The Essentials

Former-Cornell-student-turned-hip-hop-artist Dylan Owen’s new video features lots of campus landmarks.

Maps are covering new ground in the digital age, and the University of Richmond recently launched the first interactive map of the end of U.S. slavery in the Civil War.

Visualizing Emancipation documents the path of the Union Army, legal boundaries and the spread of emancipation. Overlays and filters on the map highlight different people and events like fugitive slaves and the capture of troops, telling the stories of the men and women behind them.

Much of the map is based on digitized primary sources, such as letters, newspapers and diaries, many of which are pulled from Cornell University Library’s Making of America Collection.

Crowd-sourcing is a part of the map as well. Users can fill in new information using data mined from the library’s website or other reputable sources.

Humans domesticated dogs before any other animal. But today’s Western pets contain only a small fraction of dogs’ original genetic diversity.

Adam Boyko, a geneticist and assistant professor of biomedical sciences at the Vet College, is raising money to identify ancient genetic markers found in free-ranging “village” dogs – an intermediate between modern purebred dogs and wild canid species – in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo this summer.

“Due to their isolation these dogs offer our best hope of obtaining the pure genetic remnants of the first African dogs,” writes doctoral student (and Adam’s brother) Ryan Boyko. “Samples from these dogs, combined with the genes of dogs from isolated places across Asia, Europe and the Americas, will allow us to see which genes these diverse populations share that differ from wolves, pinpointing the genes related to domestication.”

Studying village dogs can improve dog and human health, the researchers say.

African-American Cornellians who broke new ground as scholars, advocates and professionals are featured in an online exhibition.

Portraits, action and candid photos of five Cornellians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are included in the slideshow. As students they studied biology, agriculture, veterinary medicine, and human ecology, and they paved the way for future African-American students in the sciences and at the university.

The shell of a red VW Beetle appeared today, Slope Day, on the roof of Risley Hall.

How the battered Bug got there is not known.

The story is reminiscent of another legendary Cornell prank.

Electrical engineering students Chuck Moyes and Mengxiang Jiang play Pong with their brainwaves in the video below.

Writes Engadget: “Their experiment links a baseball cap full of EEG-scanning electrodes to a computer, letting the cap wearer control a paddle using Alpha or Mu waves. Depending on the waves you use, you can move the paddle either by changing your concentration level or by thinking about moving your feet. You won’t rack up a high score while napping (or with a teammate narrating over your shoulder), but with a budget under $75, it’s hard to find fault.”

Cornell is listed among the nation’s greenest colleges in The Princeton Review’s Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2012 Edition:

Cornell University’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future brings together students, faculty and staff to “help advance multidisciplinary research and cultivate innovative collaborations within and beyond Cornell to foster a sustainable future for all.” The center provides seed grants for cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and supports strategic hiring of faculty focused on sustainability. Students can choose from over 300 courses and 28 majors to study sustainability in every college. Cornell is implementing a plan to be carbon neutral by 2050 and achieved a 25 percent carbon emissions reduction in 2010 when it ended the use of coal on campus. Another critical part of Cornell’s carbon reduction strategy is a $46 million investment in energy conservation initiatives. An award-winning Transportation Demand Management program provides free bus passes to freshman and staff, and offers incentives to use Ithaca Carshare, vanpools, public transportation and the new Big Red Bikes, bikeshare program. There are over 35 active green groups on campus to fill every niche, including Greeks Go Green, USGBC Students, Dilmun Hill Organic Farm, Kyoto NOW!, Engineers for a Sustainable World, Cornell Farmers Market and the Sustainable Enterprise Association. More than 63 percent of waste on campus is recycled or composted, including 823 tons of food from the dining halls. Cornell considers itself a caretaker of the natural environment. In total, the university manages 3,500 acres of biologically diverse natural land on and around its campus. The Ithaca campus currently has 8 LEED Gold buildings, and a policy for all new major construction to obtain LEED Silver and 30 percent more energy efficient than national standards.

Cornell and its natural surroundings inspire a startling number of writers, and a new exhibit in Olin Library celebrates the work of poets who have taught or studied far above Cayuga’s waters.

The display, curated by poet and librarian Fred Muratori, features six Cornell poets, from A.R. Ammons to Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, whose work has garnered substantial recognition among critics and peers.

Each poet is represented through a poem that takes the Cornell campus or its natural surroundings as a vantage point from which to examine the outer and the inner life, mapping the metaphysical borderland that merges personal experience with human consciousness.

The selection samples a half-century of writing, from the 1950s to the present. Stop by Olin’s first-floor lobby to take a look.

The steel bridge and concrete canoe civil engineering student teams received high marks at their respective intercollegiate competitions, which were part of the American Society of Civil Engineers regional meeting at Clarkson University, April 19-21. The steel bridge team placed third overall, and the concrete canoe team placed fourth overall.

Watch a time lapse of the steel bridge team assembling their structure.

Five Cornell professors have been named to “The Best 300 Professors.” The book takes data from RateMyProfessors.com, a website on which students rank professors on helpfulness, clarity, easiness and “hotness.”

“The professors in the book are not ranked (nor are their colleges ranked in this book) but each professor profiled received high ratings from their most important audiences, beneficiaries and critics: the students they teach and inspire,” writes the publisher.

Cornell winners are Gerald Feigenson, professor of molecular biology and genetics; Karl J. Niklas, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Biology; Cindy Van Es, senior lecturer in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management; George Hudler, professor of plant pathology and plant-microbe biology; and Shalom Shoer, senior lecturer in Near Eastern studies.