Hirokazu Miyazaki doesn’t usually get his research ideas from his son. But last year, after reading a children’s book about an exchange of dolls among Japanese and American schoolchildren in the 1920s, then-10-year-old Xavier asked his father to investigate.
This is an episode in the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast from Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences, showcasing the newest thinking from across the disciplines about what it means to be human in the twenty-first century.
For three decades, astronomers thought that only Saturn’s moon Janus confined the planet’s A ring – the largest and farthest of the visible rings. But after poring over NASA’s Cassini mission data, Cornell astronomers now conclude that the teamwork of seven moons keeps this ring corralled.
Radio producers Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett, co-creators of the 90-second NPR radio show, “The World According to Sound,” will be on campus to offer a presentation at 7 p.m., Oct. 25 in the Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium in Klarman Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
An Oct. 20 lecture will kick off a new series on language and inequality co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Inequality and the departments of linguistics and sociology.
A cellular biology “mystery” is closer to being solved, thanks to sleuthing in the lab of Jeremy Baskin, assistant professor and Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology.
A group led by Rob Shepherd, assistant professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is using the cephalopod as inspiration for a method to morph flat surfaces into three-dimensional ones on demand.
Sodalicium Loquentium Latine, Cornell’s new spoken latin club, held their inaugural meeting in September, bringing together individuals interested in learning and practicing speaking Latin. They discussed Ovid’s “Amores” in Latin and English.
On Oct. 20-21, Cornell will host a trans-disciplinary workshop on apes, language and communication, “The Eloquence of the Apes,” featuring renowned primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Cornell researchers across multiple disciplines.
Richard Thaler, professor of economics at Cornell for nearly two decades, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Oct. 9 for work he began at Cornell.
Joining the Cornell faculty in 1978, Thaler was a young assistant professor who had decided to try to make a go of research on a new scholarly concept, behavioral economics, that married psychology and economics. He went looking for a job that would allow him to pursue it.
What began as a Twitter joke between two researchers has turned into a four-year, $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant to take 3-D digital scans of 20,000 museum vertebrate specimens and make them available to everyone online.
Cornell’s Museum of Vertebrates, with 1.3 million fish specimens, 27,000 reptiles and amphibians (called herps), and 57,000 bird and 23,000 mammal specimens, is one of 16 institutions involved and promises to feature prominently in the project.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, will deliver this year’s Reuben A. and Cheryl Casselberry Munday Distinguished Lecture.
His talk, “A Revitalized Black Public Sphere and the Future of American Democracy,” will take place at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 19 at the Africana Studies and Research Center.
Concentration camps existed before World War II and still exist, as Andrea Pitzer will explore in her Oct. 17 lecture, “Harbingers and Echoes of the Shoah.”
In the spirit of the ancient bards, Joe Goodkin will perform an original musical adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey for solo acoustic guitar and voice on Oct. 24 in Klarman Hall, KG70, at 5 pm.
his is an episode in the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast from Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences, showcasing the newest thinking from across the disciplines about what it means to be human in the twenty-first century.
Screenwriter Chase Palmer met with students Sept. 21 as part of the Professional Directions Series hosted by Austin Bunn, associate professor in the the Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA) and talked about the importance of networking and taking the time to write.
How many people can say they can speak Latin? Erchen “Erial” Zheng ‘18, a senior classics major with a minor in history, is part of the growing number of scholars invested in learning Latin as a living language.
“I started learning Latin in high school,” Zheng said, “but I think my love for the classical world began much earlier when I was in the third grade. It started with Greek myth and then from there my interest grew bigger and bigger.”
Dan McCall, a beloved Cornell professor of American studies and creative writing, passed away in 2012, but his son Steven has just published his father’s memoir, “Boy on a Unicycle,” and will visit for a reading Oct. 23.
As a math major with a concentration in computer science, one might assume that on paper, Beatrice Jin ’18, would be more inclined to pursue purely technical fields rather than the humanities. Jin, however, who hails from the suburbs of Chicago, has had a consistent passion for art and visual design in addition to math and science.
Fifteen Cornell student delegates, including six from Arts & Sciences, worked on solutions to world problems in fields such as education and health care.
Hart '63 said her Cornell experience taught her confidence and persistence, which served her well as she fought to establish the Women's Rights National Historical Park.
Award-winning novelist and educator Marlon James will read from his work on Oct. 12 at 4:30 p.m. at the Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium in Klarman Hall, as the fourth installment of the Fall 2017 Barbara and David Zalaznick Reading Series.
At the height of the Great Recession, psychologist Amy Krosch noticed that people of color seemed to be getting much harder hit than the white population on a number of socioeconomic indicators.
Saida Hodžić, associate professor of anthropology and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, was awarded the 2017 Michelle Z. Rosaldo Prize for her book, “The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs.”
Professors are using active learning, peer-assisted workshops and practice tests to help students succeed in what can be one of the most challenging first-year classes.
Ever since the invention of the laser more than 50 years ago, scientists have been striving to create an X-ray version. But until recently, very high power levels were needed to make an X-ray laser. Making a practical, tabletop-scale X-ray laser source required taking a new approach, as will be described by physicist Margaret Murnane in this fall’s Hans Bethe Lecture.
by :
Hirokazu Miyazaki
,
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
Hirokazu Miyazaki, professor of anthropology, penned an essay for the Democrat and Chronicle, in honor of an exhibition of Japanese dolls taking place a the Rochester Museum and Science Center on September 30th.
On Sept. 27, a forum in downtown Ithaca with faculty, staff, and partners offered stories of experiences and answered questions about implementing community-engaged initiatives.
The 2017-18 Environmental Humanities Lecture Series will bring to campus four pioneering scholars in the environmental humanities, beginning with Heidi Hutner (Stony Brook University).
Mathematician Moon Duchin of Tufts University will discuss how mathematicians can make meaningful interventions in the redistricting process in this year’s Kieval Lecture, “Political geometry: Mathematical interventions in gerrymandering,” on Thursday, October 5, 4:00 pm in Martha Van Renssalaer Hall G71
Walk into the lab section of any science course and you’ll see students busy with beakers, microscopes, calculators and more. But what’s really going on in their minds?
Graduate students Thomas Davidson and Julius Lagodny report on their research into social media use by Alternative for Germany (AfD)in this Washington Post opinion piece.
The pair, who are studying in the fields of sociology and government, undertook the project to determine whether the party's social media use helped it to win 12.6 percent of seats in Germany's recent parliamentary elections, a number that surprised many.
In her recently published chapbook, "Chinatown Sonnets,” Dorothy Chan ‘12 reflects on her experiences growing up and the influence she felt from Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood, nearby her hometown, and Chinatowns all over the world.
The Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) is supporting 35 projects that will be presented on campus this academic year. Through its Individual Grant Program, the CCA awarded 15 grants of $2,500 each to Cornell faculty, departments and programs, and 20 grants of $1,000 each to undergraduate and graduate students and student organizations. Recipients were selected by a panel of faculty in the arts.
Five New York companies have been awarded funding through the Cornell Center for Materials Research JumpStart program, which is supported by Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation.
The Cornell Center for Materials Research – which through research and education is enhancing national capabilities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and materials research at all levels – has been has been granted $23.2 million for the next six years from the National Science Foundation.
