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12/11/01

International Scientists And Experts Convene At Columbia University’s Biosphere 2 Center

Key Earth Systems Issues To Be Debated at Conference, Dec. 14 to 18
Will Evaluate the Biosphere 2 Laboratory as Potential Multi-User Facility

TUCSON, AZ. — Top scientists from universities, international research institutions and the U.S. Department of Energy Laboratories, will gather this week with leaders of national and international programs in integrative climate change science at Columbia University’s Biosphere 2 Center to debate key Earth systems issues and evaluate the Biosphere 2 Laboratory as an inclusive multi-user facility, it was announced today by Biosphere 2 Center President and Executive Director Dr. Barry Osmond.

 

12/03/01

Healy researchers make a series of striking discoveries about Arctic Ocean

Contrary to their expectations, scientists on a research cruise to the Arctic Ocean have found evidence that the Gakkel Ridge, the world's slowspreading mid-ocean ridge, may be very volcanically active. They also believe that conditions in a field of undersea vents, known as "black smokers," could support previously unknown species of marine life.

 

12/03/01

Arctic Gakkel Ridge Eruption Reveals Magma From Earth's Mantle

Boulder, Colo.–It's exciting to be the first scientist to observe a volcanic eruption on an ultraslow-spreading mid-ocean ridge, an event in and of itself that rarely occurs. Even better is discovering that the USS Hawkbill, a submarine equipped with scientific mapping tools, just happened to have passed by at the same time and recorded the event while the scientists on board were completely unaware of the eruption.

 

12/03/01

Environmental Sustainability: Perspectives on the World

E-seminar provides a new learning experience that crosses departmental lines.

"Figuring out what’s happening to the planet and what to do about it is a pretty complicated task," says Marc Levy, Associate Director for Science Applications at CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, a unit of the Columbia Earth Institute, by way of explaining why CIESIN decided to create an online seminar on the topic of environmental sustainability. "No one department will cover all the problems of planetary sustainability, but it turns out that Columbia has an intering bunch of people working on this problem from several angles."

 

11/28/01

Ocean Frontier Revealed: Scientists To Describe Unexpected Discoveries Of Arctic Research Cruise

The Arctic Ocean is one of Earth’s least explored oceanic frontiers. Last summer, a research team aboard USCGC Healy, the U.S. Coast Guard’s newicebreaker, exceeded its most ambitious hopes to map the ocean’s floor and reveal geological and biological features of the underwater Gakkel Ridge during a research cruise funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Live webcast on November 28th, at 1:00pm .
Click here to go to the NSF's webcast page.

 

11/16/01

Damage to Buildings Near World Trade Center Towers Caused by Falling Debris and Air Pressure Wave, Not by Ground Shaking, Columbia Seismologists Report in November 20 issue of Eos

Researchers Call for Seismographic Stations in Urban Areas

On September 11, seismographs operated by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, recorded seismic signals produced by the impacts of the two aircraft hitting the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and the Towers’ subsequent collapse. While the ground shaking was consistent with the energy released by small earthquakes, it was not sufficient to cause the collapse of or damage to the surrounding buildings, as some have thought. Rather, the buildings around the Twin Towers were impacted both by the kinetic energy of falling debris and by the pressure exerted on the buildings by a dust- and particle- laden blast produced by the collapse.

 

11/02/01

Surface to Depth: Hudson River Research at the Columbia Earth Institute

Columbia University's Commitment to the Hudson Supports Dozens of Researchers Working to Unravel the Mysteries of This Complex River

The Hudson River is not the gangster graveyard it is often portrayed as being. Nor is it merely a toxic wasteland, saturated with PCB’s. The Hudson is a dynamic river where remnants of a glacial past, invasive zebra mussels and underwater dunes more reminiscent of the Sahara Desert, come together. It’s like a universe unto itself. In the next few years, it’s expected that there will be environmental changes that impact on the dynamics and use of the river.

 

09/21/01

Lamont Scientists reach North Pole

The USCGC Healy, carrying 6 Lamont scientists and students, reached the North Pole on September 6. The historic occasion marked the first time a U.S. icebreaker has broken its own way to the North Pole. In addition, this was Healy's maiden scientific voyage. The expedition departed Tromso, Norway in July to collect rock and sediment samples from the seafloor along the Gakkel Ridge, the earth's slow-moving mid-ocean ridge system.

 

09/17/01

The World According to PimmThe World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth

Stuart Pimm's new book argues that all is not lost, much can be saved

Stuart Pimm is an optimist. In his new book "The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth," Pimm forecasts that unless proactive measures are taken, 50% of the species on the earth will be on a path to extinction by the middle of the 21st century.

 

09/06/01

Columbia Scientists Take First Geological Samples Ever From the Arctic Gakkel Ridge

For the first time, a team of scientists, including six from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, will enter the Arctic Ocean with two scientific ice breakers to collect rock and sediment samples from the seafloor along the Gakkel Ridge, the earth's slow-moving mid-ocean ridge system.

 

07/30/01

Columbia Earth Institute Populations Expert Finds Banning Animals From the Bedroom in Rural South America Could Reduce Chagas Disease Risk

Keeping chickens and especially dogs out of the bedroom could help reduce the risk of Chagas disease infection in rural areas of Central and South America, according to a new report in the July 27 issue of the international journal, Science.

 

06/06/01

 New CEI Center Will Use Scientific Advances to Protect Societies Facing Disaster

Global losses from natural hazards continue to rise rapidly, despite significant scientific and engineering advances. With the ablishment of the Center for Hazards and Risk Research, the newaddition to Columbia's Earth Institute, researchers hope to revolutionize the ways in which hazards are defined and analyzed and to help communities around the world protect against hazards.

 

06/04/01

LDEO'S Anderson Assesses National Energy Consumption, Offers Mixed Review of Bush Energy Plan

The Bush Administration's energy plan, which contains 105 initiatives ranging from loosening regulations on oil and gas exploration to tax credits for fuel-efficient cars, contains "thought-provoking ideas - both good and bad," said Roger Anderson, director of the Energy Research Center at the Earth Institute's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

 

05/01/01

 Computers An Energy Drain

Since 1980, the consumption of electricity has been increasing at 5 to 6 percent a year. Almost all of that can be traced to computer usage. Video produced by David Marks, Office of Public Affairs.

 

05/01/01 3:OO P.M.

Earthquake Data from the Former Soviet Union Can Now Reach LDEO in Near Real Time

Seismological data from earthquakes as far away as the former Soviet Union can now reach scientists at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) in near real-time due to a new joint research effort between Columbia and Borovoye Geophysical Observatory, a former Soviet monitoring station in northern Kazakhstan.

 

05/01/01 2:OO P.M.

Rogen is the Most Ancient of Hormones, Study By Columbia University Biologist Concludes

By reconstructing a DNA sequence that existed more than 450 million years ago, a Columbia University research biologist has revealed how new hormones emerged during evolution, concluding that the female hormone rogen is the most ancient of all steroid hormones but that its role in differentiating the sexes from each other developed much later.

 

03/07/01

at Lake Vostok A Great Under-Ice Lake in Antarctica
Los Angeles Times Features Lamont's Lake Vostok Research

 

03/02/01

Bergen Record Article:

N.J. is not immune to quakes

Ramapo FaultThe first jolt that drowsy summer afternoon came a few minutes after 2. Startled citizens barely caught their breath when they were rocked again seconds later.

 

02/07/01 11:OO A.M.

Columbia Researchers Discover New Evidence of Climate Warming in Mongolian Trees

coringColumbia University researchers have discovered unusually rapid growth in recent times in trees from the remote alpine treeline fors in Mongolia, indicating that temperatures in that region rose to their highlevels in the past century. This latstudy, which provides a detailed record of annual temperature-related growth fluctuations from the third century to today, is the first of its kind for this region of Eurasia.

 

02/01/01 2:OO P.M.

Urban Planning, Urban Design and Earth Science Students Plan Disaster Relief Project in Venezuela

In the wake of mudslides that devastated Caracas, Venezuela, in December of 1999, 38 students and faculty from Columbia's programs in Urban Planning and Urban Design and from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory will travel to Caracas, Venezuela, to help the local government create a long-range plan to redesign the neighborhoods and transportation systems that were decimated during this natural disaster.

 

01/29/01

CIESIN Study Shows Finland, Norway and Canada Rank as Top Countries in Environmental Sustainability

Finland, Norway and Canada are the top nations in environmental sustainability, according to a 122-nation study by a consortium of analysts, including Columbia's Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN). The United States was ranked 11th, just behind Denmark and one place ahead of the Netherlands.

 

01/18/01 2:OO P.M.

Manhattan Earthquake -- 01/17/01

Manhattan and Queens, NY experienced a minor earthquake at 7:34 A.M. Wednesday January 17, 2001. The magnitude was 2.4, the instrumental location of the earthquake was the upper east side of Manhattan at a depth of approximately 7 kilometers (4.3 miles). The earthquake was located near to the 125th Street fault and it is possible that this fault was the source of the earthquake.

 

01/04/01 2:OO P.M.

New York Times Mud Yields Ghosts of Hudson River's Past

About a thousand years ago, a hurricane of cataclysmic proportions swept up the Hudson River. Or perhaps it was the mother of all northeasters. No one knows. What is clear, however, is that the force of the storm was beyond any recorded or remembered human experience. Great swaths of the river bottom were scraped up and moved about in one ferocious flood.