Yesterday, the graduating masters students in my department presented on their theses. I’m really proud of all of them and wish them luck in their future endeavors! We’ve had a kick butt 2 year run here, and we all deserve some fun now! Here are the topics they studied: Use of microsatellites to classify individualsRead More
Category: Science
Profile on Dickson Despommier, Ph.D.
A discussion about vertical farming and some of its environmental implications (Portions of the quoted text have been edited from the raw transcript.) Vertical farming has been brought into the forefront recently, with a spot in the film FUEL, articles in TIME, Scientific American, as well as others in the past 6 months. What thisRead More
Climate change and conflict
(This piece was written in Fall 2008.) Climate change is important to any analysis for the future, environmentally, socially, economically, or politically. The IPCC projects that with rising temperatures, there will be a global increase incidence of droughts, desertification, and extreme precipitation events (IPCC 2007). The increase in temperature will also allow range expansion andRead More
Rosemary Grant and the Galapagos finches
As part of Columbia University’s Darwin Speaker Series, Rosemary Grant of Princeton University came to speak on April 14th, 2009 about evolution in Darwin’s finches. This year being the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, it was fitting for Rosemary Grant to speak about her researchRead More
Commentary on “Why isn’t the brain green?”
The New York Times Magazine recently put out a piece by Jon Gertner about environmental decision-making and the different social dynamics that are involved. The author discusses several different studies that involve individual and group decision-making. One group doing such research is the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions is an interdisciplinary based at ColumbiaRead More
Recycle more, and more diversely
I recall the time I spent in China as the hottest and stuffiest days of my life. I was there for a summer study abroad experience, as well as the chance to visit with relatives that I had not seen since I was five years old. At every step of my travels, in the dustyRead More