In a world plagued by shortages of water, three facts stand out in an analysis by Cornell ecologists: Less than 1 percent of water on the planet is fresh water; agriculture in the United States consumes 80 percent of the available fresh water.
Neither increases in government subsidies to corn-based ethanol fuel nor hikes in the price of petroleum can overcome what one Cornell University agricultural scientist calls a fundamental input-yield problem: It takes more energy to make ethanol from grain than the combustion of ethanol produces.
"Human Natures: Genes, Culture and the Human Prospect" is the topic for Stanford University biologist Paul R. Ehrlich in a public lecture Wednesday, April 25, at 4:45 p.m. in Cornell's Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall.
A Cornell University research team has uncovered the mechanics of a critical reaction in the combustion of hydrogen that could have implications for the future of energy production.
Science-based information on the relationships between breast cancer and environmental risk factors -- including pesticides and diet – is offered at a Cornell University-based web site. In time for October's national Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the web site from the Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors in New York State has been expanded with several features.
Sixteen years of hard work and setbacks have taught Professor Emeritus Richard B. Fischer what it takes to make the bluebird of happiness happy: Location, location, location. And a few amenities.
Surveying aquatic life from the Great Lakes to small ponds, ecologists at Cornell and the Institute of Ecosystem Studies have found that food-chain length — the number of mouths food passes through on the way to the top predators — is determined by the size of an ecosystem, not by the amount of available food energy.
It's possible that one day all the cooling power of a noisy, bulky household refrigerator will be available on a small device that is lightweight and has no moving parts. And the same device, when given a heat source like a car's exhaust pipe, could be used to generate electricity.
When the going gets toxic, the hungry get clever - very quickly - say biologists from Cornell and Germany's Max Planck Institute für Limnology whose study of tough times in a German lake has shown that rapid evolution can influence the environmental effects of pollution.
As the world population passes the 6 billion mark, pioneering work to guarantee food sustainability continues at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. the largest not-for-profit organization dedicated to plant research in the world, celebrates its 75th anniversary.
Years from now, democratically determined population-control practices and sound resource-management policies could have the planet's 2 billion people thriving in harmony with the environment. Lacking these approaches, a new study suggests, 12 billion miserable humans will suffer a difficult life on Earth by the year 2100.
