Cornell University

Sharing the scenes that make Cornell feel like home all season long.

A couple of weeks ago, we shared a batch of vintage images of Cornell student life captured in summery weather, drawn from Kroch Library's Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Here's round two, more color-saturated photos from the 1980s to the early 2000s, stored as slides (many on glorious Kodachrome) and never before digitized. Chances are, nobody's seen them since the day they were shot.

Do you recognize anyone in these photos? See your younger self? Tell us in the comments!

See more at https://alumni.cornell.edu/cornellians/vintage-summery-photos-2/.

Photos courtesy of the Cornell University Library and the Cornell University Library - Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Doctors recommend dietary fiber for healthy digestion, but to benefit from it, people not only need specific species of gut bacteria but the right strains of those bacteria to process the starches, according to a new study that advances the promise of precision nutrition.

Dietary fiber, which comes in a variety of forms prevents constipation, fosters healthful gut microbes and slows digestion to regulate blood sugar. It is found in several legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

Previous studies examining the benefits of resistant starches found mixed outcomes, as some subjects benefited from it while others experienced no effect.

“We think that one of the reasons for that is because you need the right bacteria in your gut to process resistant starch,” said Angela Poole, assistant professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University and the College of Human Ecology at Cornell, and the paper’s senior author.

Read more: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/07/will-dietary-fiber-help-digestion-it-might-depend-your-gut-bacteria

Big Red summer views.

An overactive immune response in the brain may play a role in Dravet syndrome, a rare and severe genetic epilepsy that typically begins in infancy, according to Weill Cornell Medicine researchers.

Children with the condition experience frequent seizures that are often difficult to control with medication, and may also face developmental, cognitive, and behavioral challenges. Until now, most research has focused on how a mutation in the SCN1A gene disrupts electrical signaling in the brain.

“Rather than being a disorder only involving abnormal electrical signaling, the disease may also involve a self-sustaining immune response triggered by DNA released from stressed neurons,” said study senior author Li Gan, the Burton P. and Judith B. Resnick Distinguished Professor in Neurodegenerative Diseases and director of the Helen and Robert Appel Alzheimer’s Disease Research Institute at Weill Cornell.

“As a result, inflammation may help drive and sustain the disease. This finding links seizures to the brain’s immune system in a way that had not been fully appreciated before.”

Read more: https://news.cornell.edu/index%2ephp/stories/2026/07/inflammation-may-drive-rare-epileptic-syndrome.

Strict regulations have prevented continental U.S. beekeepers from participating in the lucrative organic honey market, but new research finds that bees’ actual habits make certain rules too extreme. The findings potentially provide evidence for federal agencies to ease restrictions and open organic markets to U.S. producers.

“Consumers are willing to pay 20 to 30% more for organic certified honey than nonorganic certified honey,” said Scott McArt, associate professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University and a senior author of the new study, published July 29 in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

“If organic honey was possible to produce in the continental U.S., it would open up a huge market for our country’s beekeepers, who are really struggling right now.”

Read more: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/07/insights-bee-biology-could-ease-us-rules-organic-honey.

A new modeling study finds that weak AI regulation may be worse than no regulation at all when it comes to the safety of AI products and services.

In the absence of strong federal AI regulation, states have attempted to take up the slack, but it’s unclear how this patchwork of laws will alter incentives for companies to invest in the safety of their products.

To better understand the implications, researchers at Cornell and Carnegie Mellon University developed a theoretical model to estimate the effects of AI regulation, both for companies that produce general-purpose AI models – like the ones behind popular chatbots – and downstream companies that apply those models, such as for customer service chatbots or medical diagnostic systems.

They hope that this work will inform thoughtful regulation of AI products.

Read more: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/07/weak-ai-regulation-may-backfire-making-products-less-safe

Cornell Tech | Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science

How much do you know about McGraw Tower?

Visit https://alumni.cornell.edu/cornellians/mcgraw-tower-trivia/ and test your knowledge of Cornell's most iconic landmark with 12 questions: One for each hour on the clock!