“In the stable of 400,000 stars that TESS is looking at, we wonder which are the stars that we should take really good note of, because these are the ones where we can actually find a planet that will get the same energy from its star that we get from our own,” says study leader Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University. “We don’t know if that would mean it could have life, but it would be equal in energy, so it could be a similar environment to Earth.” 

"We found that they tried harder when they found out that the robot was slower, and vice versa," so that as the robot performed better, humans' performance levels ebbed, explains Ori Heffetz, an associate professor of strategy and business economics at Johnson, who worked with College of Engineering assistant professor Guy Hoffman on the study. 

Christopher Clark, visiting senior scientist for the Bioacoustics Research Program in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, says, “To me, this is a beautiful example of how much we didn’t know and how much we can know.” Clark plans to go back into his own recordings to search for the animal’s signature sounds. “I know there are places that I’ve recorded Omura’s whales in the last nine months,” he says.

Bart Selman, a professor of computer science at Cornell University, says that NYC, with all its congestion and constant surprise traffic interruptions, actually offers preternaturally fertile testing ground for driverless cars. 

Discussing spring on Mars, Don Banfield, a principal research scientists at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences, says: “The Northern hemisphere is starting to heat up; the Southern hemisphere cooling off—just like on Earth.” There are seasonal trends, such as summer dust storms, “but without rain and plants, they aren’t quite as obvious,” says Banfield.

Josh Chafetz, a professor at Cornell Law School, says the 1604 decision “both forestalls the sort of dilatory tactics that keep the House from turning to other business and also makes it harder for the Crown to keep bullying members until they vote the way that it wants.”

“We’re at the beginning of understanding how we could balance commercial interests with helping users as individuals,” explains Longqi Yang, a Ph.D. student at Cornell Tech who worked on the project.

Natalie Mahowald, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences in the College of Engineering, says that a 12-year time frame is a “robust number for trying to cut emissions” and to keep the increase in warming under current levels. But she says sketching out unduly dire consequences is not “helpful to solving the problem.”

In this op-ed from Steven Strogatz, professor of applied mathematics for the College of Arts & Sciences, he argues that the famous mathematical ratio, estimated to more than 22 trillion digits (and counting), is the perfect symbol for our species’ long effort to tame infinity.

“While it may be tempting to design such robots for optimal productivity, engineers and managers need to take into consideration how the robots’ performance may affect the human workers’ effort and attitudes toward the robot and even toward themselves,” explains Guy Hoffman, the senior author of the study and assistant professor for the College of Engineering.

“I can see the UAW saying, we’ve given up so much money on other things and we’ve tried to claw back some of that, and now you’re saying we need to make up for a 40 percent hit on health care,” says Arthur Wheaton, director of the Worker Institute at Cornell University. “I think you’re talking strike.”

Andrew Karolyi, a finance professor at Johnson, says many Chinese companies also tend to have small “floats” upon listing in New York, meaning a relatively small portion of their shares are available for public trading. That makes them more susceptible to large price swings, he explains.