Kim Martineau, science writer for The Earth Institute, became a journalist to discover the world, explore the human condition and reveal the truth hiding in a string of facts. As a newspaper writer for the Times Union in Albany, NY, and The Hartford Courant in Connecticut, she wrote about crime and punishment, small town government, higher education and the environment. She was twice named a finalist for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists for profiling a transgender student at Yale and a Nobel Prize-winning chemist accused of stealing the rights to his own invention. A story that she broke about an antique map dealer caught slicing maps out of ancient books at a Yale library received national attention. She lives in New York City with her husband and a rabbit possibly old enough to qualify for the book of Guinness World Records.
Researchers at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have published a new study showing that a tsunami of unimaginable size swept over the Cape Verde Islands some 73,000 years ago. The discovery may have implications for the potential for modern hazards. READ THE FULL SCIENTIFIC STORY
Two-thirds of people on the planet will live in cities by 2050. But few cities are prepared for this population boom. An upcoming research project will explore new, localized models for urban infrastructure to make cities cleaner, healthier and more enjoyable places to live.
Computer scientists at Columbia University will work with oceanographers to understand what has caused an unusual plankton-like species to rapidly invade the Arabian Sea food chain, threatening fisheries that sustain more than 100 million people.
Two women investigating climate change from different perspectives—Christine McCarthy, a geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Denise Iris, a multimedia artist from Brooklyn—had a chance to spend several days together recently. In the Rock Mechanics Lab at Lamont, where McCarthy works, and a nearby “cold room” chilled to the climate of an industrial freezer, they exchanged notes on two ways of looking at ice.
A team of scientists traveled to the Pacific Northwest aboard the R/V Atlantis last fall to investigate whether the waxing and waning of ice ages and volcanic eruptions are somehow related.
Nearly 20 years after its last eruption, in 1995, Fogo volcano off West Africa awoke on Nov. 26. Within a week, it had buried two villages under scorching lava, leaving 1,200 people homeless. Lamont-Doherty geologist Ricardo Ramalho was there to document the action and help advise local government.
Once a year, Piermont Pier becomes a field station, and local students, a team of environmental investigators. On Tuesday, scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory led students through a series of field experiments designed to teach them more about the Hudson River.
New pictures in the journal Nature Geoscience may help resolve a debate about how new crust forms at mid-ocean ridges where earth’s tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart.
Sean Solomon, director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and a geophysicist who has spent much of his career studying Earth’s neighboring planets as well as the Earth itself, will receive the National Medal of Science.
The day before Japan’s Ontake volcano blew its top, Lamont volcanologist Einat Lev visited Shinmoedake, another active volcano in Japan, to film the aftermath of a recent eruption there. Three years after Shinmoe came to life with a steam explosion similar to Ontake’s, the volcano continues to spew poisonous sulfur dioxide gas.
