“This year really stands out to me as interesting, because everything is so patchy,” says Taryn Bauerle, a plant science professor at Cornell University. “Some trees are green and some are not. It’s really kind of a wildcard. We’ve had some crazy weather and it’s making all kinds of repercussions in the ecology of animals and plants.”

Foreign capital can also be overrated as a source of growth. Emerging economies benefit from it only after they pass a certain threshold of institutional quality, suggests research Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Dyson. 

Studies by Alexander Colvin, interim dean and professor at the ILR School, have found that, in arbitration, “employers get better results and lower chances of really large damage awards” to plaintiffs. “One of the biggest motivating factors for employers is avoiding big jury awards,” Colvin says.

A team of researchers at Cornell University, including Lab of Ornithology research associate Aaron Rice and technician Kristin Hodge, found that dolphins in the Western North Atlantic modified their whistle calls in response to high noise levels caused by ships, possibly hindering their ability to talk to each other.

A paper released last month, co-authored by Michael Lovenheim, associate professor of policy analysis and management at the College of Human Ecology, found that students have worse job outcomes and increased risk of defaulting on student loans when they attend for-profit institutions.

Op-ed from Amanda Rodewald, a professor and senior director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Of course, barley — let alone beer — is among the least of our worries when it comes to climate change. Nevertheless, the new research underscores how far-reaching, and sometimes surprising, the consequences might be,” Rodewald says.

Op-ed from Adam Anderson and Eve De Rosa, co-directors of the Affect & Cognition Lab in the Department of Human Development and Human Neuroscience Institute at Cornell University. They says, “With the unemployment rate lower than it's been in 18 years, most Americans are hard at work, yet they still have a paucity of savings.”

Retail giant Sears has filed for bankruptcy. Louis Hyman, an associate professor at ILR and director for the Institute for Workplace Studies, reflects with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on the impact the Sears catalog had for African-Americans during the Jim Crow era

“You can certainly tell a story of competitive harm if you find examples of driving out competition and stifling innovation,” says Justin Johnson, an economics professor at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. “If you're going to introduce new regulations and levy fines, I'd hope there would be some evidence of consumer harm and not just a bunch of unhappy merchants.”

David Lodge, director of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, wrote an op-ed about the impact hurricanes such as Michael and Florence have on the “haves” and the “have nots” and policy changes that can limit the disparity.

Dr. Ronald Adelman, co-chief of geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, developed this annual program — which includes a theater piece and is required for all second-year students — after he realized that medical students were getting a distorted view of older adults. “Unfortunately, most education takes place within the hospital,” he says. “If you’re only seeing the hospitalized elderly, you’re seeing the debilitated, the physically deteriorating, the demented. It’s easy to pick up ageist stereotypes.”

Companies including Even, Stripe and Green Dot are helping lower- and middle-income earners avoid predatory lenders, says Louis Hyman, a historian of work and business and a professor at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “The speed of the pay cycle is one of the things that could help working Americans avoid debt.”