During Summer of 2011, CSSR interns Huili Zhu and Ashley Shaw, undergraduates at Columbia Engineering ’12 and Columbia College ’13, respectively, will be following Raphy Rosen’s footsteps. They will devote time, thought, and new ideas to palliative care research at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center… Please visit the CSSR websites for future updates: http://thecssr.wordpress.com/

Despite the UN’s 2010 resolution on the human right to water, debate continues over how useful a rights approach really is. Even if we identify water as a human right, where the state is the principal duty-bearer, will it improve access to water for communities in need?

Following an initial gift last year to create a Masters Degree in Carbon Management, a generous Columbia University alumnus has renewed his support with additional funding toward the preparation and implementation of the program.

AC units have become more efficient over the years, but energy consumption during hot summer months can increase significantly, boosting both the amount of money spent on electricity and the volume of greenhouse gasses emitted in the energy production process.

Our field team has set camp at 5045 m on the dusty slopes of Ampato, an extinct, ice-clad volcano in the Western Cordillera. This is the very mountain from which Juanita, the famous Incan ‘ice maiden’, was plucked back in 1995. The tents are clustered in the lee of a large glacial erratic and, now…

For the last nine days, we have been underway acquiring seismic reflection data to study a plate tectonic boundary offshore Alaska with the R/V Marcus G. Langseth. Now that the initial excitement of deploying all of our seismic gear and watching the first sound waves arrive on our two 8-km-long streamers has faded, we have…

It seems that this year the world is experiencing a crisis of both too little water and too much. And while these crises often occur simultaneously in different regions, they also happen in the same places as short, fierce bursts of rain punctuate long dry spells.

The following is a guest blog, authored by Pam Allyn, Executive Director and Founder of LitWorld, a global organization advocating for children’s rights as readers, writers and learners, and an MCI partner. This account is based on Pam’s travels to the Millennium City of Kisumu, Kenya, to spend time with four Girls’ Clubs, which foster…