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RESEARCH

The Humble Pig

Mark Essig’s Lesser Beasts: A Snout to Tail History of the Humble Pig is an ambitious, free-ranging book. It draws not only on history, but also on anthropology, folklore, paleontology, archeology, sociology, contemporary food studies, and probably a dozen other disciplines to weave a compelling narrative that, while centered on the pig, explores less tangible, heavier stuff such as faith, taste, ethics, and status.

PIONEER

The College Years of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a Founder of Queer Theory

A&S Communications

The advent of queer theory “caused a shock wave which has affected all intellectual disciplines,” as Didier Eribon, a leading French intellectual, once said. A look back at the undergraduate years of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘71, a founder of queer theory, reveals a unique glimpse of where that shock wave first began.

SOCIAL SCIENCE

Polls produced by students reveal shifting attitudes

Cornell Chronicle

Polls produced by Cornell students reveal shifting liberal attitudes.

AFRICANA

Examining black 'transness' through contemporary media

Cornell Chronicle

For C. Riley Snorton, assistant professor of Africana studies and of feminist, gender and sexuality studies in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, winning a coveted National Endowment for the Humanities-Schomburg Center Scholar-in-Residence fellowship is the chance of a lifetime. He will examine a topic that has intrigued him since college, when he first self-identified as a transgender person – and write a book about it.

MUSIC

Graduate student Tonia Ko composes a soaring career

Cornell Chronicle

Graduate student Tonia Ko’s career as a young composer and artist has hit a new level, with several recent international honors, concert commissions and performance premieres, including a piece performed on bubble wrap.Ko, 26, was one of nine recipients of the 63rd annual BMI Student Composer Awards, held May 18 in New York City. The winners ranged in age from 14 to 26.

BIOLOGY

3-D scans of mating fruit flies uncover female biology

Cornell Chronicle

Cornell researchers have used cutting-edge X-ray technology to noninvasively image fruit flies during and after mating.

OUTREACH

Elementary school students dig archaeology

A&S Communications

Lori Khatchadourian teaches the Exploring Archaeology mini-course at the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca.The week of June 15-19, professors Adam T. Smith, anthropology, and Lori Khatchadourian, Near Eastern studies, led a mini-course on archaeology at the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca. Nine children ages 5-8 spent five mornings exploring aspects of archaeological research.

LINGUISTICS

Asian, European languages not so different under the hood

Cornell Chronicle

Editors and other language mavens have long recognized that sentences containing subject relative clauses – as in, “The man who called the woman is friendly” – are easier to understand than those containing object relative clauses, such as, “The man who the woman called is friendly.” And indeed, this observation is borne out in laboratory experiments with French, English, German and many other European languages.

PSYCHOLOGY

Re-examining the 'first impressions' adage

Cornell Chronicle

What does it take to reverse a first impression? Cornell researchers were especially interested in implicit impressions – rapidly and uncontrollably activated positive and negative evaluations of others. Implicit impressions are assumed to be very difficult to revise.

STRATEGY

Rock-paper-scissors may explain evolutionary 'games' in nature

Science Magazine

The hand game “rock-paper-scissors” is a classic way to settle playground disputes, with rock smashing scissors, scissors cutting paper, and paper covering rock. But it turns out that nature plays its own versions of the game, and mathematicians and biologists have used it to study everything from human societies to bacteria in a petri dish.

GOVERNMENT

Flores-Macías studies Colombian security tax on country's elite

A&S Communications

Gustavo Flores-Macias, professor of government, has studied the Colombian security tax, a levy on the economically elite that finances public safety.Growing up in Latin America at a time of drastic economic reforms wasn’t easy, says Gustavo Flores-Macías.Those reforms included privatization, trade and financial liberalization, and the elimination or reduction of government subsidies, all of which carried what Flores-Macías refers to as “distributive consequences.”

ASTROBIOLOGY

Colorful life-form catalog helps discern if we’re alone

Cornell Chronicle

While looking for life on planets beyond our own solar system, a group of international scientists has created a colorful catalog containing reflection signatures of Earth life forms that might be found on planet surfaces throughout the cosmic hinterlands. The new database and research, published in the March 16 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), gives humans a better chance to learn if we are not alone.

EXOPLANETS

Finding infant Earths and potential life just got easier

A&S Communications

Among the billions and billions of stars in the sky, where should astronomers look for infant Earths where life might develop? New research from Cornell University’s Institute for Pale Blue Dots shows where – and when – infant Earths are most likely to be found. The paper by Blue Dots research associate Ramses M. Ramirez and director Lisa Kaltenegger, “The Habitable Zones of Pre-Main Sequence Stars,” is forthcoming in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

EXOPLANETS

Astronomers create array of Earth-like planet models

Cornell Chronicle

To sort out the biological intricacies of Earth-like planets, astronomers have developed computer models that examine how ultraviolet radiation from other planets’ nearby suns may affect those worlds, according to new research published June 10 in Astrophysical Journal.

Jewish Studies

Reunion panel examines future of Jewish studies

Cornell Chronicle

"This is an exciting moment for Jewish studies,” said Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, in her introduction to a Reunion Weekend panel on “Jewish Studies at Cornell, Today and Tomorrow,” held June 10 in the Physical Sciences Building.The panel included Jonathan Boyarin, Jewish Studies Program director, and Kim Haines-Eitzen, incoming director of the Religious Studies Program.