Bitter fighting continues in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, even as President-elect Joe Biden urged unity in his victory speech Saturday night.
On Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech SE announced that Phase III data is pointing to 90% efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine, exceeding expectations that a vaccine might only reduce symptomatic COVID-19 in 60-70% of cases.
Earth’s most arid desert may hold a key to finding life on Mars. Diverse microbes discovered in the clay-rich, shallow soil layers in Chile’s dry Atacama Desert suggest that similar deposits below the Martian surface may contain microorganisms, which could be easily found by future rover missions or landing craft.
Now more than ever, leadership is needed at all levels of government to overcome growing partisanship and to keep the United States in a strong position in the world on fronts such as democracy, cybersecurity and climate change, said former U.S. Sen. John Kerry on Oct. 29.
To identify what makes people vulnerable, the researchers matched the extent of the storms with the measures of governance and living conditions in affected areas.
Black feminist scholars will examine the current socio-political and cultural moment in “Triangle Breathing: A Conversation with Hortense Spillers and Alexis Pauline Gumbs,” the final Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series: At Home virtual event of the fall.
Anticipation is mounting around the possible spread of disinformation on social media channels in the lead up to Tuesday’s presidential election and following the closing of polls.
Dark Laboratory, a “humanities incubator” for digital storytelling with a special focus on Black and Indigenous voices, launched its first podcast episode, a crossover with the podcast “Get Free” by laboratory co-founder Tao Leigh Goffe, on Oct. 26.
Amid the clatter in the days before the presidential election – the long lines at early polls, racial strife, street protests, political ad skirmishes and the streaming patter of television punditry – three College of Arts and Sciences professors offered a bright light at the end of the 2020 tunnel: hope for democracy.
Caitlín Barrett, associate professor of classics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a National Geographic Explorer after receiving a grant from the National Geographic Society to study daily life in ancient Rome through archaeological research at Pompeii in modern-day Italy.
A new initiative from the Department of Performing and Media Arts, the Asian American Studies Program, and the Latina/o Studies Program is inviting students and community members to engage in hands-on workshops and conversations with artists and arts/performance scholars. The next visit is Thursday, Oct. 29.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday parents whose children are currently enrolled in all-remote classes will now have until Nov. 15 to opt back into in-person classes – a shift from the previous plan which allowed parents numerous opportunities to choose to enroll for in-person education.
The authors analyzed the interconnected nature of dilemmas such as carcinogens, energy crises and invasive species at the intersection of technological and environmental history.
As the frenzied 2020 presidential campaign reaches culmination, the nation’s media, political parties and courts brace for a possible contested outcome. But in the United States and around the world, heated national elections are nothing new.
Former U.S. Sen. John Kerry, secretary of state in former President Barack Obama’s administration and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, will be the Belnick Family LaFeber/Lowi Presidential Forum speaker Oct. 29 at 5 p.m. The virtual event is open to those with a Cornell NetID; registration is required.
The first literary festival featuring multiple African languages will take place virtually from Oct. 26 to Nov. 2 as part of Afrolit Sans Frontières, a series of virtual literary festivals for writers of African origin. The festival will take place simultaneously on the Afrolit Sans Frontiéres Facebook page, YouTube and on Twitter via the handle AfrolitSansFro1.
Cornell University Library’s annual Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences is funding three new projects aimed at conserving fragile, physical artifacts and digitizing them for research and scholarship.
The Trump administration has accused Iran of targeting Democratic voters in an e-mail intimidation campaign seemingly designed to create uncertainty around the U.S. election.
A forensic team in Tulsa, Oklahoma has unearthed 11 coffins while searching for victims of the 1921 massacre in which hundreds of Black residents were killed.
The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Thursday, with a possible final vote on her confirmation as soon as Monday, Oct. 26 – a week in advance of the election.
Rich social and cultural transformations came to the classical world in Late Antiquity, roughly 250 CE to 750 CE. Moving away from the paradigm of decline and fall, historians have taken a new look at the period, including the rise to prominence of Christianity.
Elora Robeck ’24 couldn’t find rubbing alcohol. She needed alcohol to preserve the soft-bodied insects she’d collected near her home in Missouri, for her entomology class at Cornell. But it wasn’t included in her box of supplies, because alcohol is too flammable to ship. Her local drug store was all sold out. So at her professor’s suggestion, she asked her father to buy a bottle of 190-proof Everclear instead.
Three decades after Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that Voyager 1 snap Earth’s picture from billions of miles away – resulting in the iconic Pale Blue Dot photograph – two astronomers now offer another unique cosmic perspective:
If an initial COVID-19 vaccine is about as effective as a flu shot, uptake by the American public may fall far short of the 70% level needed to achieve herd immunity, new Cornell research suggests.
“Media Objects,” a media studies conference originally scheduled for March 2020 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, has been reconfigured into a virtual event, with the first panel scheduled for Oct. 23.
Three collaboratively crafted online performances led by undergraduate women artists of color will be offered Oct. 30–31 by the Cornell University Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA), Cornell Ambassadors for Media and Performance (CAMP), and Graduate Researchers in Media and Performing Arts (GRMPA). The series, titled “Virtual Vibrance: Making, Shaking, Breaking Performance,” is funded in part by the Cornell Council for the Arts.
The European Commission has launched a new system designed to link national COVID-19 tracing apps across the European Union — starting with Germany’s Corona-Warn-App, Ireland’s COVID tracker and Italy’s immuni. With the system — known as the interoperability gateway — the apps can work in all participating countries.
With Election Day just around the corner – and millions of ballots already cast in early voting – the next installment of the Democracy 20/20 webinar series will tackle polarization and how tension between the political parties and the social groups they represent is redefining American democracy.
On Thursday, a former Mexican defense minister, General Salvador Cienfuegos, was detained in Los Angeles on drug charges. The arrest prompted President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to vow to punish other military officials involved.
Thousands continued to protest in Thailand in the wake of an emergency decree issued Thursday by the government limiting gatherings to groups of five and the arrest of key protest leaders. Tamara Loos, professor of history and Thai studies at Cornell University, says the events of this week indicate that Thailand has reached a tipping point, with widespread protests necessitating a response from the regime and monarchy.
Michael D. Morley, professor emeritus of mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), died Oct. 11 at Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pennsylvania. He was 90.
Hungry giant predators, treacherous mud and a tired, probably cranky toddler – more than 10,000 years ago, that was the stuff of every parent’s nightmare. Evidence of that type of frightening trek was recently uncovered, and at nearly a mile it is the longest known trackway of early-human footprints ever found.
