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An American atmospheric chemist who led efforts to identify the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole and a French geochemist who extracted the longest-yet climate record from polar ice cores have won the prestigious 2012 Vetlesen Prize. Susan Solomon and Jean Jouzel will share the $250,000 award, considered to be the earth sciences’ equivalent of a Nobel.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officially designated 2012 as the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States. This isn't too surprising for a year that already had the warmest spring, the second warmest summer and fourth warmest winter. The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3°F, 3.2°F above the 20th century average, and a full 1.0°F above 1998, the previous record holder. Climate expert Anthony Barnston, who is the Chief Forecaster at Columbia's International Research Institute for Climate and Society, explains some of the climate factors behind this record-breaking…

Most cosmologists agree that the universe started out hot, dense and microscopically small. But where did it come from, and how did it expand into its present form?

(Editor's note: Physics Professor Amber Miller, who also serves as Columbia’s Dean of Science in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, leads the team based at the University’s Nevis Lab that developed and built key components of the EBEX telescope that launched from Antarctica on Dec. 29, 2012 and remained aloft for three weeks to collect data. This story about the project that will provide new insights into the big bang theory and how the universe expanded was originally published on April 7, 2009.) Most cosmologists agree that the universe started out hot, dense and microscopically small. But…

Findings suggest that therapies that increase leptin-signaling may relieve asthma in obese people

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has awarded a total of $15 million to Columbia University, the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and High Tech Rochester to create three centers dedicated to helping inventors and scientists turn their high-tech, clean-energy ideas into successful businesses. NYSERDA will invest $5 million in seed money at each center over a five-year period, with cost-sharing from each institution required. The centers are expected to operate on their own after NYSERDA funding ends. The new entities—“idea incubators”…

The Humble and Much-Maligned Body Mass Index Takes the Cake

By analyzing tissues harvested from organ donors, Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have created the first ever “atlas” of immune cells in the human body. 

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

This semester Charles Fried is back in Morningside Heights as the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Visiting Professor of Law, teaching contract law to 36 first-year students.

Graduates of Columbia’s acting program can claim something besides their diplomas at Commencement: membership in Actors Equity. Under an unprecedented agreement between the Theatre Program at the School of the Arts and the off-Broadway Classic Stage Company, all third-year M.F.A. students in Acting will be eligible to join Actors Equity Association. In addition, two M.F.A. students in Stage Management each year will be eligible to join. This agreement marks the first time that a graduate theater program in New York has offered this invaluable bridge to the field. Equity pay scales are significantly…

In a paper in the Sept. 13 issue of "Physical Review Letters," Zelevinsky and her team reported the creation of a new type of ultracold strontium molecule, made of pairs of these glowing atoms.

Soon after winning the prestigious Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, University Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak said she would donate the $630,000 cash award that comes with the prize to the foundation she established to support primary education in her native India. “What I do there is what I do here,” Spivak said. “I give my time and skill to train teachers and students together.” An internationally renowned scholar of postcolonial theory whose work focuses on the importance of the humanities in the redress of the economically dispossessed and marginalized, Spivak was honored…

Winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature and the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor of the Humanities, Pamuk took the podium and captivated the audience with a lively discussion of the novel and its real-life counterpart, which opened this year in his native Istanbul.