A new project led by Richard Plunz and his colleagues at the Earth Institute’s Urban Design Lab combines mapping techniques with Twitter-usage data to gain a real-time understanding of how people occupy public space.

In a scientific first, researchers have observed in mice how the brain learns to repeat patterns of neural activity that elicit the all-important feel-good sensation. Until today, the brain mechanisms that guide this type of learning had not been measured directly.

Engineering professors Karen Kasza and James Teherani have each won a prestigious, five-year award from the National Science Foundation, which supports the early career-development activities of junior faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.

If coral reefs continue to degrade, waves on coastlines may substantially increase, leading to greater coastal erosion, found a study co-authored by Alessio Rovere, an adjunct scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Chris Wiggins, a Data Science Institute professor and Chief Data Scientist at The New York Times, has helped launch nytDEMO, a group at the NYT devoted to bringing data-science prototypes into products.

Marco Tedesco, who studies snow and ice at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is leading an investigation into the properties of snow in the eastern U.S. Citizen scientists can contribute by gathering data to help uncover how snow is changing over time.

“These stars are teaching us what happened to the Galactic disk – what happened to the Milky Way in the past,” said Kathryn Johnston, Columbia professor of astronomy, a co-author on the current paper and co- or lead author of papers leading up to this finding.