Cornell University
"Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" Zoologist Konrad Lorenz once asked in postulating the "butterfly effect," the idea that the flapping of fragile wings could start a chain reaction in the atmosphere. In today's world of the Internet the question might be rephrased: Can a single e-mail from Brazil set off a torrent of action in Texas? Sociologists postulate that what a few influential leaders think and say can spread and grow and bring about big changes in the thinking of large numbers of people. But how do you find those influential people? Computer scientists at Cornell University have some suggestions. Their ideas could be applied to such diverse goals as selling a new product, promoting new agricultural techniques in developing countries, predicting the spread of a disease or identifying leaders of terrorist organizations.
Nearly 99 percent alike in genetic makeup, chimpanzees and humans might be even more similar were it not for what researchers call "lifestyle" changes in the 6 million years that separate us from a common ancestor. Specifically, two key differences are how humans and chimps perceive smells and what we eat.
An instrument aboard NASA?s recently launched orbiting infrared observatory has found evidence of organic molecules in an enormously powerful galaxy some 3.25 billion light years from the Earth. So powerful is the source, that it is equal to 10 trillion times the luminosity of the sun, making it one of the brightest galaxies ever detected.
People with the autoimmune disease lupus may develop carotid atherosclerosis (the buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries) at an accelerated rate and independently of many risk factors normally associated with cardiovascular disease, according to a new study supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health. The work was reported in the December 18 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
There's sweet news about hot cocoa: Researchers at Cornell University have shown that the popular winter beverage contains more antioxidants per cup than a similar serving of red wine or tea and may be a healthier choice. The study adds to growing evidence of the health benefits of cocoa and points to a tasty alternative in the quest to maintain a diet rich in healthy antioxidants, chemicals that have been shown to fight cancer, heart disease and aging, the researchers say.
The complete genome sequence of a leading bacterial plant pathogen offers new ways to stave off agricultural loss and perhaps foil animal or human infection, says a Cornell University researcher.
In the fishbowl of life, when hordes of well-fed predators drive their prey to the brink of extinction, sometimes evolution takes the fast track to help the hunted survive -- and then thrive to outnumber their predators. This rapid evolution, predicted by Cornell University biologists in computer models and demonstrated with Pac-Man-like creatures and their algae food in laboratory habitats called chemostats, could play an important role in the ecological dynamics of many predator-prey systems.
About 90 percent of child deaths worldwide occur in just 42 countries -- and about one-fourth of these deaths occur before age 5 in the poorest countries, such as Angola and Niger. Yet, 8 million of the 11 million childhood deaths worldwide each year could easily be prevented, says a Cornell University expert, writing in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet . That's because almost 60 percent of deaths of children under 5 in the developing world are due to malnutrition and its interactive effects on preventable diseases.
A new study suggests that lead may be harmful even at very low blood concentrations. The study, funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, will appear in the April 17 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. The five-year study found that children who have blood lead concentration lower than 10 micrograms per deciliter suffer intellectual impairment from the exposure.
The fouling of ships' hulls, whether by barnacles and seaweed or by slime-creating bacteria, is a major problem for shipping worldwide, and particularly for navies. It has been estimated, for example, that fouling of hulls can create such turbulence as a ship moves through the water that fuel consumption is increased by as much as 30 percent. Traditionally major users of ships, like the U.S. Navy, have attempted to resist fouling by painting hulls with paints containing copper or triorganotin, a tin-based compound. But these paints are highly toxic and can leach into the water, killing marine life. That's why their use increasingly is being prohibited. But help is at hand: A research group at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., led by Christopher Ober, has developed two types of non-toxic paint, one hydrophilic and one hydrophobic, that effectively prevent fouling, whether by bacteria or barnacles. The paints act not only by minimizing adhesion by organisms but also by enabling hulls to become self-cleaning: As a ship moves through the water at 10 to 15 knots, the turbulence created removes the clinging barnacle or seaweed.
Finding an economical way to make a polyester commonly found in many types of bacteria into a plastic with uses ranging from packaging to biomedical devices is a long-held scientific goal. Such a polymer would be a "green" plastic, in that it would be biodegradable. Geoffrey Coates, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., has partially achieved this goal by discovering a highly efficient chemical route for the synthesis of the polymer, known as poly(beta-hydroxybutyrate) or PHB. The thermoplastic polyester is widely found in nature, particularly in some bacteria, where it is formed as intracellular deposits and used as a storage form of carbon and energy. And yet it shares many of the physical and mechanical properties of petroleum-based polypropylene, with the added benefit of being biodegradable.
What do flocks of birds, traffic jams, fads, drinking games, forest fires and residential segregation have in common? The answer could come from a new computational research method called agent-based modeling. Michael Macy, a sociologist at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., is using this powerful new tool to look for elementary principles of self-organization that might shed new light on long-standing puzzles about how humans interact. A professor and chair of Cornell's Department of Sociology, Macy will speak Feb. 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver in a symposium, "Artificial Agent Societies: A Computational Future for the Social Sciences."
The Tragedy of the Commons , as explained by Garrett Harding in his classic 1968 book, is that self-interest can deplete a common resource. It seems this also applies to the Internet and other computer networks, which are slowed by those who hurry the most. Fortunately, say computer scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. , there is a limit to how bad the slowdown can get. And after developing tools to measure how much the performance of a particular network suffers, they say, the way to get improved performance on the Internet is the same as the way to maintain air and water quality: altruism helps.
The same antioxidant compounds in dark grape juice that are noted for their health benefits in fighting heart disease may have a downside, according to new research in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. In cell studies, scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Cornell University found that polyphenols in purple (also called red) grape juice can inhibit the uptake of iron, which could increase the risk of iron-deficiency anemia.
Researchers have found that the electrical properties of the semiconductor indium nitride are different from what been previously thought -- by a wide margin. The result is that an alloy incorporating the material can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight -- from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet -- to electrical current. "It's as if nature designed this material on purpose to match the solar spectrum," said one researcher involved.
