Ocean May Absorb Less CO2 as Man-Made Carbon Emissions Are Cut
Shrinkage due to COVID-19 may provide case in point. Volcanic eruptions and human-caused changes to the atmosphere strongly influence the rate at which the ocean…
Columbia University
Wake-Up Call: Measles Outbreak in NYC Fueled by Low Vaccination Rates and “Measles Parties”
Study is a wake-up call for the potential of another such outbreak, as vaccination rates plummet during the COVID-19 pandemic. An analysis of the 2018-2019…
Columbia Astronomer Estimates the Odds of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence Emerging in Alien Worlds
New study uses Bayesian statistics to shed light on how extraterrestrial life might evolve beyond our planet. Humans have been wondering whether we alone in…
Harmful Algal Blooms in Arabian Sea Fueled by Shrinking Snowcaps
Climate-driven shifts disrupt fisheries, desalination plants; problems may hit other regions. A uniquely resilient organism all but unheard of in the Arabian Sea 20 years…
Emerging Across the Globe: Potentially Fatal Combinations of Heat and Humidity
US Gulf Coast among regions hit with conditions not expected for decades. Most everyone knows that humid heat is harder to handle than the “dry”…
Unexpected Mental Processes Revealed in How the Brain Links Events to Form a Memory
2-photon calcium imaging (5x speed) of the activity responses of neurons in hippocampal area CA1 of a mouse as it learns to associate a neutral…
Fast, Flexible, Powerful Bioelectronic Devices Are Two Steps Closer With Columbia’s Soft Transistors
Columbia researchers design biocompatible ion-driven soft transistors that can perform real-time neurologically relevant computation and a mixed-conducting particulate composite that allows creation of electronic components…
Record Greenland Ice Loss in 2019 Driven by Unusually Clear Skies
Last year was one of the worst years on record for the Greenland ice sheet, which shrunk by hundreds of billions of tons. According to…
Cutting-Edge 3D Imaging Reveals How the Nose Detects Odor Combinations
Columbia study in mice shows how special cells in nose help the brain to distinguish between world’s near-infinite combinations of scents. Every moment of…
Uber and Lyft Ridesharing Linked to More Crash Injuries for Motorists and Pedestrians
Ride-hailing trips increase the number of crashes for motorists and pedestrians at pick-up and drop-off locations, reports a new study from researchers at the Columbia…
Global Famine Predicted in Even a Limited India-Pakistan Nuclear War Due to Soot and Firestorms
Soot from firestorms would reduce crop production for years. The concept of nuclear winter — a years-long planetary freeze brought on by airborne soot generated…
Great 2011 Japan Tsunami Magnified by Shifts in Deep Geologic Structure
Where tectonic plates meet, a change in angle. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake struck under the seabed off Japan–the most powerful quake…
Rapid Spread of Coronavirus Outbreak Fueled by ‘Stealth Transmission’
Undetected cases, many of which were likely not severely symptomatic, were largely responsible for the rapid spread of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, according to…
New Way to Control the Phase of Light Using Atomically Thin Materials Enables Quantum and Neural Circuits
Researchers use 2D materials—1/100,000 the size of a human hair—to manipulate the phase of light without changing its amplitude, at extremely low power loss; could…
New Method Developed to Isolate Atomic Sheets and Create New Materials
New exfoliation method makes large-area atomically thin layers that can be stacked in any desired order and orientation to generate a whole new class of…
Sex Pheromone Alters Brain Circuitry to Drive Both Innate and Learned Sexual Behaviors
Columbia-led study in mice maps brain circuitry that enables a sex pheromone named for Jane Austen character to alter brain in mouse courtship. The infamously…
Toxic Protein Tau Exposed – Linked to Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases
Columbia-led team harnesses two powerful technologies to identify promising targets for diagnosing and treating neurodegenerative diseases. The protein tau has long been implicated in Alzheimer’s…
Nanostructures and Living Cells in Butterfly Wings Could Inspire Radiative-Cooling Materials & Advanced Flying Machines
Researchers discover that butterflies have specialized behaviors and wing scales to protect the living parts of their wings; nanostructures found in the wing scales could…