This is an episode from the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast's third season, "What Do We Know about Love?" from Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences, showcasing the newest thinking from across the disciplines about the relationship between humans and love. Featuring audio essays written and recorded by Cornell faculty, the series releases a new episode each Tuesday through the fall semester.
A new technique that combines electricity and chemistry offers a way for pharmaceuticals – including many of the top prescribed medications – to be manufactured in a scalable and sustainable way. The procedure for this technique is outlined in a new paper published Aug. 2 in Nature Protocols.
Alexa may not be able to read your mind -- at least not yet— but Hannah Lee ’19 is trying to help her move in that direction.“We want to train machines so they can know by looking at people’s facial expressions or hearing their speech patterns that the machine got something wrong, even before the person tells them,” Lee said.
Since freshman year, Emily Wang ‘20, has been combining social justice and healthcare by interning at the Ithaca Free Clinic. From working to start a non-profit to investigating patient outcomes, this biology major and Public Service Center Scholar is continuing her work this summer with the clinic’s chronic care program thanks to an Arts & Sciences Summer Experience Grant.
The impact of technology on modernity has been a worldwide phenomenon, but Western art historians tend to ignore the “global south” – less developed countries – as María Fernández explores in her new edited work, “Latin American Modernisms and Technology.”
High-temperature superconductors have remained a scientific mystery for more than 30 years. Their electrical resistance, which increases linearly with temperature, has been particularly puzzling, spawning hundreds of theories.
Image: Conceptual installation by Colombian-born sculptor Doris Salcedo at the 2007 exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. Photo credit: Gilberto Dobón, Wikimedia Commons
Some of the 14 participants in this year’s Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP) at Cornell said their week of intensive study, July 21-29, taught them how to read critically, paying attention to the perspectives of the authors, their intended audiences and the historical contexts that informed their writings. Others noted the relevance of ancient works to present times.
After taking a freshman writing seminar on visual depictions of women reading throughout history, Ellie O’Reilly’s ’20 passion for feminism, art history and English grew.
A National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) committee has endorsed the idea of building an electron-ion collider (EIC) in the United States, for the purpose of expanding understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter.
Andrej Singer, assistant professor of materials science and engineering and David Croll Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow, will lead a three-year project funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science that will attempt to create new quantum states of matter.
A celebration of the life and legacy of civil rights icon Dorothy Cotton will be held Aug. 11 from 2 to 4:30 p.m. in Bailey Hall on the Cornell campus. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required.
In a recent research paper published in Nature, a group led by physics professors David Muller and Sol Gruner claimed a world record for electron microscope resolution using a high-powered detector and a technique called ptychography. Their technique was shown to measure down to 0.39 ångströms or 0.039 nanometers (one-billionth of a meter).
Thanks to a fellowship from Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program, Javier Agredo’19 is spending the summer studying Thai at the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute. Agredo, who has a passion for language documentation and preservation, has also had the chance to attend Gamelan performances, a traditional musical ensemble from Indonesia, and explore the city of Madison.
An average day for Conan Gillis ‘21 starts with a math class in the morning, followed by a trip to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection at Kroch Library, where he might hold a letter by Thomas Jefferson or view a 1,000-year-old manuscript. In the evenings, he often participates in a fencing practice run by two Olympic-level fencers.
Sustainability science is getting a big boost from the humanities. And the social sciences. And the arts.Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future has named seven social sciences, humanities and arts (SSHA) fellows for the 2018-19 academic year. The annual fellowships are awarded to faculty from across the university whose work broadens and deepens sustainability research.
A project to develop topical therapies for skin diseases associated with DNA damage and another to investigate bone-binding polymers to relieve bone-on-bone pain for those with severe osteoarthritis are two of nine projects awarded 2018-19 Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) grants.CAT is housed in Cornell’s Institute of Biotechnology.
Having worked as a research assistant in Michael Goldstein’s Behavioral Analysis of Beginning Years (B.A.B.Y.) lab at Cornell, Kathryn Garrisi ‘19 was eager to learn how other labs approach the study of the infant mind.
Suzanne Mettler, The John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, writes in this New York Times opinion piece about President Trump's efforts to rebrand various social programs as "welfare."
In a light-filled classroom in Klarman Hall, the students don’t seem to notice the verdant courtyard just outside the window, so focused are they on exploring the ties between literary criticism and media studies.
Fuel cells could someday power numerous devices – automobiles and mass transit systems, buildings, and virtually any type of portable electronic device.Unlike batteries, which eventually run out of power (and thus need to be recharged), a fuel cell will continue to generate electrical energy as long as it has a fuel – usually hydrogen – and oxygen or some other oxidant necessary for the complete electrochemical reaction.
Glenn C. Altschuler, Dean of Cornell University’s School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions and the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences, presents, "The Election of 2018: What's at Stake and What to Look For" at Call Auditorium in Kennedy Hall on Wednesday, July 25 at 7 p.m. Free and open to the public, the lecture is part of the summer events series sponsored by Cornell’s School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions.
Before she enrolled at Cornell, Yonn Rasmussen ’83, MS ’86, PhD ’89 visited the Ithaca campus with her parents and saw for the first time McGraw Tower, the inside of Andrew Dickson White Library, and the suspension bridge over the gorge. “I remember walking down the well-worn steps of Willard Straight Hall to the cafeteria in the basement and thinking how many Cornellians must have passed through there to make the concave indentation on the stone steps,” she said.
A new book by Sarah Kreps, associate professor of government, argues that part of the reason for America's current long-running wars is the lack of a war tax – a special levy historically paid by the American people during times of war.
The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies has selected new leaders for its South Asian, East Asian, Latin American, and peace and conflict studies programs, as well as in its international relations minor.
Photosynthesis is one of the most crucial life processes on Earth. It’s how plants get their food, using energy from sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide from the air into sugars. But scientists have long believed that more than 30 percent of the energy produced during photosynthesis is wasted in a process called photorespiration.
On July 26, astronomer Steve Squyres will explain the exciting science behind the proposed Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) mission. His talk, at 7 pm in Klarman Hall’s Rhodes-Rawling Auditiorium on the Cornell campus, is free and the public is invited.
“Carol was a bright light in our department and our college. Her brilliance and expertise was only matched by her kindness and generosity,” said Ella Diaz, associate professor of English and Latina/o studies. Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, called Warrior “one of the rising stars of our faculty.”
In this opinion piece on Fox News Online, Gustavo A. Flores-Macías, associate professor of government, discuses what the presidency of Mexico's new leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador – known by his initials as AMLO, might look like.
The Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future’s Academic Venture Fund (AVF) supports collaborations that cut across disciplines to address today’s greatest sustainability challenges. In 2018, the fund awarded $1.5 million to a range of projects that will provide sustainable solutions around the world, from the Finger Lakes to the Pamir Mountains in Central Asia.
In new research, psychologists found that study participants, on average, were more than twice as likely to call male professionals – even fictional ones – by their last name only, compared to equivalent female professionals. This example of gender bias, say researchers, may be contributing to gender inequality.
Why would five Cornell professors decide to teach a class when there was no budget to pay them to do it? If you’re the directors of Cornell’s Behavioral Economics and Decision Research Center (BEDR), you rely on research showing the importance of the class topic: Better Decisions for Life, Love and Money.
History Professor Maria Cristina Garcia writes in this Wall Street Journal editorial that the policy makers who crafted the 1980 Refugee Act never imagined that within a generation the U.S. would be flooded with requests.
Thirteen students participating in the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program at Cornell traveled to Washington, D.C., June 28 to advocate for federal programs assisting first-generation and low-income college students.
As an aspiring public servant, Natalia Hernandez ’21 wanted an internship that would allow her to see how national higher education policies can affect students locally. Through a summer experience grant, Hernandez ‘21 is spending the summer working in Washington D.C. as a government relations and communications intern at the National Council of Higher Education Resources (NCHER).
Since she was a child, Margo Hittleman ’81, Ph.D. ’07, was encouraged to speak up and try to change things that she thought were unfair. Looking back, she says many of the things that bothered her most related to systemic social injustice and exclusion, and she wanted to do something about it.
Frontispiece of “Quasi Labor Intus: Ambiguity in Latin Literature,” created by Lucy Plowe B.F.A. '20 Legal capriciousness, or hog soup? The Latin “ius verrinum” could mean either, as the new volume “Quasi Labor Intus: Ambiguity in Latin Literature” explains.
by :
Melanie Lefkowitz
,
Cornell University Library
Newly digitized documents from the archives of the International Workers’ Order (IWO) and the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order – including three letters from artist Marc Chagall – cast light on the lives of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants in the United States during World War II and the Cold War.
Allen Porterie ‘20 is spending the summer at the University of Notre Dame, where he is exploring the performance of black masculinity in theatre. Porterie, an English major with a minor in theatre, is studying how actors and directors frame the black masculine body on stage. Porterie began this work last summer at Louisiana State University's Pre-Doctoral Scholars Institute with Angeletta Gourdine, an associate professor of English.
After studying the criminal justice system and hearing the experiences of incarcerated family and friends, Benjamin Finegan ‘19, a government major, decided to spend his summer interning at The Urban Justice Center for the Corrections Accountability project (CAP) in New York City.
