Imagine you are watching an NBA basketball game, and you are asked to bet on the outcome of the game. Are you likely to put your money on the team with the player who appears to be unstoppable- the one who just made his last three shots and is just about to shoot again? What if that same player goes for the shot and misses, but the referee mistakenly calls a foul when there was none and allows the player a free throw. Would you expect the player to make the shot?
"While other historical works on the revolution tend to skip over the year 1774," says Mary Beth Norton, "noboday has ever paused to look seriously at the events of the year 1774, to see how the American population, which previously has been quite united in opposition to Britain, divides over various issues."
In the middle of the periodic table of elements, on the block that bridges the two jutting sides, is a series of elements known as transition metals. The electronic composition of transition metals makes them great catalysts for some of earth’s most life-enabling reactions. They mediate key reactions, for example, in photosynthesis and help convert nitrogen in the atmosphere so it can be used as a nutrient to sustain life.
As a math major with a concentration in computer science, one might assume that on paper, Beatrice Jin ’18, would be more inclined to pursue purely technical fields rather than the humanities. Jin, however, who hails from the suburbs of Chicago, has had a consistent passion for art and visual design in addition to math and science.
Like human social behavior, the behavior of electrons in relation to each other is difficult to predict. In strongly correlated systems, each electron impacts how those around it act, their orientation and movement, and this leads to diverse behavior in the whole. This Cornell Research story explores this behavior.
In 1989, W.E. Moerner—a Cornell University graduate and current professor at Stanford University—discovered a method that allowed researchers to see single molecules for the first time. It was a breakthrough that opened doors for the development of an entirely new technique that would impact scientific research across disciplines, and one that earned Moerner, as well as fellow Cornell alumnus Eric Betzig (Howard Hughes Medical Institute), a Nobel Prize in 2014.
Allen Tyrone Porterie hopes to cast more light on the theater stage. The issue in question is homophobia as it pertains to gay black men in the theater. “This research relates closely to me, and it is also a very important issue,” says Porterie in this Cornell Research story.
The National Science Foundation awarded Cornell $9 million over five years to establish a neurotechnology hub, dedicated to developing new technologies for imagine the brain, then disseminating them to the wider neuroscience community.
This Cornell Research story focuses on Kim Weeden, the Jan Rock Zubrow ’77 Professor of the Social Sciences and director of the Center for the Study of Inequality, whose work focuses on inequality and opportunity in the United States and other industrialized countries.
Through his writing, archaeology, and outreach, Kurt Jordan, associate professor of anthropology, works alongside Native partners to better understand the indigenous history of the Finger Lakes region.
Arts & Sciences student and English major Molly Karr '18 writes about her study abroad experience with a London acting troupe in this Cornell Research piece.
Alexander G. Hayes, assistant professor of astronomy, first began studying Titan as a graduate student, Hayes' research is described in this Cornell Research story.
The research of Richard W. Miller, professor of philosophy and director of the Program on Ethics & Public Life, is explored in this recent Cornell Research story.
This Cornell Research story profiles the work of Natasha Holmes, assistant professor of physics, who studies the teaching and learning of physics, particularly in lab courses.
“I write in books, not in individual poems,” says poet Lyrae N. Van Clief-Stefanon, English. “A group of poems that make up a book will have an over-arching through line, all these threads that I’m holding together.”
Climate change is a game changer: glaciers melt, sea levels rise, weather patterns become unpredictable. Garcia is exploring its impacts in her latest book project, "Climate Refugees: The Environmental Origins of Refugee Migrations," which looks at environmentally driven migrants.
"I applied to colleges as a prospective chemistry major because of my interest in the field, despite knowing that I’d probably have to make a greater effort than others to develop my skills," said Ashley Vincent '17.
The world is full of languages and dialects—more than 7,000. Across these languages, many possible sounds can be combined into words. While there may be similarities in words between closely related languages, for years linguists have believed that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is completely arbitrary. Recently Morten H. Christiansen, Psychology, collaborated with fellow researchers to investigate whether that belief might need to be reappraised.
Roberto Sierra,the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Music Composition, talks about his life, composing, teaching, and the creative process.
Paul A. Fleming, German Studies/Comparative Literature, recounts an old story that’s been told and retold many times. It comes from Herodotus’ Histories, an account of the Egyptian King Psammetichus’ capture by the Persians. As part of the king’s humiliation, the Persians parade his family in front of him—first his daughter as a slave and then his son on his way to execution. While everyone else around him wails, King Psammetichus shows no emotion until a beggared old drinking buddy passes, upon which he begins to weep and lament.
Robert D. Guber ’15 studied alcoholic liver, diabetes, and obesity. Lipi Gupta ’15 worked on reducing beam emittance in the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR), a 768-meter ring that is part of the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), to produce brighter s-rays. Sang Min Han ’15 examined toadfish to create a mathematical model for vertebrate vocalization. Swati Sureka ’15 engineered nucleic acid to develop DNA materials. Teresa O.
Atop a cabinet, leaning against a wall of Dagmawi Woubshet’s office, is an enlarged framed cover of the May 17, 1963, issue of TIME magazine. Its portrait of writer James Baldwin stares into the room. Woubshet, associate professor of English, gestures to it several times as he talks about his research.
Like all researchers, Itai Cohen, Physics, has a lot of questions. But unlike many, his questions make big, topical leaps. From fruit flies to mosh pits, from origami to cartilage—Cohen dreams of preventing stampedes in Mecca, understanding the complex neuromechanics of fruit fly flight, and making self-folding robots from a single sheet of atoms. How can all this happen in one lab? Well, the answer is: it doesn’t.
From our earliest history, humans have contemplated the cosmos. Before we had an inkling of the nature of our own solar system, we wondered at the composition of our sister planets. And long before we knew there were planets orbiting other stars, we wondered if we, earth-bound beings, were alone in the universe.
Walk by a bakery, and you’ll smell fresh-baked bread. But would you smell it, if you’d never learned what bread was? “Not necessarily,” says Thomas A. Cleland, Psychology.
In academic fields from physics to genetics, researchers rely on computers for everything from data analysis to modeling. One area of scholarship that has gone largely untouched is the humanities, where today’s researchers are far more often hunched over stacks of books than scanning graphs and charts on a screen.
Kyle Shen, associate professor of physics, creates and investigates artificial and unconventional materials with unusual electronic and magnetic properties. His research into these new materials and their potential applications is explored in this Cornell Resarch story.
This Cornell Research story explores the many avenues that graduate students pursue in their research projects and the multitide of Cornell supports available to them.
More than 5,000 graduate students work at Cornell, studying in more than 80 fields.
Karen Pinkus, professor of Italian and comparative literature, is deeply concerned about the environment and believes that the humanities can bring a critical research component to solving the problems of climate change.
Despite the distance, Cornell researchers are actively involved in the cutting-edge particle physics experiments taking place at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.
This Cornell Research story explores the many projects and discoveries Cornell faculty are undertaking as they pursue answers to some of the universe's greatest mysteries.
Everywhere we turn in modern Western society, we run into the influence of economics. Our worldview, and our very language, is colored by it. We worry that politicians can be bought and sold. We give credit to those who can afford a comfortable retirement. We debate the price of a free society as police clash with protestors.
In the short story “How to Win an Unwinnable War,” a seventh-grade boy named Sam enrolls in a summer school class called How to Win a Nuclear War. The story traces Sam’s morbid reflections spurred by the course—“He wonders what the stars will see the day the war begins, the whole planet brightening, then going gray like a dead bulb”—as he simultaneously grapples with the dissolution of his parent’s marriage.
Peter J. Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies, offers a look into his world of teaching and research in international relations in this video on the Cornell Research site.
Of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world, many are endangered. An endangered language is one that is at risk of losing all of its native speakers.
Courtney Roby, assistant professor of classics, had some big questions as she was working as an electrical engineer. See how she found the answers in classics.
