Richard R. Nelson, George Blumenthal Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs, Business and Law at Columbia University, has been award the 2006 Honda Prize for his pioneering research on technology and history. Nelson will be the 27th laureate of the prize, and is currently responsible for Center for Science Technology and Global Development of…
by John Mutter It has been one year since hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans and a sizeable stretch of the Gulf Coast. What made that event a disaster, however, happened well before the storm actually came ashore. With hurricanes, the rule for survival is simple — get out! If you get out you…
On September 5, the Columbia Program on International Investment (CPII) and the Economist Intelligence Unit, a member of The Economist Group, released the World Investment Prospects to 2010: Boom or Backlash? The volume (304 pages) is dedicated to the assessment of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows during 2005-2010. It also examines various factors that suggest…
Marie Tharp, a pathbreaking oceanographic cartographer at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, co-creator of the first global map of the ocean floor and co-discoverer of the central rift valley that runs through the Mid-Atlantic Ridge died Wednesday August 23 in Nyack Hospital. She was 86. A pioneer of modern oceanography, Tharp was the first to map…
The many natural respites in New York City — frequented by humans, migratory birds and other animals — are not natural at all, says Professor James Danoff-Burg of Columbia University, but the result of a post-industrial phenomenon called restoration ecology. “New York City is at the forefront of many restoration ecology projects and approaches,” says…
by Jessie Stensland Global warming is a hot issue these days. Former Vice President Al Gore is getting rave reviews for his movie about climate change. President George Bush finally admitted last year that human activity “may” be causing global warming. While the federal government has been resistant toward taking substantial steps to curb the…
Each year nearly 40,000 tons of cosmic dust fall to Earth from outer space. Now, the first successful chronological study of extraterrestrial dust in Antarctic ice has shown that this amount has remained largely constant over the past 30,000 years, a finding that could help refine efforts to understand the timing and effects of changes…
By Justin Nobel, Columbia University Earth and Environmental Sciences Journalism Student My first impressions of Africa came from reading National Geographic articles like those in 2000 and 2001 chronicling ecologist Michael Fay’s African “megatransect.” His 2,000-mile, 456-day trek across the rainforests of the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Gabon described an impenetrable wilderness unspoiled…
Researchers at the Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR), a part of The Earth Institute, have developed a high-resolution map of projected population change for the year 2025. The innovative map shows a world with large areas of population loss in parts of Eastern Europe and Asia, but significant gains elsewhere. The work, Mapping the…