CNN: "I'm a climate scientist, but I didn't work on the latest National Climate Assessment. I wasn't asked to do so, in fact. But if I had been, I would have thought hard before agreeing to participate, because the work is largely thankless. The scientists who put long hours, days, and years into assessments like the NCA, those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others do so on a volunteer basis. The time comes out of their other projects, reducing their output -- meaning fewer papers published on their own research, fewer proposals for grant funding to sustain their research groups, less time put into anything that benefits their careers directly. To what end?"

Columbia Engineering researchers have created the first flat lens capable of correctly focusing a large range of colors of any polarization to the same focal spot without the need for any additional elements. Only a micron thick, their revolutionary "flat" lens is much thinner than a sheet of paper and offers performance comparable to top-of-the-line compound lens systems. The findings of the team, led by Nanfang Yu, associate professor of applied physics, are outlined in a new study, published by Light: Science & Applications.