News

Last fall, a private bus company operating under a city contract permitted its passengers, primarily Orthodox Jews, to enforce a religious tradition—in order to prevent physical contact between the sexes, women were required to sit in the back of the bus. The New York Times, New York Post and CBS 2 ran the story, which was later picked up by the BBC and Belgian and Israeli news outlets. But it was an enterprising reporter from The New York World—a new Graduate School of Journalism endeavor—who first broke this story of segregation.

Sasha Chavkin (JRN’10), one of six reporters who contribute to the news site covering city and state government, posted the story the day the World’s website launched in October. One week later, the bus company agreed to stop the practice, which violates city anti-discrimination policies, and Chavkin wrote a follow-up story for The Jewish Daily Forward.

“This story is a really great example of something unique The New York World does,” said its editor, Alyssa Katz, a veteran journalist who has covered urban policy, politics and housing in New York. “We’ll take seemingly mundane things about how life works in New York City and say, ‘Well actually, this is what’s really going on.’”

The case for launching a local news site based at Columbia finds its root in the pages of a 2009 Journalism School report proposing steps to reinvigorate American media amid economic challenges and changing technology. Its authors, Professor Michael Schudson and Leonard Downie, former executive editor of The Washington Post, called upon universities to take on accountability journalism as budgets at for-profit news outlets shrink.

Columbia President, and First Amendment scholar Lee C. Bollinger has similarly said that universities are among the organizations in society that can contribute to filling the void left by decline in both local and international news reporting.

“This was the one recommendation we had the power to implement,” said Nicholas Lemann, the journalism school’s dean. “We want to provide important coverage that others are not doing and to establish a model for ongoing news production at a journalism school.”

Accountability journalism, said Katz, is a two-way street: It is holding government officials accountable and simultaneously making sure readers know what they can and should expect from public institutions.

The World, named after the New York World published by journalism school founder Joseph Pulitzer, is entirely supported by J-school alumni and foundations. Reporters have the freedom to pursue long-term investigative projects, a rare opportunity in a profession increasingly driven by clicks and advertising revenue.

Each of the reporters, who hold yearlong post-graduate paid fellowships, is an alumnus of the J-school’s master’s programs in investigative journalism and digital media. “It’s an opportunity to take the skills learned in a classroom and put them to work in a real newsroom that continues to be a teaching environment,” explained Katz.

Alice Brennan (JRN’11) said she went to work for the World because no other place offered similar opportunities for experimentation. “It not only fosters investigative journalism, but also interesting, original ways of telling stories and delivering them to a wider audience,” she said.

When Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park were threatened with eviction in October, reporters Yolanne Almanzar (JRN’11) and Michael Keller (JRN’11) wanted to learn more about the city’s privately owned public spaces, including whether people know they are public and how the spaces are used.

Keller discovered a database of the places and plotted them on a map. But there were too many to check up on, so he and Almanzar asked the community for help.

Almanzar presented the crowdsourcing project on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, and within a month, listeners provided 200 reports on the city’s privately owned public spaces. “There were some egregious offenders with illegal locks, gates and no-entry signs,” said Almanzar, who is now working on a follow-up story. Katz has established partnerships with other media outlets in New York that run stories her reporters have produced. This growing list includes City & State, MetroFocus and Queens Chronicle. TheWorld stories also have been picked up by larger media, such as The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press.

“It’s a place where we can try some experimental forms of storytelling and test them out in a live lab,” said Bill Grueskin, dean of academic affairs and faculty adviser to the project. “And if we’re smart about it, it will create a feedback loop to the classrooms where students and faculty can learn from the World.”

by Meghan Berry

A Volcanic Explosion Crater May Have Future Potential

In California’s Death Valley, death is looking just a bit closer. Geologists have determined that the half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater, formed by a prehistoric volcanic explosion, was created far more recently than previously thought—and that conditions for a sequel may exist today.

Poet, painter and photographer Liu Xia has been a noteworthy figure on the contemporary Chinese art scene for more than three decades.

If Barry Kane does his job right, you may never know he exists. As associate vice president and University Registrar for all 17 of Columbia’s divisions, he oversees the invisible but vital tasks of academic life: class registration and course enrollment, classroom assignments, final exam schedules, transcripts for tens of thousands of students, and mandatory reports to the federal government and NCAA. And, of course, the 10,000-plus diplomas conferred each year.

“I’ve often said that the very best registrar’s offices are those that are utterly and completely taken for granted,” said Kane, who took over as Columbia’s registrar a year ago, succeeding the long-serving John Carter, who retired.

Kane comes to Columbia with plenty of experience, having served as the senior registrar at six colleges and universities. They were as small as Colgate—enrollment 2,900, where he managed a staff of five—and as large as Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with 10,000 students. There the registrar’s office numbered over 50 employees, whose responsibilities included producing major academic publications, building a suite of electronic applications for faculty and students and helping coordinate an advisory program for undergraduates.

“The bigger the school, of course, the more complicated the task,” he says. Columbia, with a student enrollment of 28,211, is Kane’s biggest undertaking yet. His mandate is to make sure the University is at the forefront of developing technology to replace cumbersome manual forms and eliminate lines at the registrar’s office. Priorities include updating and enhancing the 20-year-old database currently in use; replacing printed transcripts with electronic records transmittable via the Internet; developing tools to add or drop courses online; and establishing uniform, clear policies for all schools to report and process student withdrawals.

Already, he has overseen several projects requiring collaboration among dozens of University administrators, such as the recent effort to build an online Curricular Planning Statement offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which allows departments to schedule courses only at approved time blocks. That means fewer courses overlap and translates into fewer scheduling conflicts for students.

“Being new to an institution is a great thing,” said Kane, “not because I have some special wisdom or skill set but because it allows a new set of eyes to be viewing and thinking about an old set of problems. And, hopefully, coming up with some solutions that will work for the institution, given its unique history, set of circumstances and special ways of doing business.”

In 1996, Yale hired him away from Colgate to merge the formerly separate registrar’s offices in Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and to implement the new Banner student information system. Both came with the challenges of changing business practices at institutions that pride themselves on tradition.

The lessons Kane learned there were put to good use when he joined Harvard in 2003, where class registration was still done on paper card stock and course listings were available in printed catalogs the size of small phone books.

“When Barry got to Harvard, the registrar’s office was something out of the 19th century,” said Benedict H. Gross, who hired Kane when he was dean of Harvard College and now is the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics. (Last semester, Gross was the Eilenberg Visiting Professor of Mathematics here at Columbia.) “It was amazingly difficult to even get a transcript.” He added, “When Barry left, he left us in the 21st century.”

Working behind the scenes—The Crimson nicknamed him “Harvard’s international man of mystery… rarely seen but often heard”—Kane put all the registrar’s functions onto virtual platforms. When the school started its first advising office for undergraduates, Kane’s team built an online portal where students could contact each of their advisers, and vice versa.

“When we worked together at Harvard, he anticipated our needs, helped us articulate them and took the solution to a level higher than anyone else could have imagined,” said Monique Rinere, who founded the Harvard advisory program and is now dean of advising at Columbia College and the engineering school.

At each of his previous jobs, Kane says, he has learned skills and gained experience that will help him in his new position.

“I like to think that Columbia is getting a better registrar than Harvard had with me and that Harvard got a better registrar than I was when I was at Yale, and so on,” Kane said. “You just learn a lot along the way, and, hopefully, those lessons will translate into being far more effective with each opportunity for service that comes your way.”

Worldwide pandemics of influenza caused widespread death and illness in 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009. A new study examining weather patterns around the time of these pandemics finds that each of them was preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific.

Study Reveals Origins of Esophageal Cancer |  New Understanding of Fastest-Rising Solid Tumor in U.S.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have identified the critical early cellular and molecular events that give rise to a type of esophageal cancer called esophageal adenocarcinoma, the fastest-rising solid tumor in the United States. The findings, published online today inCancer Cell (21(1) 36–51 (2012), challenge conventional wisdom regarding the origin and development of this deadly cancer and its precursor lesion, Barrett’s esophagus, and highlight possible targets for new clinical therapies.

Lacking a good animal model of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC), researchers have been hard pressed to explain exactly where and how this cancer arises. What is known is that EAC is usually triggered by gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), in which bile acid and other stomach contents leak backwards from the stomach to the esophagus, the muscular tube that moves food from the mouth to the stomach. Over time, acid reflux can irritate and inflame the esophagus, leading to Barrett’s esophagus, an asymptomatic precancerous condition in which the tissue lining the esophagus is replaced by tissue similar to the lining of the intestine. A small number of people with Barrett’s esophagus eventually go on to develop EAC.

Using a new genetically engineered mouse model of esophagitis, the CUMC researchers have clarified critical cellular and molecular changes that occur during the development of Barrett’s esophagus and EAC. In human patients, acid reflux often leads to overexpression of a molecule called interleukin-1 beta, an important mediator of the inflammatory response, reported study leader Timothy C. Wang, MD, the Dorothy L. and Daniel H. Silberberg Professor of Medicine at CUMC. Thus, Wang and his colleagues created a transgenic mouse in which interleukin-1 beta was overexpressed in the esophagus.

Overexpression of interleukin-1 beta in the mouse esophagus resulted in chronic esophageal inflammation (esophagitis) and expansion of progenitor cells that were sustained by the notch signaling pathway. Notch is a fundamental signaling system used by neighboring cells to communicate with each other in order to assume their proper developmental role. “When we inhibited notch signaling, that blocked proliferation and survival of the pre-malignant cells, so that’s a new possible clinical strategy to use in Barrett’s patients at high risk for cancer development,” noted Dr. Wang.

For decades, investigators thought that the physiological changes associated with Barrett’s esophagus originate in the lower esophagus. “However, our study shows that Barrett’s esophagus actually arises in the gastric cardia, a small region between the lower part of the esophagus and the upper, acid-secreting portion of the stomach,” said Dr. Wang. “What happens is that the bile acid and inflammatory cytokines activate stem cells at this transition zone, and they begin migrating up toward the esophagus, where they take on this intestinal-like appearance.”

The researchers also demonstrated that these changes occur primarily in columnar-like epithelial cells, rather than in goblet cells, as was previously thought.

“All told, the findings present a new model for the pathogenesis of Barrett’s esophagus and esophageal adenocarcinoma,” said Dr. Wang.

Barrett’s esophagus affects about 1 percent of adults in the United States. Men are affected by Barrett’s esophagus twice as frequently as women, and Caucasian men are affected more frequently than men of other races. The average age at diagnosis is 50. At present, there is no way to determine which patients with the condition will develop EAC. EAC is increasing in incidence about 7 to 8 percent a year, making it the most rapidly rising solid tumor in the U.S.

Treatment with acid-reducing drugs can lessen symptoms of GERD and lower the chances of developing Barrett’s esophagus and EAC. Low-grade EAC is highly treatable with endoscopic radiofrequency ablation, photodynamic therapy, or surgical resection. Patients with severe disease may require open surgery, in which most of the esophagus is removed. The overall five-year survival rate with advanced disease is about 25 percent.

Dr. Wang’s paper is entitled, “Bile acid and inflammation activate gastric cardia stem cells in a mouse model of Barrett’s-like metaplasia.” The lead author is Michael Quante of CUMC and Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. The other contributors are Govind Bhagat, Julian Abrams, Frederic Marache, Pamela Good, Michele D. Lee, Yoomi Lee, Richard Friedman, Samuel Asfaha, MD, PhD, Zinaida Dubeykovskaya, Carrie Shawber, and Charles Lightdale, all of CUMC; Umar Mahmood and Jose-Luiz Figueiredo, of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; Jan Kitajewski of CUMC; and Anil K Rustgi of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

This research is supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health grants (RO1DK060758, 1U54CA126513, and R01CA120979) to T.C. Wang; NIH U01 grant (5U01 CA143056) to A.K. Rustgi, T.C. Wang and U. Mahmood. A.K. Rustgi was further supported by NIH P01-CA098101 and P30-DK050306 grants. M. Quante was supported by a grant from the Mildred-Scheel-Stiftung, Deutsche Krebshilfe, Germany. J. Abrams is supported by a Career development Award from the NCI (K07CA132892) and by a Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Scholars Award.
The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest.
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Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research, in medical and health sciences education, and in patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Established in 1767, Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons was the first institution in the country to grant the M.D. degree and is among the most selective medical schools in the country. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest in the United States.

The Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) of Columbia University (CU) is the University’s organizational structure for the conduct of basic, clinical and population-based cancer research and patient care. Cancer Center researchers and physicians are dedicated to understanding the biology of cancer and to applying that knowledge to the design of cancer therapies and prevention strategies that reduce its incidence and progression and improve the quality of the lives of those affected by cancer. Initially funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1972 and designated comprehensive in 1979, the HICCC is one of 40 NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States, of which only three are in New York State.
Today, the HICCC has more than 200 members from six schools at Columbia University.

Media Contact: Karin Eskenazi, 212-342-0508, [email protected]

Columbia University will be closed on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Jan. 16, and will reopen on Tuesday, Jan. 17.

Reducing Soot and Methane Would Bring Fast Results, Says Study

A study by a large international team of scientists says that relatively cheap, simple measures to cut two common pollutants could substantially reduce global warming and improve human health and agriculture in coming decades.

Nathaniel Persily, Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia Law School, has been named special master for redistricting by the Connecticut State Supreme Court.

President Lee C. Bollinger’s Statement on the Recent Death of Judge Robert L. Carter

A review of recent research on methamphetamine use suggests that claims the drug causes significant cognitive problems are exaggerated. The study by Carl Hart, PhD, and colleagues at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) was released in this month’s Neuropsychopharmacology.

Kelley Remole’11, PhD, still has fond memories of the day a local scientist visited her middle school classroom. “It was the first time I had a met a scientist and I thought it was really cool. I was already interested in science, but I would say she made the idea of science as a profession more real in my head.”

So when Remole began graduate school at P&S in the Department of Neuroscience she wanted to pass the favor on to a new generation. The department didn’t have an outreach program, but the chair encouraged Remole to start one.

“I cold-called about half a dozen schools in upper Manhattan and was successful at getting through to one that year (2006). I recruited two friends to help me, and we got the class talking about science and the brain. The next year we got more volunteers and teacher contacts through word of mouth, and the Columbia University Neuroscience Outreach (CUNO) program was born.”

Every year since then the program has grown. Last year, 34 CUNO volunteers reached nearly 1000 New York City students at 16 schools in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. In 2011, CUNO volunteer Heather McKellar ’11, PhD, helped the program establish a partnership with the Dana Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes brain research and education, to prepare New York City high school students for the International Brain Bee. And this year, CUNO volunteers are on target to reach even more students, says current CUNO president Cate Jensen, a 4th year graduate student and doctoral candidate in neuroscience.

“We make the brain accessible and fun rather than mysterious and distant,” Jensen says. “Our goal at CUNO is not to turn every child we meet into a future researcher, but instead to increase scientific awareness and understanding. Neuroscience has broad public interest, so it is a handy tool for engaging even young children in science.”

One quick way to captivate a room full of 12-year-olds, CUNO volunteers have found, is to bring a preserved human brain for “show-and-tell.” Initial reactions vary from “Eeww, gross!” to “That is amazing! Can I take a picture?”

“Seeing a brain in person never fails to solidify the awe of everything that it can do,” says McKellar. “One teacher told me that six months after we visited them, the kids are still talking about touching human brains.”

Other hands-on activities teach students how the brain works: elementary students construct model neurons out of pipe cleaners, or eat jelly beans while holding their noses to learn about the way the brain processes smell and taste.

For most elementary and middle school kids, the visit from CUNO is their first introduction to neuroscience. “We spend a good amount of time answering questions, and they’re usually very thoughtful,” McKellar says.

“Neuroscience can seem lofty and difficult to adults,” adds Remole, “but kids get excited learning about their own brain and what it can do.”

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For more information about CUNO, go to Brains in the City; for information about other community outreach programs at P&S and CUMC, click here.

This article was adapted from Grad Students Go from Bench to Blackboard, by Kelly Remole and Heather McKellar, which appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of Columbia Medicine.

Tom Edsall has covered every presidential campaign since 1968. He has reported on politics from more than 30 states and written five books on the subject. He sees politics in virtually everything. “If I’m walking down Broadway and I see a school bus hit a police car, my first thought is, does this help the Democrats or the Republicans?” he said.

Fourteen winners of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards were announced today by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

It’s been a busy year for Kellie Jones. She has just published an anthology of her essays from the past 20 years and curated a well-regarded exhibition at UCLA’s Hammer Museum exploring the legacy of African American artists in Southern California.