fors, Karthik Sridharan and Jin Suntivich have been named recipients of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowships. These awards support early-career faculty members’ original research and broad-based education related to science, technology and economic performance.
Margaret Washington, professor of history, is featured in the new PBS documentary film, "'Tell Them We Are Rising': The Story of Black Colleges and Universities," directed by MacArthur Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson.
Say you’re the coach of a basketball team that’s trailing by two points in the dying seconds of a game. Your team has the ball and you call a timeout to set up a play.Or imagine your football team has just scored a touchdown with three seconds to play to pull to within one point. Instead of immediately sending out the placekicker for the point-after, you call your final timeout to discuss your next move.
As the Cornell Institute of Host-Microbe Interactions and Disease(CIHMID) wraps up its first year, the launch of its Undergraduate Research Experience (URE) proved to be a highlight, say institute leaders.
Graduate teaching assistants Stepfanie Aguillon and Aravind Natarajan have received the 2017-18 Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.The awards were presented by Julia Thom-Levy, vice provost for academic innovation, Jan. 22 at the Eighth Annual Celebration of Teaching Excellence hosted by the Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI).
Myron Rush, a Kremlinologist whose careful lexical analysis of public leadership statements determined that Nikita Khrushchev had won the power struggle to succeed Joseph Stalin, died Jan. 8 of kidney failure at his home in Herndon, Virginia. The professor emeritus of government died a week after his 96th birthday.
Two new studies led by Hening Lin, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, offer new insights into oncogene RAS, the most frequently mutated gene of its type in human cancer.
In 2016, Yimon Aye, Howard Milstein Faculty Fellow and assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, introduced the world to “T-REX” – a chemical method for targeting and modulating single proteins to analyze and screen for specific oxidation-reduction (redox) events, which are vital to many basic functions of life.
Toppling a widespread assumption that a “lactation” hormone only cues animals to produce food for their babies, Cornell researchers have shown the hormone also prompts zebra finches to be good parents.
Languages have an intriguing paradox. Languages with lots of speakers, such as English and Mandarin, have large vocabularies with relatively simple grammar. Yet the opposite is also true: Languages with fewer speakers have fewer words but complex grammars.Why does the size of a population of speakers have opposite effects on vocabulary and grammar?
Kelly Zamudio, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, will analyze the effects of activity modules on classroom learning goals as the 2017-18 Menschel Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Cornell.
Graduate students explored texts and artworks with themes of movement, escape and water and curated a related gallery installation as part of a fall course at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.
Among other important milestones, students in the popular class learn how Slope Day and Dragon Day originated; what Collegetown once looked like and why Day Hall creek is called Wee Stinky Glen.
Are supporters of President Donald Trump increasing in prejudice? What’s the best way to end violence in Liberia during elections? Is Colombia ready for a sustainable boom in cocoa production?These are a few of the questions Cornell social science faculty are answering, thanks to small grants from the Institute for the Social Sciences.
An international group of astronomers has found that the Cornell-discovered fast radio burst FRB 121102 – a brief, gigantic pulse of radio waves from 3 billion light years away – passes through a veil of magnetized plasma. This causes the cosmic blasts to “shout and twist,” which will help the scientists determine the source.The research is featured on the cover of Nature, Jan. 11.
An unfortunate church dinner more than 100 years ago did more than just spread typhoid fever to scores of Californians. It led theorists on a quest to understand why many diseases – including typhoid, measles, polio, malaria, even cancer – take so much longer to develop in some affected people than in others.
For Sagar Chapagain ’17, his interdisciplinary studies degree from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences completes another step toward a career in medicine and health policy.
The algorithm is having a cultural moment. Originally a math and computer science term, algorithms are now used to account for everything from military drone strikes and financial market forecasts to Google search results.
How does the “big” get built up from the “small”? How do belief and thought in a brain emerge from subatomic particles? In her new book, “Making Things Up,” philosopher Karen Bennett tackles the question of how fundamental things determine or generate less fundamental things, and what it all means.
President Martha E. Pollack has committed the university to a new multi-institution initiative to make public data pertaining to career outcomes for life sciences doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers.
Tucked away in the basement of Clark Hall are five staff members whose machining expertise is integral to the success of many of the designs, experiments and innovations of Cornell’s physics faculty, graduate students and postdocs, as well as to work done within other departments and units across campus.
As fires rage across southern California, upstate economies struggle and teenagers crave educations that matter, Engaged Faculty Fellows are asking what they can do to help – and designing courses that do. The seven faculty members in this year’s cohort are developing community-engaged classes that give students hands-on experience and empower them to be global citizens – all while advancing community partners’ missions and contributing solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges.
Pianist Andy Sheng ’20 is the winner of the 14th annual Cornell Concerto Competition, held Dec. 10 in Barnes Hall Auditorium. He performed the first movement of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 and will perform the piece as a featured soloist with the Cornell Symphony Orchestra in a concert March 11, 2018, in Bailey Hall.
Fundamental processes that occur along strands of DNA, including RNA transcription and DNA replication, commonly encounter obstacles – or “roadblocks” – that can impede progress and ultimately result in mutations and/or DNA damage.
Starting Jan. 1, 2018, Cornell University Press will report to Cornell University Library.“We look forward to working closely with the first university press in the nation,” said Gerald Beasley, the Carl A. Kroch University Librarian. “Both the library and the press share a similar vision to promote a culture of broad inquiry and support the university’s mission to discover, preserve, and disseminate knowledge and creative expression.”
At this year’s eLab Pitch Night in New York City, 14 teams comprising 50 Cornell eLab students pitched their entrepreneurial ideas in hopes of securing mentors, advisers and supporters for their teams. The event, held Dec. 1 at Wilmer Hale’s World Trade Center offices, gathered Cornell students, alumni and those with an interest in entrepreneurship and innovation.
When honeybee colonies get larger, common sense suggests it would be noisier with more bees buzzing around.But a study recently published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiologyreports that bigger honeybee colonies actually have quieter combs than smaller ones.
The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies has awarded five seed grants and four small grants to Cornell faculty members to support their international research. Recipients come from seven departments in six Cornell colleges.Seed grant recipients
Since the 1970s, the Greek island of Santorini has enjoyed a thriving tourism industry. While the nearly 2 million people who annually visit the island pump money into the local economy, they also put a tremendous strain on the island’s infrastructure, particularly the usage of water. This problem is compounded by a lack of rainfall during the dry summer months when the tourist season is at its peak.
A broad, representative group of three dozen students, faculty and staff — including 10 faculty and students from the College of Arts & Sciences — has been named to the Presidential Task Force on Campus Climate, Cornell President Martha E. Pollack announced Dec. 4.
Representing global youth constituencies at the high-level segment at the Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, Nov. 6-17, Cornell students delivered a strong statement to the convention delegates as they negotiated and wrestled with climate change.
Connecting researchers to federal and state policymakers. Supporting children affected by the opioid epidemic. Sending students to the United Nations climate conference. Offering disaster workshops to regional animal shelters. Collaborating with cooperative businesses for experiential learning.These are among the 22 projects that received fall 2017 Engaged Opportunity Grants.
Maren Vitousek, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, has received a two-year, $500,000 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award to study links between stress, social connectedness, health and future performance. The DARPA Young Faculty Award program provides funding, mentoring and industry and Department of Defense contacts to awardees early in their careers.
President Martha E. Pollack and more than a thousand others gathered to celebrate the museum and Cornell’s founding principles of inclusion and diversity.
The Keck Foundation announced in early July that it had awarded $1 million to a Cornell cross-campus collaboration of professors in engineering and physics aimed at turning theory into reality – namely, creating a specific topological superconducting material that could help pave the way to quantum computing.
The concept of “race” – the idea that humans are naturally divided into biologically distinct groups – has been definitively proven false. But the 21st century has seen a disturbing increase in scientists inaccurately presenting race as the reason for racial inequality, says an acclaimed scholar of race, gender and law.
Reducing antibiotic resistance in animals and developing a lubricating formula in joints for people suffering from arthritis are two of seven projects that received Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) annual grants.
