The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/category/science/)
Imagine running without being able to breathe. Sounds pretty terrible, right? Unfortunately, this is the reality that many horses suffer through. Seeking to solve this problem, Prof. Normand G. Ducharme, clinical sciences, has revitalized the equine industry with his work on respiratory illnesses in horses. Ducharme got involved with horse medicine when the success rate for helping race horses was low.
Cornell researchers discover protein regulating mechanism which could be the key to eventually treating over 30 percent of all human cancers. For more than three decades, mutant Ras proteins have been known to play a vital role in driving 95 percent of pancreatic cancers and 45 percent of colorectal cancers. With this in mind, Dr. Hui Jing and Dr. Xiaoyu Zhang, both former graduate students who worked under Professor Hening Lin, chemical biology, sought to learn more about the regulation of human cancers by studying K-Ras4a: one of the four members of the Ras protein family. In addition to studying K-Ras4a, Zhang and Lin studied SIRT2, which is another protein that has been closely implicated in aging related diseases. “In the basic research field, scientists still do not fully understand how SIRT2 promotes the formation of the certain types of cancers” said Zhang.
Meet Sawako Suzuki ’20, a student passionate about solving scientific problems outside the classroom. For some people running is a sport or a rigorous workout. For Suzuki, running is a medium for community engagement, research, philanthropy and healthcare. This summer, she will be running across the country as a fundraiser for youth cancer patients. The run is from San Francisco to Boston.
Dark green forests, blue skies, fresh water and sunny days are what make Ithaca ‘gorges.’ Unfortunately, this aesthetic is under attack by none other than the infamous Emerald Ash Borer. The EAB is an invasive beetle species which has destroyed ash trees across the country and its detection in Tompkins County is no surprise. The beetle was discovered in February in the Arnot Forest, which is Cornell’s largest teaching and research park at 4200 acres, by Mike Griggs, an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service at Cornell’s Robert W. Holley Center. While peacefully walking his dogs near the forest, Griggs was startled upon recognized deep “wood-peckering” or exposed inner bark on the ash trees, an innuendo for the malignant beetle. The woodpecker activity is a common symptom because the birds are attracted to the larva.
“Any person, … any study”: it is the phrase heard resounding across the Arts Quad as a backwards-walking tour guide shouts to a shuffling clump of wide-eyed high school students about Cornell’s history of inclusiveness. For Cornellians, the phrase is cliched, but beloved — seen running across the front of every brochure, every banner and every statue across campus. Ezra Cornell was progressive for his time and aimed to promote his institution’s role as a nondiscriminatory place of learning that is open to any student, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. Unbeknownst to Ezra Cornell, the age of the computer would take this inclusiveness to another level.
This past weekend, while the Cornell Campus shut down for an unprecedented snow day, the eHub on College Avenue hummed to life with an atmosphere of innovation and excitement. On Friday evening, students, mentors, and speakers, congregated in Collegetown to embark on the three-day enterprise that is the Cornell Health Hackathon. The Cornell Health Hackathon is an event that encourages students from a diverse background of degrees, majors, and schools to collaborate in teams and produce a viable solution to a relevant issue in the medical community. This year’s hackathon outlined two health-related problems for teams to tackle. The first challenge involved resolving the global antibacterial resistance crisis, the other, creating an easy to use sleep tracking program.
Interested in having your own startup? An Ithaca-based company with annual revenues of $20 million and subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Japan and Taiwan is here to give you the inspiration you need. Researchers and clinicians seek reliable quantitative data to make informed decisions about patients and experiments. Transonic Systems aids in this process by producing diagnostic and research measurement equipment. Cornelis J. Drost, CEO and president of Transonic Systems, discussed his inspiration behind creating the business.
Remember those rainy days in elementary school? Sitting in your assigned desk and staring at the clock, counting down the minutes until lunch. Suddenly, the door swings open and an assistant teacher wheels in the TV cart. The classroom instantly fills with excited chatter. The mood lifts.
Ever wondered how much spending is involved in research at Cornell? A Cornell Research report gives light on spending data from 2016-2017 school year. The report broke down spending into two main categories: organized research and departmental research. Organized research, as defined by the report, “represents the research efforts funded by sponsored programs and federal and NYS appropriations and internal solicitations, including formal cost sharing.”
Research that is funded by gifts to departments and with faculty research accounts falls under departmental research, according to the report. Organized research spending accounted for 83 percent of all research spending and $985.5 million was spent in total.
Popular legend claims that drinking from the fountain of youth will keep one’s body vigorous and vivacious for years to come. Prof. Sylvia Lee, molecular biology and genetics, may have discovered such an elixir in the soils of Ithaca. Her research indicates the secret of immortality may be hidden in the genome of a worm. Lee found that Caenorhabditis elegans, a common species of soil worm, has a very similar lifespan and reproductive pattern to humans, importantly sharing hallmark features of human aging. These similarities make C. elegans a premier experimental model to reveal the mysterious mechanisms of mortality in humans.
Chances are you know someone who’s mined bitcoin. However, cryptocurrencies are not everything they appear to be. Drawing the ire of governments and financial institutions alike, questions about its reliability are on the rise. Prof. Ari Juels, computer science at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech, discussed the impact, technology and regulatory environment of cryptocurrencies. Co-director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts — a collaboration between Cornell, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, based at Cornell Tech — Juels helps lead research on blockchain technology and its applications.
