Research and Discovery

Top 10 Ideas in Statistics That Have Powered the AI Revolution

Andrew Gelman, a statistics professor at Columbia, and Aki Vehtari, a computer science professor at Finland’s Aalto University, recently published a list of the most important statistical ideas in the last 50 years. Here, they break it down in easy-to-understand terms.

Health, Medicine and Wellness

Q and A: Artificial Intelligence and Nursing

Columbia Nursing’s Maxim Topaz explains why nurses need to understand AI, and how AI tools can help—and hurt—patient care.

gray hair photo

It’s True: Stress Does Turn Hair Gray (And It’s Reversible)

A new study from researchers at Columbia University is the first to quantitatively link psychological stress to graying hair in people and find that the process is reversible.

How Long People Want to Live Depends on a Hypothetic Illness

How long would you choose to live if you knew that you'd lose a spouse or develop dementia? Columbia Aging's Vegard Skirbekk asked Norwegians over 60. Here's what he found.

The Brain and Psychology

Cells from two different parts of the hippocampus of a titmouse color-coded by their response as the bird explores its environment (Credit: Hannah Payne, PhD / Aronov Lab / Columbia's Zuckerman Institute

Brain Region Draws Map for Food-Caching Birds

A brain region that allows birds to remember thousands of food hiding spots during the winter offers a new way to study memory, with implications for disease and AI.

Illustration of someone wondering whether to cross the street

Why Do Thoughts Take So Much Time?

Every thought involves multiple decisions. How does the brain juggle those decisions while accumulating evidence about the world? Researchers at Zuckerman Institute explain.

Shown here in green are branches, or axons, from cells in the midbrain that connect to the substantia nigra region. Swellings at the ends of those axons, where cells connect, are shown in red. (Credit: Lauren McElvain / Kleinfeld lab / UC San Diego)

New Map of Brain Connectivity Reveals Far Reach of Central Regulator

Neurons in the brain's basal ganglia are essential in controlling behavior, but how they connect to other brain regions remains poorly understood. New research from Zuckerman Institute brings fresh insights to this mysterious part of the brain.

Earth, Climate and Environmental Science

Two women at a market selling chickens (Credit: Kevin Krajick)

Food Systems Offer Huge Opportunities to Cut Emissions, Study Finds

In a new global analysis, researchers estimate that activities connected to producing and eating food produced the equivalent of 16 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2018—one third of the human-produced total.

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: Milestones in Climate Science

Scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have helped shape our understanding of Earth's climate past and present in important ways. Here's a breakdown of their biggest discoveries.

Photo of Shishmaref, a small Alaskan island. Here, the impacts of climate change pose a threat to every dimension of daily life. Photo: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve

What is Needed for Fair and Equitable Managed Retreat?

Experts and community leaders gathered to discuss fair and equitable adaptation strategies for communities threatened by climate change. The June event, "At What Point Managed Retreat? Resilience, Relocation, and Climate Justice," was led by the Columbia Climate School.

Science, Technology and Engineering

drawing of e-coli

Bacteria Employed as "Living Hard Drives"

Columbia scientists have found a way to encode digital information straight into the genomes of living E. coli bacteria cells, which, they say, preserves the data in a surprisingly stable, robust manner.

illustration of genetic code

Gene Discovery May Hold Key to Better Therapies for OCD

Columbia research finds that some cases of OCD are caused by damaging gene variants that, while rare, provide a needed starting point for the development of better therapeutics.

AI illustration (Credit: CU SEAS)

Automatically Better

Artificial intelligence has transformed business analytics. Meet some of the Columbia Engineering researchers developing the algorithms to make business more efficient and profitable.