<p>Forget those shepherding moons. Gravity and the odd shapes of asteroid Chariklo and dwarf planet Haumea – small objects deep in our solar system – can be credited for forming and maintaining their own rings, according new research in Nature Astronomy.</p>
<p>When rains fell on the arid Atacama Desert, it was reasonable to expect floral blooms to follow. Instead, the water brought death.</p><p>An international team of planetary astrobiologists has found that after encountering never-before-seen rainfall three years ago at the arid core of Peru’s Atacama Desert, the heavy precipitation wiped out most of the microbes that had lived there.</p>
<p>After a half-century singing songs you know, the Cornell Hangovers offer a harmonic convergence to celebrate their golden anniversary. The group’s <a href="https://baileytickets.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?id=1309&p=1">Fall Tonic concert</a> will be Nov. 10 at 8 p.m. at Bailey Hall</p>
The Cornell University Glee Club, the university’s oldest, continuously operating student organization, will celebrate its sesquicentennial with a free concert. The group will sing pieces from different eras Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. in Sage Chapel. The event is open to the public.
<p>For couples hoping for a baby via in vitro fertilization, chances have improved. A process that once took hours now takes minutes: Cornell scientists have created a microfluidic device that quickly corrals strong and speedy sperm viable for fertilization.</p><p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.cornell.edu/video/corralling-sperm-speeds-ivf-process/embed" title="CornellCast video" width="560"></iframe></p>
Robert A. Plane, a professor emeritus of chemistry who served as the university’s eighth provost during the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s, later becoming an innovative Finger Lakes vintner, died Aug. 6 at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
<p>To root out the scientific complexities between nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria and its close alliance with plants, the National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.1 million Dimensions of Biodiversity grant to the Cornell-affiliated Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI). Unlocking the genetic and ecological detail behind this symbiotic relationship may help reduce agricultural dependence on synthetic fertilizer.</p>
<p>In an era that swirls with government distrust, national political cynicism and questions of character among authorities, public service can rescue us, said New York State Supreme Court Justice Debra James ’75, J.D. ’78, at the June 8 Olin Lecture in Bailey Hall during Reunion Weekend.</p>
<p>For Gabriela Matos-Ortiz, scientific knowledge leapt from the pages of biology textbooks into reality.</p><p>Matos-Ortiz arrived from hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico to a snow-covered Ithaca in January, but soon warmed to the idea of shadowing other students in the laboratory – thanks to an opportunity from the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board’s (CURB) mentorship program.</p>
Cheers of encouragement, heartfelt love and exuberance punctuated each award presented at the annual Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives’ (OADI) Honors ceremony May 4, at the Statler Hotel ballroom.
Among other important milestones, students in the popular class learn how Slope Day and Dragon Day originated; what Collegetown once looked like and why Day Hall creek is called Wee Stinky Glen.
<p>An international group of astronomers has found that the Cornell-discovered fast radio burst FRB 121102 – a brief, gigantic pulse of radio waves from 3 billion light years away – passes through a veil of magnetized plasma. This causes the cosmic blasts to “shout and twist,” which will help the scientists determine the source.</p><p>The research is featured on the cover of Nature, Jan. 11.</p>
Representing global youth constituencies at the high-level segment at the Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, Nov. 6-17, Cornell students delivered a strong statement to the convention delegates as they negotiated and wrestled with climate change.
<div><div><p>Cornell’s <a href="http://www.mcgoverncenter.cornell.edu/">Kevin M. McGovern Family Center for Venture Development in the Life Sciences</a> business incubator graduated three companies at a ceremony in Weill Hall Nov. 13. Embark, Lionano and Sterifre Medical join the McGovern Center’s previous two graduates, Agronomic Technology Corp. and ArcScan.</p></div></div>
<p>Four decades after NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, about 800 Cornellians gathered at Bailey Hall Oct. 19 to celebrate the unprecedented mission, its famous Golden Record and the university’s role in the mission.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>After 360 engine burns, 2.5 million executed commands, 635 gigabytes of gathered data, 162 moon flybys, 4.9 billion miles traveled and 3,948 published papers, NASA’s 20-year Cassini spacecraft ran the last lap of its historic scientific mission Sept. 15.</p>
On the eve of fall semester classes starting, Cornellians spied the sky – with special safety glasses – to view the partial solar eclipse Aug. 21 over Ithaca.
<p>Give your medicine a jolt. By using a technique that combines electricity and chemistry, future pharmaceuticals – including many of the top prescribed medications in the United States – soon may be easily scaled up to be manufactured in a more sustainable way. This new Cornell research appears in Science Aug. 11.</p>
<p>Cornell chemists have uncovered a fresh role for nitric oxide that could send biochemical textbooks back for revision.</p><p>They have identified a critical step in the nitrification process, which is partly responsible for agricultural emissions of harmful nitrous oxide and its chemical cousins into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change.</p>
<p>Cornell astronomers gathered atop Mount Pleasant at sunset June 25 to honor one of their own. The 25-inch reflecting telescope at the university’s Hartung-Boothroyd Observatory was named in memory of the <a href="http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/10/noted-astronomer-james-houck-dies-74">late James R. Houck</a>.</p>
<p>Disappearing ozone, rising seas and a world of environmental strife have forced all of the globe’s citizens to great underground cities – powered by renewable energy. It’s quite the fictional vision.</p><p>For Cornell’s 2017 Imagining Energy Futures: Undergraduate Science, Art and Design competition, the fictional short story “Underground: Project Gaia” by Reade Otto-Moudry ’17, Kayla Aulenbach ‘19 and Ashley Herzig ’18 won the $500 top prize.</p>
<p>Enceladus – a large icy, oceanic moon of Saturn – may have flipped, the possible victim of an out-of-this-world wallop.</p><p>While combing through data collected by NASA's Cassini mission during flybys of Enceladus, astronomers from Cornell, the University of Texas and NASA have found the first evidence that the moon’s axis has reoriented, according to new research published in Icarus.</p>
<p>Lord Martin Rees, who has probed deep into the cosmos, studied gamma-ray bursts and galactic formations, spoke May 8 at Cornell’s David L. Call Alumni Auditorium on issues closer to home: the preservation of our “pale blue dot.”</p>
<p>More than 80 students unveiled their scholarly work at the 32nd annual Spring Research Forum hosted April 27 by the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board (CURB).</p>
The Rawlings scholars program, which features a wide range of undergraduate research, provides significant support to students who have strong academic potential and intellectual curiosity.
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.
"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."
<div id="main"><div><p>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.</p></div></div>
<p>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.</p>
<p><a href="http://government.cornell.edu/theodore-lowi">Theodore Jay Lowi</a>, the charismatic Cornell professor of government whose dream of an undergraduate program in Washington became reality and whose seminal books – “The End of Liberalism,” “American Government” and “American Political Thought: A Norton Anthology” (co-edited with <a href="http://government.cornell.edu/isaac-kramnick">Isaac Kramnick</a>) – became standards in political science discourse, died Feb. 17 in Ithaca, New York.</p>
<p>Many of the vintage observatory instruments were collected in the 19th century by Estevan Fuertes, founding dean of Cornell’s civil engineering department.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13.5135px; line-height: 21.6216px;">Forget Rome. Ignore Madrid. Overlook tropical islands. Cash in your frequent flier miles and book a cruise to far-flung, exotic exoplanets.</span></p>
<p>Klarman Hall – the College of Arts and Sciences’ light-filled humanities building that opened last semester – was certified LEED Platinum July 29.</p><p>The U.S. Green Building Council, which certifies LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) structures, awarded the university 87 out of 110 points, the highest total Cornell has ever received.</p>
<p>NASA’s Cassini and Huygen’s missions have provided a wealth of data about chemical elements found on Saturn’s moon Titan, and Cornell scientists have uncovered a chemical trail that suggests prebiotic conditions may exist there.</p>
<p>If you’re expecting to hear from aliens from across the universe, it could be a while.</p><p>Deconstructing the Fermi paradox and pairing it with the mediocrity principle into a fresh equation, Cornell astronomers say extraterrestrials likely won’t phone home – or Earth – for 1,500 years.</p>
<p>Cornell’s <a href="https://www.acsf.cornell.edu/">Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future</a>(ACSF) has given $1.5 million from its Academic Venture Fund to a record 14 new university projects. This marks the third consecutive year ACSF has granted more than $1 million.</p>
<p>In the face of scientific dogma that faults the population decline of monarch butterflies on a lack of milkweed, herbicides and genetically modified crops, a new Cornell study casts wider blame: sparse autumnal nectar sources, weather and habitat fragmentation.</p>
<p>The geologic shape of what were once shorelines through Mars’ northern plains convinces scientists that two large meteorites – hitting the planet millions of years apart – triggered a pair of mega-tsunamis. These gigantic waves forever scarred the Martian landscape and yielded evidence of cold, salty oceans conducive to sustaining life.</p>
<p>Searching vast cosmic communities like real estate agents rifling through listings, Cornell astronomers now hunt through time and space for habitable exoplanets – planets beyond our own solar system – looking at planets flourishing in old star, red giant neighborhoods.</p><p>Astronomers search for these promising worlds by looking for the “habitable zone,” the region around a star in which water on a planet’s surface is liquid and signs of life can be remotely detected by telescopes.</p>
