The Essentials

Engineering grad students Marc Vaz, Sandeep Gangundi and Xiya Wang created “Air Driano,” which can be seen today at the student exhibition BOOM‪. They turned a Papa John’s pizza box into a musical instrument that’s part piano, part drum, on which they play The Eagles’ “Hotel California” in the video below.

Cornell Plantations and the Department of Natural Resources will present a workshop to train volunteers to identify and report new hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae).

This newly arrived invasive insect pest threatens eastern hemlock trees and the biodiversity they support, causing environmental changes for some amphibians, fish, invertebrates and plants in response to the increased light and warmer temperatures.

Hemlock woolly adelgids were first reported in the central Finger Lakes region in mid-2008, but now inhabit at least 30 sites. Early detection of new sites is a high priority, and conservation groups are organizing volunteer surveys as a critical first step in managing this devastating invasive species.

The workshops will feature a presentation on the adelgid’s biology and the threat it poses to local hemlock forests. Participants will visit Beebe Lake to observe hemlock woolly adelgids first-hand and gain experience in detection, monitoring and reporting protocols, and have the opportunity to volunteer in the “Adopt-a-Hemlock” program to conduct surveys and report new infestations in hemlock forests.

The workshop will be held on Saturday, March 10 from 9 – 11 a.m. at Plantations’ Lewis Education Building in the Botanical Garden.

Pre-registration is not required.

Visit Cornell’s iTunes U page for free lectures on a gajillion topics, athletics videos, plus visiting and faculty scientists, artists and writers.

Kristen McBride Dawson ’05 is teaching English and political science at Sri Lanka’s Sri Jayawardenapura University as a Fulbright scholar. In the photo above, Dawson, who was a history major at Cornell, visits a temple in Colombo.

She writes: “I don’t have any photos of myself teaching here, and I thought I would take some after the winter holidays had concluded. But there has been some civil unrest and a bomb on campus, so I haven’t actually been back to the university.”

Dawson is one of more than 1,600 U.S. citizens to travel abroad for the 2011-12 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government.

Read about the work of Lindsay Myron ’11, who is taking lessons learned in her Cornell coursework on garden-based learning to rural Tanzanian farmers.

The College of Architecture, Art and Planning hosts its annual Post-Baccalaureate Exhibition Jan. 5-16 in New York City, featuring work by three Class of 2011 B.F.A.s.

Taery Kim presents video from “[home]coming,” an ongoing project exploring personal and national identity; Maggie Prendergast documents her project (pictured) creating gardens as public art in all five boroughs of New York City; and Rachel Mari Simkover re-contextualizes collected images and experiences “as an escapist proposition and/or invitation.”

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies has announced the winners of its 2011 Graduate Photo Competition. The winning entry, “Working Hands,” is by Julia Berazneva, in the field of applied economics and management. She took the photo in the Nyanza Province of Kenya. A total of 11 photos were honored; graduate students studying or conducting research abroad submitted 42 photos.

Cornell Adult University offers an educational voyage to Patagonia, Argentina, to retrace the footsteps of Charles Darwin, March 15-26. Participants will visit destinations critical to the development of his revolutionary ideas with Warren Allmon, director of the Paleontological Research Institution.

The itinerary includes visits to the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio, the habitats of Peninsula Valdés and Puerto Madryn, the Tierra del Fuego National Park, Glaciers National Park and a catamaran sail through the Beagle Channel.

Architecture students in the Parallel Utopias studio, an upper-level design course directed by Yehre Suh, will present their work at the DMZ Forum 2011 Annual Conference, Nov. 21 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

The DMZ Forum is an international nongovernmental organization whose mission is to support conservation of the unique biological and cultural resources of Korea’s Demilitarized Zone. Cornell students have been researching the political, social, economic and ecological conditions in border areas of North and South Korea, and have created speculative architectural scenarios and strategies for the sites.

Suh, a visiting critic in the Department of Architecture, was awarded the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts Grant in 2008 for her research project “Parallel Utopias: The Normalcy of Architecture in North and South Korea” and a Reich Foundation Fellowship in 2010 for ”Parallel Utopias: Strategies of Normalcy and Exception.”

- Daniel Aloi

The Legacy Project, which collects practical wisdom for living from the oldest Americans, has launched a YouTube channel of interviews. Professor Karl Pillemer directs the Legacy Project and is author of the new book, ”30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice From the Wisest Americans.”