Michael Lynch ‘70, professor of science & technology studies, has been awarded the 2016 J. D. Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) for his “long-term and highly influential contribution to Science and Technology Studies and to the intellectual life of 4S.”
The geologic shape of what were once shorelines through Mars’ northern plains convinces scientists that two large meteorites – hitting the planet millions of years apart – triggered a pair of mega-tsunamis. These gigantic waves forever scarred the Martian landscape and yielded evidence of cold, salty oceans conducive to sustaining life.
The real estate maxim about the importance of location is true for teenagers too. Their intellectual and physical health depends on location, location, location.Teens living in disadvantaged neighborhoods face a higher risk of obesity and reduced cognitive ability, according to new research by a Cornell sociologist. In addition, adolescent girls in the most disadvantaged environments are more likely than boys to become obese, he found.
Searching vast cosmic communities like real estate agents rifling through listings, Cornell astronomers now hunt through time and space for habitable exoplanets – planets beyond our own solar system – looking at planets flourishing in old star, red giant neighborhoods.Astronomers search for these promising worlds by looking for the “habitable zone,” the region around a star in which water on a planet’s surface is liquid and signs of life can be remotely detected by telescopes.
The Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) has awarded grants supporting 40 projects, many involving students and faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences, to be presented or performed during the 2016-17 academic year.
Hirokazu Miyazaki, professor of anthropology and director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, is the program chair for this year’s Society for Cultural Anthropology biennial meeting at Cornell May 13-14.
When she was growing up in Harlem, Ginger So ’79 walked 10 blocks each way once a week to borrow books from the public library.In those books, she saw photographs of an America she did not know – an America of houses with white picket fences – and images of other countries. Her reading made her want to travel, so she followed the advice of her mother and studied hard, gained entrance to a good high school and later was admitted to Cornell.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Alex Hayes, assistant professor of astronomy, will receive the 2016 Zeldovich Medal, in Commission B (planets) from COSPAR (Committee on Space Research for the International Council of Science) and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The award is given to young scientists who have demonstrated excellence and achievement in their field of research.Hayes will be presented with the award at the inaugural ceremony of the 41st COSPAR Scientific Assembly on August 1 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Professor of performing and media arts Bruce Levitt is the inaugural recipient of Cornell’s Engaged Scholar Prize, Vice Provost Judith Appleton announced May 11.
At a May 2 reception and award presentation, the first cohort of Ewing Family Service Award recipients presented updates on their projects to 40 students, faculty, staff and members of the Ewing Family.Established in fall 2015 to support Cornell’s commitment to innovation in community engagement, the Ewing Family Service Award provides up to $2,000 per project to foster student, faculty or staff leadership and social responsibility in the Cornell campus community.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Identity goes far beyond belonging to a particular group according to race, religion or sexual orientation, faculty say, and it's more complicated today than ever before.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Jonathan Boyarin, the Hendrix Director of Jewish Studies, the Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and professor of anthropology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR). The AAJR was founded in 1919 and includes about one hundred of the most eminent scholars of Jewish Studies in North America.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Artists today engage with a world very different from that of their predecessors: globally connected, technologically advanced and highly diverse. In the last fifty years the Western canon has been displaced as the benchmark for “good” and worthwhile art, opening the door to works intended to challenge viewers, rather than simply to aesthetically please.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Migration is one of the major forces shaping the world today, with more than 60 million displaced people.“Never in history have we seen this many simultaneous displacements across the globe and these people are not going home any time soon,” says Mostafa Minawi, assistant professor of history and Himan Brown Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow. “This is a global population redistribution and it will hit us whether we like it or not.”
Cornell University’s Department of Music, under the artistic direction of pianists Xak Bjerken and Miri Yampolsky, will present its ninth springtime festival of world-class chamber music in Ithaca May 20–24. Mayfest will offer six intimate concerts in four inspiring locations: Cornell’s Barnes Hall, Klarman Hall, Lab of Ornithology, and the Carriage House Café.
Katja C. Nowack, assistant professor of physics in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, has been selected by the Department of Energy (DOE) to receive $750,000 for research over five years as part of DOE’s Early Career Research Program for her research project, “Magnetic Imaging of Topological Phases of Matter.”
The Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (ACSF) has announced 10 faculty-in-residence fellows in the social sciences, humanities and arts for 2016-17.
Cornell astrophysicists Saul Teukolsky and Lawrence Kidder have earned a share in the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics – a $3 million award – that recognizes those who helped create the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and its ability to find gravitational waves. The discovery announced in February provided strong confirmation of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Students presented their research in the humanities and social sciences — ranging from the role of religion in society to how video game players perceive their characters — at the Humanities Showcase in Klarman Hall May 4, as reported by The Cornell Daily Sun.
Once a popular pastime, bee hunting involves capturing and feeding wild bees, then releasing and following them back to their hive.The practice is little-known today, but bee expert Thomas D. Seeley – the Horace White Professor in Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences and author of several books on honeybees – has just published a book that offers insights into the history and science of bee hunting.
A conspicuous miniature wagon is parked in Willard Straight Hall’s browsing library. In the vintage Straight interior surrounded by sculptures, paintings and scale-model ships, the antique-looking wooden wagon might seem like a part of an exposition on rural life in 18th-century Britain. But the wagon is no exhibition piece; it’s the home of a student-founded, self-funded independent community book exchange.
"The Search for a Faun"My poem is called, “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” A famous title I am sure most of you will recognize. The fame is one of the reasons why I am self-conscious about what I am about to do in this reflection, which partly amounts to betraying the naïveté of my youth.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Isabel Hull has received a Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law for her book, “A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War” (Cornell, 2014). The award, for “a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship,” was presented at the ASIL’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. in March.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
N’Dri Assié-Lumumba, professor of Africana, recently co-edited a special issue of the International Review of Education-Journal of Lifelong Learning (IRE) titled, “Rediscovering the Ubuntu Paradigm in Education," Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo) and Dr. joan.Osa Oviawe (visiting scholar at Cornell) were co–editors.
Following the April 2015 Nepal earthquake that killed more than 8,000 people, Maya Devi Neupane, president of the United Women’s Savings and Credit Cooperative, said her Kaule community on the Phyukhri Ridge “felt orphaned, abandoned.”She continued, “The earthquake destroyed our homes and our [Women’s Cooperative] building. We had to take shelter in the plastic greenhouse ‘tunnels’ where we had begun a tomato-growing project.”
Noliwe Rooks, associate professor of Africana studies and feminist, gender and sexuality studies, and director of graduate studies at theAfricana Studies and Research Center, and Bryan Duff, senior lecturer in education, received the
Chad Coates, assistant dean of admissions and advising in the College of Arts and Sciences, was voted Cornell’s 14th employee-elected trustee in an election held April 11-13. More than 1,300 staff members participated in the election.Succeeding Alan Mittman, Coates will begin his four-year term July 1.
Jim can feel the eyes of his classmates. He stays up nights reading his law books. He knows the information. None of that matters now. What matters is he’s the only black man in a classroom of white eyes and it consumes him. He feels branded.He starts to talk. His voice trembles. He stutters. His mind goes blank. He fails, again. He can’t exactly explain why.
Members of the Cornell community are invited to explore issues of race in America during six simultaneous small-group discussions of the Ta-Nehisi Coates book “Between the World and Me” Thursday, April 28.The discussions, set for 12:20-1:10 p.m., will take place at locations across campus and are part of the College of Arts and Sciences’ New Century for the Humanities celebration.
