Columbia University
For years, researchers have examined climate records indicating that millennial-scale climate cycles have linked the high latitudes of the Northern hemisphere and the subtropics of the North Pacific Ocean. What forces this linkage, however, has been a topic of considerable debate. Did the connection originate in the North Pacific with the sinking of oxygen-rich waters into the interior of the ocean during cool climate intervals, or did it originate in the subtropical Pacific with the transfer of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere?
This week, the journal Molecular Psychiatry published a study by researchers at Columbia University on the neurotoxic effects on mice of thimerosal, a mercury derivative that has been used as a preservative in vaccines. The study raises important scientific issues that need to be further explored.
Doing laundry using hot water and bleach may prevent infections in the home, while drinking only bottled water may promote infections, according to research funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) at the National Institutes of Health that looked at ways to predict infectious disease symptoms in inner city households. The study, ''Predictors of Infectious Disease Symptoms in Inner City Households,'' was led by Elaine Larson, PhD, RN, Associate Dean for Research at the School of Nursing, Columbia University, and appears in the May/June issue of the journal Nursing Research.
Over the last four decades, scientists have observed a 1.3% per decade decline in the amount of sun reaching the Earth's surface. This phenomenon, coined ''solar dimming'' or ''global dimming,'' is due to changes in clouds and air pollution that are impeding the suns ability to penetrate. Scientists believe that the combination of growing quantities of man-made aerosol particles in the atmosphere and more moisture are causing the cloud cover to thicken.
Scientists have found evidence of the release of an enormous quantity of methane gas as ice sheets melted at the end of a global ice age about 600 million years ago, possibly altering the ocean's chemistry, influencing oxygen levels in the ocean and atmosphere, and enhancing climate warming because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. The study was published in today's issue of the journal Nature.
Researchers have found an important new application for seismic reflection data, commonly used to image geological structures and explore for oil and gas. Recently published in the journal Nature, new use of reflection data may prove crucial to understanding the potential for mega earthquakes.
Doctors are far more wary of pharmaceutical companies' aggressive marketing than generally believed and don't easily yield to pressure to switch prescriptions, according to a paper being presented at a conference of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. "Are physicians easy marks?" ask Natalie Mizik of Columbia University and Robert Jacobson of the University of Washington in a paper of the same name. "To the contrary, our results show that physicians are "tough sells" in that sales force activity has modest to very small influence on prescribing behavior."
Dust from China's Takla-Makan desert traveled more than 20,000 kilometers [12,000 miles] in about two weeks, crossing the Pacific Ocean, North America, and the Atlantic Ocean, before settling atop the French Alps. Chinese dust plumes had been known to reach North America and even Greenland, but had never before been reported in Europe.
Scientists from the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), a member of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, have developed non-invasive collection, extraction, and amplification protocols providing high quality DNA from an animal's dung. The DNA is targeted from cells sloughed from the gut lining. Their research techniques, publishing in the Journal of Heredity, will enable a broad application of genetic analysis, particularly with regard to endangered, elusive, or aggressive species.
On June 18, 2002, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake occurred in southern Indiana, followed by a 1.2 magnitude aftershock on June 25, 2002. Because the region of occurrence, the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone, is seismically active, Dr. Won-Young Kim, a seismologist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, conducted research to determine the potential hazard of future earthquakes to this region. His findings suggest that an ancient fault line dating back to the Precambrian era of geological history (from 4.6 billion to 570 million years ago) has become reactivated and was the likely cause of the June 2002 earthquakes. Kim is presenting his findings at the Seismological Society of America in May, and publishing in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly .05 percent per decade, according to a new NASA funded study. "This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," said Richard Willson, a researcher affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's Earth Institute, New York. He is the lead author of the study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. "Historical records of solar activity indicate that solar radiation has been increasing since the late 19th century. If a trend, comparable to the one found in this study, persisted throughout the 20th century, it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he said.
A new study from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S) and Stanford University suggests that the malfunctioning of brain cells called astrocytes may be behind the accumulation of amyloid protein in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease, most researchers believe, is caused when small peptides called beta-amyloid accumulate in the brain. Everyone makes these peptides at all times during their life, but in people with Alzheimer's, either too much is made or too little is degraded or both.
Detection techniques and technology have improved so much in recent years that seismologists now say they are able to detect and identify virtually all events that might be nuclear explosions of possible military significance under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Verification was a major issue in the U.S. Senate debate in 1999, in which American ratification of the treaty was defeated.
