The Titans of Anabel Taylor Chapel: Richards, Yearsley and the Baroque Organ

Last fall, I had the pleasure of taking David Yearsley’s course on Music Journalism. Within discussions of style, diction and structure, Yearsley’s classes taught close analysis of journalistic delivery and choice of words. Unlike most of my English classes, where professors struggle to hook the attention of non-majors and majors alike, Yearsley pulls his students’ personalities into the class, creating a parallel between our learning of a journalist’s writing, character and opinion in the context of our own work. 

In the fall, we each wrote nine articles, including a book review and an obituary. For my live music review, I chose to attend my first organ concert, a part of the Midday Music concert series, where I saw Yearsley’s partner, Annette Richards, perform a series of enchanting Bach pieces in Anabel Taylor Chapel. Writing about music I was so unfamiliar with should have been challenging, but because of the way the class had sharpened my writing skills, it flowed with the magic that the Bach scores had borne in the space.

3D Printed Artificial Small Intestine to Advance Research on Gut Bacteria

What ingredients would you need to recreate the organ that enables you to digest your salad? According to Prof. John March, biological and environmental engineering, a 3-D printer would suffice. Together with researchers from his lab, March used 3-D printing technology to create a microscopic artificial small intestine. Unlike previous attempts, the Cornell device recreates the natural contraction and relaxation of muscles — peristalsis — in the small intestine. Without this fundamental feature, researchers have been unable to completely understand the biology that underlies the working of the organ.