Despite huge advances in science over the past century, our understanding of nature is still far from complete. Not only have scientists failed to find the Holy Grail of physics—unifying the very large (general relativity) with the very small (quantum mechanics) – they still don't know what the vast majority of the universe is made up of. The sought after Theory of Everything continues to elude us. And there are other outstanding puzzles, too, such as how consciousness arises from […]

People who suffer from end stage renal desease frequently undergo dialysis on a fixed schedule. For patients this artificial washing of the blood is a major burden. To remove toxins from the blood, large quantities of dialysis water for clearance are required. Until now there has been no solution so far to recover this dialysate cost-effectively. Therefore a cryo-purification method is being developed by Fraunhofer researchers that clears the water without loosing it. This approach not only […]

Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk and Austrian author Peter Handke—two writers whose works are deeply intertwined in Europe's religious, ethnic and social fault lines—won the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes for literature on Thursday.

Scientists have discovered how water molecules can be regenerated on asteroids moving through space, in an exciting breakthrough that could extend to other bodies such as the moon.

Back in 2009 when I was completing my book Sustainability Management and preparing it for publication by Columbia University Press in 2010, I was also working with colleagues at Columbia's Earth Institute and School of Continuing Education (now Professional Studies) to develop a new master's program in Sustainability Management. I remember struggling to provide a meaningful and bounded definition for sustainability, and in the end, we decided our focus would be on "environmental" […]