From analyzing how labor policies contributed to rapid economic growth in Europe in the 1950s to testing the therapeutic value of virtual reality technology, Cornell social science research projects are receiving assistance from the Institute for the Social Sciences’ (ISS) Small Grants Program.
“When the world turns to the normally bodacious problems we call ‘grave challenges,’ shouldn’t the perspectives of humanists and artists be included to enhance what is known and how it is known?”
In this spring’s Hans Bethe Lecture at Cornell, physicist Joshua Frieman will introduce the Dark Universe, give an overview of what we have learned about it, and describe new experiments and observatories that aim to illuminate its enigmas.
“Transforming Bodies,” an interdisciplinary conference April 21-22, will explore the centrality of bodies to concepts and practices of conversion in the early modern world.
Galactic hitchhikers take note: The restaurant at the end of the universe may be closer than we think. After probing data from NASA spacecraft Cassini’s flight through the watery plume of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, scientists from the Southwest Research Institute, Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab and Cornell confirm the presence of molecular hydrogen.
The experimental realization of ultrathin graphene – which earned two scientists from the University of Manchester, U.K., the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010 – has ushered in a new age in materials research.
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
For 30 years, the Latina/o Studies Program (LSP) has been a hub for research and community. To celebrate the anniversary, the program has launched the “Let’s Dream Together” crowdfunding campaign to raise $20,000 in support of LSP students.
As part of its ongoing effort to advance and disseminate knowledge on equality of opportunity, the Center for the Study of Inequality will host the “Social Mobility in an Unequal World: Evidence and Policy Solutions” conference April 20-22. The conference is free but RSVPs to inequality@cornell.edu are required.
Dan Cohen ’05, a producer whose latest projects include the Oscar-nominated sci-fi movie “Arrival” and the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things,” will talk with students about his career and screen one of his films along with the short film that inspired another during an April 21 visit to campus as the 2017 Arts & Sciences Career Development Center’s Munschauer Speaker.
Dawn Berry is a visiting scholar in the Department of History at Cornell, and former postdoctoral fellow in foreign policy, security studies, and diplomatic history at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.How did you become interested in foreign policy relating to the Arctic and Antarctic, and why are these regions important?
"Making the climate change issue more personal, rather than hammering a person with ‘facts,’ is our first step in getting acceptance of it as a global problem."
Students representing 11 startup companies with products ranging from organic skin care products to concussion detection devices pitched their businesses to a panel of judges March 20, vying for the 2017 Student Business of the Year, given by Entrepreneurship at Cornell.
For the second year in a row, Cornell University Press has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant worth nearly $100,000 to fund the open access initiative, Cornell Open.“This is exciting news for the press and for the university,” said Laura Spitz, Cornell’s vice provost for international affairs. “Open access to humanities scholarship aligns with the mission of a global and engaged Cornell.”
by :
Linda B. Glaser
,
Arts & Sciences Communications
For more than 25 years, the Department of Mathematics has been engaged in outreach and building solid partnerships with local teachers and schools, such as the annual T-shirt design contest held at Ithaca High School in honor of April's Math Awareness Month.
At Cornell, students take the opportunity to combine their interests in wide ranging areas of study. What they soon learn is that any combination of disciplines can forge a unique path of exploration and discovery.
Fuel cells convert energy cleanly and efficiently, but fabrication costs are prohibitive. This Cornell Research article talks about a breakthrough polymer invented at Cornell that could change that.
The old adage, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” has long fueled the parental drive for children to attend Ivy League schools. But it turns out where you went to school is less important than who else went to the same school – at least, if you’re in Congress.
The electron microscope, a powerful tool for science, just became even more powerful, with an improvement developed by Cornell physicists. Their electron microscope pixel array detector (EMPAD) yields not just an image, but a wealth of information about the electrons that create the image and, from that, more about the structure of the sample.
Three graduate students in the Department of Anthropology were recently named recipients of Engaged Graduate Student Grants for 2017. The grants were awarded to 16 graduate students across the Cornell community in various disciplines.
Kim Haines-Eitzen, professor of Near Eastern studies, recently wrote a piece on The Conversation website that discusses the origins of Christian celibacy.
New research by Judith Byfield, associate professor of history, offers a different lens through which to understand women’s political history in post-World War II Nigeria.
“Climate Change Awareness and Service Learning in the Mekong Delta” featured seven weeks of in-class preparation, two weeks in Vietnam, then another seven weeks back on campus.
CICER helps coordinate the efforts of scholars across campus and supports research to understand economic growth in China and its impact on the world economy.
When 18-year-old Aaron Yeiser was awarded second place honors – and $175,000 – in the national Regeneron Science Talent Search, no one was prouder than his mentor Alex Townsend, assistant professor of mathematics.
Individuals and corporations contribute more money to charitable organizations than they ever have before. Is this golden age of gift-giving a positive or negative force in modern culture?
Astronomy meets gastronomy: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew by and photographed a close-up of Saturn’s small moon Pan, never before seen in high resolution. Those images – as science hungered for joviality – revealed this moon looks like ravioli.
Poet Langston Hughes, courtesy Library of CongressJoanie Mackowski, associate professor of English, writes in this Time opinion piece that our country needs to support the National Endowment for the Arts not because of its financial benefits, though that's the argument some arts organizations are encouraging their constituents to use with members of Congress.
The world is full of languages and dialects—more than 7,000. Across these languages, many possible sounds can be combined into words. While there may be similarities in words between closely related languages, for years linguists have believed that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is completely arbitrary. Recently Morten H. Christiansen, Psychology, collaborated with fellow researchers to investigate whether that belief might need to be reappraised.
Cornell’s wide-ranging, interdisciplinary expertise in global sustainability issues will be front and center when the university hosts a conference about sustainability research, community engagement and opportunities for collaboration in Asia, April 6-7 in Hong Kong.
