It's all well and good to discuss the importance of the humanities and their place in the scheme of things. But exactly what are the humanities? If you find yourself bereft of a ready answer, you're in pretty good company. Many humanist scholars themselves are unsure of the mix. The humanities are not a unified domain but represent a broad range of disciplines loosely classed under the rubric "liberal arts."
Two dozen scholars and academic administrators launched a new initiative in the humanities on campus with a round-table conversation, "The Humanities at Cornell and Beyond," in Sibley Hall May 9. Led by Provost Biddy Martin, the collective self-examination marked the latest effort at Cornell to address what some academics have framed as a "crisis in the humanities."
Much of our electronics could soon be replaced by photonics, in which beams of light flitting through microscopic channels on a silicon chip replace electrons in wires. Photonic chips would carry more data, use less power and work smoothly with fiber-optic communications systems. The trick is to get electronics and photonics to talk to each other. Now Cornell researchers have taken a major step forward in bridging this communication gap by developing a silicon device that allows an electrical signal to modulate a beam of light on a micrometer scale.
Suppose the computer from the starship Enterprise or the HAL 9000 from "2001, A Space Odyssey" had been scanning intelligence data four years ago. Perhaps it would have made the connection humans missed between terrorists and flight schools.
Kimberly Taylor, J.D. '05, can barely remember a time when she wasn't planning to become a lawyer. "My father is an attorney, [so] the legal profession always seemed like a natural career path for me," she explained. Judging by her performance as a student at Cornell's Law School, it looks like she was right. Born and raised in Hawaii, Taylor attended Yale University, where she received a bachelor's degree in political science. She also served as Yale student body president and was an active member of Yale's Mock Trial and International Relations associations.
Through the combined efforts of East Hill area residents and Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) management staff, TCAT's Route 93, a Cornell nighttime service route, will continue to operate through the summer months. The service will run Monday through Saturday nights, using the current bus schedule. Route 86 will be eliminated as of May 31.
Cornell researchers think they understand the mechanism that several bird species use to bias the sex ratios of their offspring toward female. By experimenting with domestic chickens, they have determined that the presence of higher-than-normal levels of the hormone progesterone during the first meiosis produces significantly more females.
The 2005 conference of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) will take place Sunday and Monday, May 22 and 23, on campus. Its title and theme is "Assessing Public Higher Education at the Start of the 21st Century." The presentations are free and open to the public.
A Cornell researcher has won a prestigious Burroughs-Wellcome Fund Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award, given to a young researcher whose work focuses primarily on the interaction of pathogens with their human hosts. John Parker, assistant professor with the Baker Institute for Animal Health in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, won one of the 11 awards given this year.
On three evenings last week, when most students were cramming for exams and writing papers, a handful came together to raise awareness about the slaughter of innocent civilians in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where genocide on the scale of that in Rwanda 10 years ago is taking place. Sponsored by the Darfur Action Group, a student group on campus, "Documenting Darfur" featured back-to-back three-hour showings of films and videos about the tragedy, on May 9, 10 and 11 in 165 McGraw Hall.
Salah Hassan has been appointed to a five-year term as director of Cornell's Africana Studies and Research Center effective July 1, the Office of the Provost announced May 12. Hassan, chair of the Department of History of Art and associate professor of African and African Diaspora art history and visual culture, has served as the center's acting director for two years, overseeing the renovation and expansion of the facility that was celebrated with a formal dedication ceremony April 29.
