Last February Francis Collins enchanted the CSSR with his lecture, “The Language of God: A Believer Looks at the Human Genome”. Collins was the leader of the Human Genome Project, the revolutionary program which undertook the task of reading out all of the letters of the human DNA instruction book, and has recently become the director [...]
At times of flux when little can be trusted to remain the same, it is common to look for solace in the concrete. Today, as our climate continues to change, many find guidance in the unchanging words of the Bible. The lessons kept within those ancient pages free themselves for interpretation in order to give [...]
The concluding seminar of the CSSR’s fall semester will take place Thursday, December 10th from 6:00 – 7:30 pm in the Davis Auditorium on Columbia University’s main campus. Come one, come all, this seminar is free and open to the public. John Horgan, the Director of the Center for Science Writings at The Stevens Institute [...]
Andrew Revkin’s New York Times blog, Dot Earth, has been raising an interesting question recently: how can religion affect climate change? These two concepts may seem antithetical, one works with beliefs while the other strives to present hard data, but when broken down into parts, it can be seen that they could easily work together. [...]
On September 30th the Crossroads Cultural Center held a conference called Wonder and Knowledge that focused on “the origin of the universe in science and philosophy and the role of wonder in scientific discovery.” It was co-sponsored by the Columbia Catholic Ministry and the CSSR. Our very own Professor Pollack gave a captivating introduction concerning [...]
For the past six years Katherine Pollard has been working with the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium comparing the genes of chimps and humans in order to more fully understand how the human genome has evolved. Using the software she created to study genomic data, Pollard was able to identify the areas of the human [...]
Summer Ash, a current Frontiers of Science Fellow at Columbia College, takes a page out of Galileo’s book and looks towards the cosmos under the ever-enlightening lens of a telescope. Read her ruminations on our night sky here: The Starry Messenger The universality of the sky was revealed to me last night. It started simply [...]
State of the Planet is a forum for discussion on varying viewpoints. The opinions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Earth Institute or Columbia University.
