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.
If Cornell University researchers and their colleagues have their way, cheetahs, lions, elephants, camels and other large wild animals may soon roam parts of North America. (Aug. 17, 2005)
David Macdonald, head of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University, will deliver a public lecture in April during his first visit to Cornell as an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large.
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.
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.
Scientists and engineers have waged a long war on the Eurasian watermilfoil, a non-indigenous water weed that diminishes swimming, boating and the environment. Using standard mechanical means of harvesting the milfoil, winning the war looked bleak, but environmentally friendly biological control may be the answer.
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.
Ray J. Wu, Cornell professor of molecular biology and genetics, who developed the first method for sequencing DNA and some of the fundamental tools for DNA cloning, died at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca Feb. 10.
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.