On Wednesday, former Senator and Vice President Joe Biden will be inaugurated as President of the United States. His inauguration takes place amid continued challenges presented by COVID-19 and the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft – currently orbiting Jupiter, flying close approaches to the planet and then out into the realm of the Jovian moons – and the InSight lander, now perched in Mars’ equatorial region, have both received mission extensions, the space agency announced Jan. 8. Cornell astronomers serve key roles on both projects.
Ding Xiang Warner, professor of Asian studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, has won a yearlong 2021 fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to study etched shell casings and other “trench art” made by some of the Chinese laborers who supported the allied armies during World War I.
During his 16 years representing a Long Island district in Congress, Steve Israel said he saw divisiveness and partisanship grow exponentially. By the time he retired from the House of Representatives in 2017, compromise and respect for democratic norms seemed almost irrelevant, he said, and his biggest fear was not of foreign conflict but internal division.
Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge, part of Global Cornell, has won a three-year, $5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative that will bring together scholars across the university and beyond to study the links between racism, dispossession and migration.
A comparative analysis of COVID-19 policies across 18 countries, led by researchers from Cornell and Harvard University, reveals that different countries reacted to the pandemic with a variety of policies – resulting in widely varied public health and economic outcomes linked to underlying characteristics of each society.
Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, technologists and health officials have looked to technologies – including smartphone contact tracing applications – to stem the spread of the virus. But contact tracing apps, which require a critical mass of adopters to be effective, face serious obstacles in the U.S., Cornell researchers have found.
An international team of astronomers – including 17 Cornellians – report they have found the first faint, low-frequency whispers that may be gravitational waves from gigantic, colliding black holes in distant galaxies. The findings were obtained from more than 12.5 years of data collected from the national radio telescopes at Green Bank, West Virginia, and the recently collapsed dish at the Arecibo Observatory, in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
Entrepreneurship at Cornell has named Jessica Rolph ’97, MBA ’04, co-founder and CEO of early childhood development startup Lovevery, its 2021 Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year. Rolph will be honored at the Entrepreneurship at Cornell Eclectic Convergence conference, Nov. 12 in New York City.
Morales is excited to be a first-year student at Cornell, but she’s experiencing her first semester online from her apartment in the Bronx. Her parents have lost their jobs, so she and her sister are working part-time to support the family. And she’s tired of hearing other students say “we’re all in the same boat,” because, frankly, her boat seems a lot less seaworthy than many of her classmates.’
While some consider public opinion polls critical to democratic accountability, others question the ability of today’s pollsters to accurately reflect the public’s preferences on issues and candidates.
U.S. Capitol Police failed to stop a mob of Trump supporters from breaching the Capitol building on Wednesday and disrupting Congress’ final electoral count.
“Are you not going out to play basketball with your friends today?” my mom asked me, as she searched for something from my room. “I’m just feeling a bit tired today, I’ll join them next time,” I remarked, as I perused through a list of the “best comedy movies over the last century.”
How do perceptions of luck shape views about inequality and redistribution? Could interventions nudge hiring managers to evaluate job candidates blindly, and thus more objectively? Has remote instruction during the pandemic improved student interactions and equity in science labs?
The results of the November 2020 elections are schedule to be certified by Congress this week, as allies of President Trump seek to delegitimize the election and the president was revealed to have pressured Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find more votes” for him.
Scientists have known that females of many species eat more to meet the demands of reproduction, and that females undergo widespread physiological and behavioral changes after mating. The mechanisms of these changes, however, are not well understood.
Chaos and uncertainty are hallmarks of armed conflict. But new research that ties together multiple aspects of political violence reveals universal dynamics in how conflicts emerge and expand. The work provides a statistical framework that could one day help anticipate deadly violence.
A group of Cornell students have launched a campaign to free a Salvadoran woman in a detention center whom they befriended through a class focused on refugees and immigration.
The first mention of the word “coronavirus” in a Cornell Chronicle story in 2020 came on Jan. 29, when the university designated mainland China as an elevated-risk destination, and imposed travel restrictions on students, faculty and staff.
A total of 17 entrepreneurial students from the College of Arts & Sciences were part of teams who shared plans for new businesses in two online December events — the Big Idea Competition and eLab Early Stage Pitch event.
Courtney Cogburn, associate professor of social work at Columbia University and director of “1000 Cut Journey,” shared her story about creating the virtual-reality experience during a November webinar with students in the Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity.
On Dec. 19, nearly 1,500 Cornell students celebrated their winter graduation in a virtual recognition ceremony viewed around the world – the first such event at Cornell, and a fitting end to what President Martha E. Pollack called “a semester like no other at Cornell.”
For their final projects, students in Africana Studies professor Carole Boyce-Davies’ Black Women and Political Leadership course created a podcast featuring interviews with Black women in politics.
Derrick R. Spires, associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, has won the Modern Language Association (MLA) Prize for a First Book for “The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States.” In the book, Spires examines the parallel development of early Black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship between 1787 and 1861.
Today, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced major changes to the way the city’s middle and high schools admit their students. Those changes include eliminating all admissions screens for middle schools for at least one year; eliminating a policy that allows some high schools to give students who live nearby first claim at spots in the school; and issuing grants to be used by schools to develop diversity and integration plans.
The White House issued an executive order this week requiring state and local governments to issue occupational licenses to workers who have received a similar license in another jurisdiction — as long as they are in good standing. The goal of the new order is to increase economic and geographic mobility.
For six generations, Mohawk ironworkers have “walked the steel.” Indigenous people began ironworking in the 19th century, when they were hired to build railroad bridges in Canada. They helped craft the New York City skyline, working on projects including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and the World Trade Center.
Erin McCauley, a doctoral candidate in the fields of sociology and policy analysis and management, recently received funding from the National Institute for Drug Abuse to support her research analyzing the effects of COVID-19 on jails.
by :
Katya Hrichak
,
Cornell University Graduate School
Cornell’s English Language Support Office (ELSO) has expanded to support all multilingual graduate students – both from the U.S. and abroad. Previously available only to international students for whom English was not their first language, now multilingual graduate and professional students from anywhere in the world can participate in ELSO programs, including tutoring, workshops, and classes.
A team of Cornell faculty, graduate students and undergraduates is fighting to save Lisa Montgomery from federal execution next month, supporting her bid for clemency from courtrooms to recording studios to a social media campaign urging followers to #SaveLisa and consider #HerWholeTruth.
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the country, federal data shows more than a third of Americans live in areas where hospitals are running critically short on intensive care beds. The data has caused some panic about the possibility of health care rationing over the coming months.
Cornell student Ryan Tremblay ‘22 won first place in a student pitch competition Oct. 28, judged by Chad Dickerson, former CEO of Etsy and Cornell Tech fellow.
Sometimes atoms, like pets and adventuresome hikers, slip loose and wander off into the wild. Their final destination isn’t known, and their trajectory can be all over the map. It’s not so easy to track their path.
Today New York City Councilman Daniel Dromm is set to introduce a bill that prohibits solitary confinement as a means of punishment. On Friday, the New York City council will hold a hearing on the proposed bill, fast-tracking the process to stop the controversial practice.
Carrying on a beloved annual tradition, the Cornell University Chorus and Glee Club will offer a musical holiday celebration including singalong carols (featuring the virtually assembled choirs), seasonal poetry readings, and recordings from past Christmas services Dec. 16.
As course enrollment opens up this week, students in the College of Arts & Sciences have access to dozens of new courses for spring 2021, thanks in part to the College’s new curriculum, which took effect this fall for students in the class of 2024.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory after congressional elections this week, consolidating power in the National Assembly, Venezuela’s last remaining independent political institution. Many influential opposition leaders boycotted the election.
Former National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, Lt. General, U.S. Army, retired, will speak to the Cornell community about foreign policy, national security and America’s standing in the world. The virtual event will be held on Dec. 8 at 6 p.m. Registration is required.
