Chris Barrett's economic development research takes him into the most poverty-stricken areas of rural Africa, the halls of Washington, D.C., and back to Cornell University, where he collaborates with biophysical and social scientists on innovative ways to improve the lives of some of the poorest people on Earth.
Around the world, soil is being swept and washed away 10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished, destroying cropland the size of Indiana every year, reports a new Cornell University study.
Bird experts believed for years that once a bird learned songs, the calls stayed relatively fixed throughout their lives, but a new study of loons, streamlined fish-eating water birds, calls those beliefs into question. (March 7, 2006)
The Big Woods of Arkansas provides rare suitable habitat for the ivory-billed woodpecker, including old-growth forest that was decimated from the southern United States after the Civil War. (December 22, 2005)
On Dec. 12, officials from Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Nature Conservancy and other agencies held a press conference at a hunting lodge outside of Brinkley, Ark., to announce that a new search for the Ivory-billed woodpecker was now in full swing. (December 13, 2005)
Laurie Drinkwater of Cornell University is leading a $1.6 million, multi-institution National Science Foundation study to determine the correlation between biogeochemical processes in agriculture pollution and institutional responses to the problem. (December 13, 2005)
In the first study to test people who eat foods that have been bred for higher-than-normal concentrations of micronutrients, nutritional sciences professor Jere Haas and colleagues found that the iron status of women who ate iron-rich rice was 20 percent higher than those who ate traditional rice. (November 29, 2005)
Higher energy prices, which have been affecting Cornell since July, are expected to continue through the winter. Members of the Cornell community are asked to help out by saving electricity. (November 29, 2005)
