Posts
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Katherine Pollard: What Makes Us Human?
For the past six years Katherine Pollard has been working with the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium comparing the genes of chimps and humans in order to more fully understand how the human genome has evolved. Using the software she created to study genomic data, Pollard was able to identify the areas of the human…
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Assessing Global Metrics for Agriculture
On October 1, I attended a symposium entitled “Going Beyond Rhetoric: Metrics for Assessing Global Agriculture,” hosted by the Earth Institute and convened at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Fifteen stories in the air, we were surrounded by miles of urban landscape — Queens to the east, Manhattan to the west, and no…
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Gridlock in Everglades Land Deal
For many who have been following the saga of the Everglades of South Florida, it seemed that restoration and conservation plans formed during the last decade were only getting more complicated and mired in bureaucracy. That is, until Gov. Charlie Crist stepped up to the plate to make a game-changing proposition to buy back land…
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Night Watchman
Nick Frearson, Gravimeter Instrument Team, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: PUNTA ARENAS, Chile–I have become a night watchman of sorts. The gravimeter we’re using in our flights over Antarctica must remain powered at all times, so between flights I hole up in the old terminal next to the aircraft watching, …and watching. We won’t be on the…
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Punjab: Less Water, More Money (Part 2)
Last week, I began the story of declining groundwater tables in India. I talked about the current system of subsidized energy, the need to change it, and the willingness of farmers to adapt to such changes. Even before changing the irrigation in the crop’s lifecycle, however, an initial step that farmers can take starts with…
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Climate News Roundup – Week of 10/11
Memo Calls for Reversing Law to Phase Out German Nuclear Plants, The New York Times German Chancellor Angela Merkel moves to reverse legislation that gradually phases out nuclear power by 2022. The proposed reversal, contained in a working document sent to Merkel’s political coalition partner, the Free Democrats, calls nuclear power the crucial “bridge” to…
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The Starry Messenger
Summer Ash, a current Frontiers of Science Fellow at Columbia College, takes a page out of Galileo’s book and looks towards the cosmos under the ever-enlightening lens of a telescope. Read her ruminations on our night sky here: The Starry Messenger The universality of the sky was revealed to me last night. It started simply…
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Taking Teachers Into Field Helps School, Students, Study Finds
Pioneering Program Connects Educators with Research Scientists
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On the Surface of Climate Change
Blog Action Day 2009’s theme this year is Climate Change. Thousands of people on blogs all over the world are writing today on this single issue, and the Columbia Water Center is joining them. On Climate In a recent study at Columbia University, correlations were drawn between sea surface temperature on the coast of Africa…
