This year, the Nobel committee awarded the prize in physics to three scientists, including Arthur Ashkin for developing a technique for grabbing and studying microscopic objects, known as optical tweezers. Michelle Wang, physics professor at the College of Arts & Sciences uses optical tweezers to study the twisting motion of motor proteins.

The agreement will give Wisconsin and New York farmers greater access to new markets but may do little address the supply-and-demand issues driving down milk prices since 2014, according to Andrew Novakovic, director of land grant programs at Cornell University. "It's going to be a good thing for the U.S., but it isn't going to change the price forecast," Novakovic says.

“With Kavanaugh’s decision to kind of fight back on explicit partisan grounds, one consequence of that is it just drags the Supreme Court right into the center of a bitter partisan feud,” says Jens David Ohlin, vice dean and professor at Cornell Law School. “That’s not going to be good for the Supreme Court at all.”

Charles Whitehead, a professor at Cornell Law School, says it's possible that Musk reaches a settlement that allows him to take a lesser role – but remain at the company. "Why would the SEC want to harm the company more than the tweet itself? That would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

“We’re trying to figure out—with all the planets we’re finding—what are the signatures that could indicate habitability?” says Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy at the College of Arts & Sciences and director of the Carl Sagan Institute. As part of their work, Kaltenegger and Cornell’s Jack O’Malley-James wanted to find out how long the fingerprints of vegetation on Earth have been visible.

Using 3-D technology, doctors fitted a plate to Patches’ skull during an operation at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. Galina Hayes, an assistant professor of small animal surgery, took a leading role in the treatment in February.

Kate Manne, assistant professor of philosophy in the College of Arts & Sciences wrote an op-ed on the importance of listening to women in Ford’s position. “And so it goes: a woman speaks out against a privileged boy or powerful man only to face willful denial, moral indifference, and seething rage from many sources,” Manne says.

Michael Lynn, professor of food and beverage management at the Hotel School, describes three of the most significant factors that motivate people to tip as income, perceived level of fairness and avoiding feelings of guilt. The desire to avoid psychological distress makes many people to want to repay favors – in this case, hours of free entertainment.

“Methane is a critically important greenhouse gas that is more than 100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in its ability to trap heat,” says Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University. “Now is not the time to relax controls on methane emissions from industry.”

Cornell University sociology and law professor Ifeoma Ajunwa says she’s concerned about these tools’ potential for bias. Given the large scale of these automatic assessments, she believes potentially faulty algorithms could do more damage than one biased human manager. And she wants scientists to test if the algorithms are fair, transparent and accurate.

“American exporters now face a double whammy in terms of their competitiveness in the Chinese markets due to China’s retaliatory tariffs and the strengthening of the dollar,” says economist Eswar Prasad, a Dyson trade policy professor and former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division.

“Fraternities are the places where problematic and toxic masculinity is incubated,” says Andrew Moisey, a photographer and assistant professor and director of visual studies at Cornell. “We literally send our kids to be educated in places where they learn to be the opposite of gentleman. It’s mind-boggling.”