- Viral Columbia professor who condemned campus inaction on antisemitism says he’s ‘ashamed’ of elite school Fox News
- Israel-Hamas war fueling tensions on U.S. college campuses NBC News
- University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College address concerns of Palestinian, Jewish students as overseas conflict continues WPVI-TV
- Nicolle Wallace speaks with Columbia University student who spoke out on antisemitism on campus MSNBC
- Israeli university presidents call on colleagues to not fall victim to Hamas’ ‘destructive propaganda’ Fox News
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Tag Archives: Columbia
Attorney General Schwalb Sues RealPage & Residential Landlords for Rental Price-Fixing, Illegally Raising Thousands of District Residents’ Rents – Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia
- Attorney General Schwalb Sues RealPage & Residential Landlords for Rental Price-Fixing, Illegally Raising Thousands of District Residents’ Rents Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia
- D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb probes alleged rent-fixing scheme by landlords CNBC Television
- Major landlords, RealPage sued in DC for alleged rent-fixing scheme CNBC
- 14 big landlords used software to collude on rent prices, DC lawsuit says Ars Technica
- DC’s biggest landlords accused of illegally raising rent FOX 5 Washington DC
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Setback For Canada PM Justin Trudeau, Premier Of British Columbia Exposes Trudeau – India Today
- Setback For Canada PM Justin Trudeau, Premier Of British Columbia Exposes Trudeau India Today
- LIVE: Khalistan Row, Nawaz’s India Praise, Saudi-Israel Deal | Vantage this Week with Palki Sharma This week on Vantage with Palki Sharma Firstpost
- View from the neighbourhood | From India-Canada row to Pakistan’s World Cup squad: What the Pakistani media is talking about The Indian Express
- West is double-dealing with India—talks value-based alliance, supports secessionists ThePrint
- India-Canada Standoff: What Is The Way Forward? NDTV
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Ghostbusters ‘didn’t do anything for me’: Star slams Columbia Pictures for ‘selectively’ pushing him aside – Fox News
- Ghostbusters ‘didn’t do anything for me’: Star slams Columbia Pictures for ‘selectively’ pushing him aside Fox News
- The Diss That Took Ghostbusters’ Ernie Hudson Ten Years To Get Over Yahoo Life
- Ernie Hudson Was ‘Selectively Pushed Aside’ on Ghostbusters The Root
- Ghostbusters’ Ernie Hudson was a Pokémon player, talks about the card game in forgotten 1999 documentary Ghostbusters News
- Ernie Hudson calls ‘Ghostbusters’ the ‘most difficult movie’ of his career: ‘Really hard to make peace with it’ Yahoo Entertainment
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Columbia Researchers Uncover Dangerous Connection Between Serotonin and Heart Valve Disease
This image shows the mitral valve of the heart of a mouse that lacks the serotonin transporter (SERT) gene. The valve was stained with prico-sirius red to show collagen. SERT knockout mice had a thickened mitral valve compared to normal mice. Credit: Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Serotonin can impact the mitral valve of the heart and potentially accelerate a cardiac condition known as degenerative mitral regurgitation, according to a new study led by researchers at
Degenerative Mitral Regurgitation
Degenerative mitral regurgitation (DMR) is one of the most common types of heart valve disease. The mitral valve is located between the left atrium and left ventricle of the heart. It closes tightly when the heart contracts to prevent blood from leaking back into the left atrium.
In DMR, the shape of the mitral valve becomes distorted, preventing the valve from closing completely. This allows blood to leak back toward the lungs (regurgitation), limiting the amount of oxygen-rich blood moving through the heart to the rest of the body.
As a result, DMR can bring about symptoms like fatigue and shortness of breath. Because of the reduced efficiency in circulation, the heart has to work harder, which over time causes permanent damage. This can lead to a number of serious and life-threatening cardiac issues, including atrial fibrillation and heart failure.
Currently, there is no treatment for mitral valve degeneration. “Certain medications can ease the symptoms and prevent complications, but they do not treat the mitral valve,” says Ferrari, scientific director of the Cardiothoracic Research Program at Columbia. “If the degeneration of the mitral valve becomes severe, surgery to repair or replace the valve is needed.”
The Role of Serotonin
Serotonin plays a part in a wide range of body functions, including emotional state, digestion, sleep, memory, and blood clotting. Serotonin’s role as a neurotransmitter helps your brain regulate mood; lower levels of serotonin are associated with anxiety and depression.
Serotonin binds to specific receptors on the surface of a cell, sending a signal to the cell to act accordingly. A protein known as the serotonin transporter (SERT or 5-HTT) moves serotonin into the cell to be reabsorbed and recycled, a process known as serotonin reuptake.
Medications called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) bind to the SERT to reduce serotonin reuptake, allowing serotonin to remain available for longer periods. This increased serotonin availability can help improve symptoms of mood disorders. SSRIs are some of the most widely prescribed types of antidepressants and include well-known medications like fluoxetine (Prozac) and sertraline (Zoloft).
Study Design
The study examined clinical data from more than 9,000 patients who had undergone valve repair or replacement surgery for DMR and evaluated 100 mitral valve biopsies. “Studying the data of these patients, we found that taking SSRIs was associated with severe mitral regurgitation that needed to be treated with surgery at a younger age than for patients not taking SSRIs,” says Ferrari.
The researchers also studied in vivo mouse models using transgenic mice lacking the SERT gene and normal mice. They discovered that mice without a SERT gene developed thicker mitral valves and that normal mice treated with high doses of SSRIs also developed thickened mitral valves.
Using genetic analysis, the researchers identified genetic variants in the SERT gene region 5-HTTLPR that affect SERT activity. They found that a “long” variant of 5-HTTLPR makes SERT less active in the mitral valve cells, especially when there are two copies (one maternal and one paternal). DMR patients with the “long-long” variant needed mitral valve surgery more often than those with other variants.
Mitral valve cells from DMR patients with the “long-long” variant were more prone to react to serotonin by producing more collagen, changing the shape of the mitral valve. Additionally, mitral valve cells with the “long-long” variant of 5-HTTLPR were more sensitive to fluoxetine than those with other variants.
Implications for Patients with Mitral Valve Disease
The study indicates that for DMR patients with the “long-long” variant, taking SSRIs lowers SERT activity in the mitral valve. The researchers suggest testing DMR patients for potential low SERT activity by genotyping them for 5-HTTLPR, which can be determined easily from a
Bus accident in British Columbia hospitalizes more than 50 people, officials say
CNN
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A bus accident in southern British Columbia, Canada, on Christmas Eve has left more than 50 people hospitalized, officials say.
Medical teams at three area hospitals are treating at least 53 individuals, according to local health authority Interior Health, which said late Saturday the accident on Highway 97C triggered a “Code Orange” response – a hospital designation used for disasters or a mass casualty event.
“We are not in a position to provide patient conditions at this time,” Interior Health said in an update on social media. “We will make every effort to connect families with patients as soon as possible.”
The accident occurred on Highway 97C-Okanagan Connector between Merritt and Kelowna, according to a joint statement from British Columbia Premier David Eby and other government leaders. The area is roughly 100 km. (62 mi.) north of the Canada-US border.
“Our thoughts are with those impacted by the crash, their loved ones, and the first responders and health-care workers giving their all to treat people and keep them safe,” the statement said.
The cause of the accident is unknown at this time.
An information line has been set up for families to locate their loved ones involved in the accident, Interior Health said.
Columbia University acknowledges submitting inaccurate data for consideration in college rankings
CNN Business
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Columbia University said that it relied on “outdated and/or incorrect methodologies” in submitting data to U.S. News & World Report for consideration in the publication’s 2021 college rankings, according to a statement released by the university Friday.
“The Columbia undergraduate experience is and always has been centered around small classes taught by highly accomplished faculty. That fact is unchanged. But anything less than complete accuracy in the data that we report – regardless of the size or the reason – is inconsistent with the standards of excellence to which Columbia holds itself,” the statement reads. “We deeply regret the deficiencies in our prior reporting and are committed to doing better.”
In February, Columbia Mathematics Professor Michael Thaddeus questioned the Ivy League school’s rise in rankings from 18th place, on its debut in 1988, to 2nd place in 2021. In a statement posted on Columbia University’s Department of Mathematics’ website, Thaddeus noted that “few other top-tier universities have also improved their standings, but none has matched Columbia’s extraordinary rise.”
Thaddeus pointed to data submitted by the university to U.S. News & World Report in questioning Columbia’s seemingly meteoric rise in rankings.
“Can we be sure that the data accurately reflect the reality of life within the university?” Thaddeus rhetorically asked. “Regrettably, the answer is no.”
The math professor then tabulated data on “undergraduate class size, percentage of faculty with terminal degrees, percentage of faculty who are full-time, and student-faculty ratio” submitted by Columbia University to U.S. News & World Report and compares the data “with figures computed by other means, drawing on information made public by Columbia elsewhere.”
In his findings, Thaddeus said there were “discrepancies sometimes quite large” which seemed to always work in Columbia’s favor.
In response to Thaddeus’ findings, Columbia University Provost Mary Boyce said in a June statement that the university would “refrain from submitting data to U.S. News and World Report” for consideration in the publication’s 2022 undergraduate college rankings.
“On two of the metrics questioned by our faculty member [Thaddeus], class size and faculty with terminal degrees, we determined we had previously relied on outdated and/or incorrect methodologies. We have changed those methodologies for current and future data submissions, as reflected in the newly posted Common Data Sets,” Boyce noted in June.
Boyce said starting Fall 2022, the university would start participating in the Common Data Set (CDS) Initiative, “a collaborative effort among data providers in the higher education community and publishers” to provide accurate information to students seeking information on institutions of higher education, according to the initiative’s website.
The CDS Initiative, represented by U.S. News & World Report, the College Board and educational services company Peterson’s, was launched in 1997 to provide institutions of higher education with “a set of standards and definitions of data items rather than a survey instrument or set of data represented in a database.”
U.S. News Chief Data Strategist Robert Morse told CNN Monday that schools report most of the information for their Best Colleges rankings directly to U.S. News.
“Each year, U.S. News sends an extensive questionnaire to all accredited four-year colleges and universities,” he explained. “U.S. News, a founding member of the Common Data Set initiative, incorporates questions from the CDS and proprietary questions on this survey. U.S. News relies on schools to accurately report their data.”
Coupled with the commitment of participating in the CDS Initiative, Boyce also announced the launch of a new webpage providing detailed context and analysis of the Columbia University undergraduate experience.
In July, U.S. News & World Report unranked Columbia University “from a number of rankings in the 2022 edition of Best Colleges (first published September 2021)” saying that the university “failed to respond to multiple U.S. News requests that the university substantiate certain data it previously submitted,” according to a blog post by U.S. News. It is unclear whether Thaddeus’ publication of his investigation into the data that Columbia presented to U.S. News & World Report may have contributed to the university being unranked.
In Friday’s statement, Boyce said the university posted two Common Data Sets, one for the Columbia College and Columbia Engineering, and one for Columbia General Studies.
“The information included in the two Common Data Sets reflects the University’s work in recent months to review our data collection processes, following questions raised by a faculty member regarding the accuracy of certain data the University submitted to U.S. News and World Report in 2021 for its ranking of undergraduate universities,” Boyce said.
“U.S. News publishes annual rankings for more than 11,500 schools and hundreds of individual programs as part of the Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools, Best Online Programs, Best Global Universities and Best High Schools rankings,” Morse said in a statement Monday.
“To produce the rankings, U.S. News collects tens of thousands of data points from the schools themselves and other sources, including the U.S. Department of Education, state and local governments and higher education associations. A very small proportion of the total number of schools that are ranked – typically less than 0.1% each year – inform U.S. News that they have misreported data that were used to calculate their school’s ranking.”
U.S. News & World Report released a breakdown of how their publication calculated the 2022-2023 Best Colleges Rankings in an article Monday.
Oregon: Hiker dies after 100-foot fall in Columbia River Gorge
Deputies from the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and firefighters from the Corbett Fire District responded to a report of the fall around 1:15 p.m., according to a news release from the sheriff’s office. While en route, they received an update that the woman’s injuries were life-threatening and that bystanders had started CPR, the release said.
The hiker was pronounced dead when firefighters reached her, according to the release. Multnomah County Search & Rescue then helped the medical examiner’s office recover the woman’s body. They said she will be identified once next of kin have been notified.
Staff from the Trauma Intervention Program Northwest were dispatched to provide emotional support and mental health resources to those impacted by the hiker’s death, the release said.
The woman was hiking on Multnomah Falls-Larch Mountain Trail, according to the release. She was found around 1.3 miles from the trailhead.
The Columbia River Gorge is a popular tourist destination in the Pacific Northwest, stretching 80 miles long and up to 4,000 feet deep, according to the US Forest Service. Multnomah Falls, a waterfall within the gorge area, is the most visited natural recreation site in the Pacific Northwest and receives over 2 million visitors each year, says the service.
Stephanie Weinstein, a tourist visiting Multnomah Falls from Canada with her family, heard about the fatal fall just before she set out to hike the same trail, according to CNN affiliate KPTV
“It’s terribly devastating,” said Weinstein, according to KPTV.
“It hit us hard to know that happened here,” Weinstein said to KPTV. “My teenage son really likes to go to the edge of trails, horrible things could happen.
“I’m sending all my prayers and my thoughts to them.”
Columbia Loses Its No. 2 Spot in the U.S. News Rankings
What is the equivalent of “disbarred” or “defrocked” in the world of college rankings?
Without fanfare, U.S. News & World Report announced that it had “unranked” Columbia University, which had been in a three-way tie for the No. 2 spot in the 2022 edition of Best Colleges, after being unable to verify the underlying data submitted by the university.
The decision was posted on the U.S. News website a week after Columbia said it was withdrawing from the upcoming 2023 rankings.
The Ivy League university said then that it would not participate in the next rankings because it was investigating accusations by one of its own mathematics professors that the No. 2 ranking was based on inaccurate and misleading data.
The biggest beneficiaries may be Harvard and M.I.T., which had shared the second spot with Columbia, and now have one less competitor. Princeton keeps its preening rights as No. 1.
The rankings are influential among students applying to college because objectively comparing schools and visiting every campus they are interested in can be difficult. College presidents have bitterly complained that the rankings are misleading, yet few institutions have dropped out of the game.
Recent Issues on America’s College Campuses
- Enrollment Crisis: New data shows that 662,000 fewer students enrolled in undergraduate programs in spring 2022 than a year earlier, a decline of 4.7 percent.
- Harvard’s President: Lawrence S. Bacow, who steered the university through the pandemic as well as an attack on its admissions policies, announced he would step down in 2023.
- Affirmative Action: As the Supreme Court prepares to decide on the lawfulness of two race-conscious admissions programs, a lawyer who helped draft Texas’s abortion ban offered a new path to detractors of affirmative action.
- Free Speech: A legal scholar who wrote that President Biden would nominate a “lesser black woman” for the Supreme Court was cleared to take on a new job at Georgetown after an investigation. He decided to step down anyway.
“I had hoped, still hope, that this episode would bring much more attention to the foibles and the failures of the ranking system,” said Colin Diver, the former president of Reed College, who has written a book, “Breaking Ranks,” about the college ranking industry. “Unfortunately, most of higher education, especially the elite part, publicly criticizes the rankings right and left, and yet they cooperate with them.”
The formula’s rankings tend to cement the established reputations of the schools, Mr. Diver said.
In its blog post on Thursday, U.S. News said that after learning of the criticism in March, it had asked Columbia to substantiate the data it had reported, including information about the number of instructional full-time and part-time faculty, the number of full-time faculty with the highest degree in their field, the student-faculty ratio, undergraduate class size and education expenditures.
“To date, Columbia has been unable to provide satisfactory responses to the information U.S. News requested,” the post said.
Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News, wrote in an email on Friday that Columbia was no longer ranked in several categories — 2022 National Universities, 2022 Best Value Schools, and 2022 Top Performers on Social Mobility — because those rankings used data from the university’s statistical surveys. The organization has unranked universities before, he said.
Columbia had originally defended its statistics, but said in a statement on Friday that it “takes seriously the questions raised about our data submission,” and that it would not submit further “undergraduate-related information” to U.S. News while its own investigation was underway.
“A thorough review cannot be rushed,” the university wrote. “While we are disappointed in U.S. News & World Report’s decision, we consider this a matter of integrity and will take no shortcuts in getting it right.”
U.S. News has acknowledged that it relies on universities to vet their submitted data, which can be extensive, and that it does not have the resources to conduct independent audits. But the decision to remove Columbia from the current rankings once again raised questions about their overall accuracy.
In a separate blog post, Mr. Morse said that U.S. News publishes annual rankings for more than 11,500 schools and hundreds of individual programs. Typically, less than 0.1 percent a year inform U.S. News that they have misreported data, he said.
He provided a list of several dozen schools that had admitted misreporting data since 2019, and had been suspended a year for their candor.
Michael Thaddeus, the math professor who first raised questions about Columbia’s data on his webpage in February, said the news pointed to the flaws of a rankings system that did not independently vet the data behind it.
“What is clear is there’s no third-party vetting,” Dr. Thaddeus said. “At some point there has to be third-party auditing since these data are so important and so many people are making final decisions based upon the data. It won’t do to say these data are self-reported and there’s no way to check them.”
U.S. News did nod to the critics in its post about Columbia this week. “We continue to be concerned and are reviewing various options to ensure our rankings continue to uphold the highest levels of integrity,” it said.
Mr. Diver said it was standard practice for U.S. News to suspend schools for cheating or misreporting rankings data. But he said that usually happened when the school had admitted to misreporting or there was some kind of independent verification. “I assume they chose to do this because there were credible charges made that they had inflated that data on these different measures,” he said.
The president of Princeton, Christopher Eisgruber, wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post in October in which he said that although Princeton had topped the U.S. News rankings for 11 years, he was not a fan of the list.
“I am convinced that the rankings game is a bit of mishegoss — a slightly daft obsession that does harm when colleges, parents or students take it too seriously,” he wrote. Because students felt pressure to get into high-ranked schools, he said, schools concentrated resources on moving up in the rankings, to the detriment of goals like admitting more talented low-income students.
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
Saanich, British Columbia: 6 officers injured in shootout outside a Canadian bank, two suspects were shot and killed, police say
The suspects were killed after exchanging fire with police outside the bank in Saanich, according to Dean Duthie, the chief constable of the Saanich Police Department.
No one inside the bank was injured, Duthie said, noting it was one of the most violent scenes he’s seen in his nearly 27 years of service in Saanich, which is a district municipality on Vancouver Island in the Greater Victoria area.
“What I know about that chaotic, tragic, dynamic, violent scene, the fact that no citizens were injured in any way is truly amazing,” Duthie said.
Officers first responded to the scene around 11 a.m. after receiving a report that two armed men had entered a bank.
Officers engaged the suspects outside the bank, Duthie said at a news conference. The suspects were heavily armed and believed to be wearing body armor, he said.
During the confrontation, three officers from the Saanich Police Department and three from the Victoria Police Department were injured.
“A lot of shots were fired,” said Joan Flood, a Saanich resident who told CNN she was in in her fourth-floor apartment across the street from the bank when the shooting happened.
“I heard a gunshot and I was standing and turned around in the living room and then saw the police coming up to the bank with guns drawn,” she said.
Flood said as the scene unfolded, she saw a person fall to the ground and not get back up.
“As I was watching, a person came from behind the bank crouched over who definitely looked like they were hurt,” she said. “And they started to crawl and then they laid down and stayed that way.”
Three of the injured officers were expected to be released from the hospital, while the other three were undergoing surgery with more serious injuries, Duthie said Tuesday.
Homes and businesses near the scene were evacuated because of a potential explosive device in a vehicle connected to the suspects, he added.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police told CNN it is assisting Saanich Police.