by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Is language innate? How did we get language? While researchers continue to debate, a new book offers a revolutionary, unifying framework for understanding the processing, acquisition and evolution of language. The book, “Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing” by Cornell Professor of Psychology Morten H.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
Hear faculty explain gravitational waves and ponder this year's election mayhem — while connecting with old friends and making new Cornell memories — at Reunion 2016.
Over the past decades, millions of managed colonies of honeybees have died from varroa mites that transmit deadly viruses, yet wild colonies survive.Cornell researchers describe – in the March 11 issue of the journal PLoS One –experiments that help reveal how wild colonies endure mites and pathogens.
The legendary Cornell Professor Milton Konvitz, Ph.D. ’33, encouraged students to explore the origins of ideals embedded in the U.S. Constitution to understand civil rights and civil liberties.He referenced principles of intellectual history in such lectures as “The Hebrew Bible,” “Antigone” and “Revolution” in his “American Ideals” course, first offered in 1947.
The Department of Performing and Media Arts will welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Paula Vogel to campus April 12-13 for a conversation and concert reading of her most recent play, “Indecent.”
The object of my reflection is a book: There are probably a lot of books among the “transformative works” you find here, but this book, known as the “Mynas Codex,” is a very different kind of object from most of them. When I say “book,” you probably think of a text that can be read in many different places at once, each reader experiencing a more or less identical object, like this one:
"The Sound of Mucus"My wife had died a horrible and lingering death when my daughters were 14 and 10. Devastated the three of us sought solace, and to begin to recoup our lives we reinstated a group activity the three of us had enjoyed when they were considerably younger. We watched movies. Indeed, we would watch the same films over and over.
I have long been troubled by Henri Bergson’s notion that all of us have only one idea. In spite of our best efforts to constantly do new work, we keep returning to this one idea. For academics, Bergson’s is a depressing proposition because a career marked by repetition is, surely, a career lacking in originality. And who would want that?
Three Cornell faculty have been awarded Simons Fellowships in Theoretical Physics for their research. Eun-Ah Kim, associate professor of physics, Dong Lai, professor of astronomy and Maxim Perelstein, professor of physics were honored with the 2016 award from the foundation, which supports scientific research related to mathematics and physical sciences, life sciences and autism, as well as education and outreach efforts.
Professor Geoffery Coates, Assistant Professor Yimon Aye and student Shivansh Chawla ’17, who works in Aye’s lab in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, were all recently honored by the American Chemical Society (ACS) with 2016 awards.
Prof. Beverly Gage, director of undergraduate studies in history at Yale University, shared insights into the life of J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the Carl Becker lecture series last week sponsored by Cornell's Department of History. Gage focused on elements of Hoover’s character and accomplishments that she said are often overlooked.
We are living in a prison industrial complex, according to Ruth Wilson Gilmore, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the City University of New York.Gilmore gave the American Studies Program’s annual Krieger Lecture in American Political Culture March 3 on “Organized Abandonment and Organized Violence: Devolution and the Police.”
Technology has changed all aspects of our lives, even ancient fields of study in the humanities. The College of Arts and Sciences’ fourth Big Ideas Panel, part of its New Century for the Humanities celebration, explored technology in the humanities March 15 in Klarman Hall’s Groos Family Atrium.
Science Foundation Ireland presented its prestigious St. Patrick’s Day Science Medal March 16 to Séamus Davis, Cornell’s James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences. The presentation was made by Charles Flanagan, Ireland’s minister for foreign affairs and trade, as part of St. Patricks’ Day celebrations in Washington, D.C.
by :
Melanie Lefkowitz
,
Cornell University Library
Runaway slave advertisements – a common sight in North American newspapers in the 18th and 19th centuries – are frankly disturbing. They describe people as property, listing their physical attributes and family connections in chilling terms.
The U.S. incarcerates a greater proportion of its population than any other country in the world, with dire social and economic consequences for the incarcerated, their children and those who work in the criminal justice system. In his new book, “Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World” (Cambridge University Press), Peter Enns sheds new light on why.
Think “Game of Thrones” meets “Hunger Games.” For the annual Cornell Fashion Collective show on March 12, warriors, rangers and magicians – models draped in LED lights and electroluminescent tape – will role-play on the runway.
Like the gravitational forces that are responsible for the attraction between the Earth and the moon, as well as the dynamics of the entire solar system, there exist attractive forces between objects at the nanoscale.
Congratulations to Roberto Sierra, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities and professor of music, on the international release of his new CD “Boleros & Montunos” in Madrid, Spain.
Lucinda Ramberg has been awarded the first Michelle Z. Rosaldo Book Prize by the Association for Feminist Anthropology (AFA) for her book Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion (Duke University Press).
Resurrecting a 17th-century Italian opera whose sole musical source was incompletely notated was a challenge musicologist Neal Zaslaw and a group of students were happy to accept.What started as a spring 2015 seminar project was unveiled March 19-20 as an opera complete with Baroque instruments, Arcadian shepherds, hellish demons and classical statuary in the auditorium of Klarman Hall.
Students and faculty in the Cornell in Turin program were recognized recently for their work in Turin’s San Salvario neighborhood as part of their research studies of migration and services for immigrants in Italy.
Mohammad Hamidian, Ph.D. ’11, has been named the 2016 winner of the prestigious Lee-Osheroff-Richardson Prize for his discoveries of new forms of electronic matter at the nanoscale and at extreme low temperatures.
Gerard Aching, director of the Africana Studies and Research Center, sees connections between the messages in two popular books and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Cuban poet and slave Juan Francisco Manzano (1797–1854) and his 1839 “Autobiografía de un esclavo,” the only slave narrative to surface in the Spanish-speaking world, are the starting point of an examination of 19th-century Cuban literature and social politics in Gerard Aching’s recent book, “Freedom from Liberation: Slavery, Sentiment, and Literature in Cuba.”
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
The mind that thinks our thoughts is a pretty special place. But is it distinct from the brain? Is there, in fact, a soul directing our thoughts or are they determined entirely by the output of our biology? Could that mouse scampering through your garden be thinking deep thoughts, or are humans really special?
