Columbia's medical researchers are provoking helpless panic across the country today, but word is, it's good for your cardiovascular health. Scientists here have upended some traditionally accepted wisdom and are now arguing (in some cases) against CT scans and abstinence. Just one more thing to worry about for two of the most lamentable at-risk populations: people who are sick but can't figure out why and 23-year-old virgins!

And in news related to Columbia only through the related post list on the second page linked above: for all you kids who were thinking of giving up sex because you could only think of 236 reasons to keep at it!

Podcasting His Life Away:
Electrical Engineering Prof. Daniel P.W. Ellis has a hobby even his wife finds creepy: digitally recording every waking moment of his day. Seeing it as an audiologged diary (or a "lifelog"), Ellis recounts such highlights as the fight with his wife in which he made "asshole" comments and his pleas to doctors for information on his injured infant son (as well as their queries as to why he was holding an Mp3 player the whole time). See the rest in this piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the lifelogging phenomenon.

MIDI-Makers Frozen Out...Again: In the week since Bwog reported on subzero temperatures shutting down the Computer Music Center in Prentis Hall, the heat has been turned on...and then off once more. After CMC officials thought the problem had been remedied, the chill returned. Now, CMC director Brad Garton is demanding a permanent solution - and spare heaters installed, just in case - before the center reopens and classes are resumed. Seriously, admins, it's one thing to cut essential services to Columbia's computer musicians - and another to give them a brief spell of hope before shutting them back out in the cold.

Get Your Beauty Rest: All nighters can make you fat. Really. According to the Daily Times of Pakistan, which assembled a compendium on US universities' sleep research, Columbia scientists determined that "adults who sleep less than seven hours a night had an increased risk of obesity. The risk ranged from 23 percent for six-hour-a-night sleepers to 73 percent for individuals who slept only two to four hours. Experts attributed this phenomenon to the fact that sleep deprivation lowered the level of leptin, a protein that suppresses appetite, and raised grehlin, which makes you want to eat." Columbia researchers: doing their homework so you have an excuse not to.

-CJS

Columbia's myriad of research institutes helped Bwog to realize that not only will studying PE or blebs in college prove fruitful some day, but that every research, however small, can be funded if need be. Even if you have to ask reactionary drug war people for the money.

A few favorite centers:

Center for the Active Life of Minority Elders

Center for Decision Sciences

Fecal Incontinence Center

Institute for Tele-Information (CITI)

Langmuir Center for Colloids and Interfaces

Center on Medicine as a Profession

Renal Transplantation Center

Center for Resilient Networks