North of Norway, the robots wait. From a laboratory on Svalbard, a team of researchers led by Christopher Zappa of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are sending at least two Manta UAVs over the Arctic Ocean. Between Svalbard and Greenland, the drones measure melting ice with every flight to help humans better understand climate change and its impact on the Arctic.

That dreaded “low battery” warning on your digital camera may soon become a thing of the past. Several groups are trying to engineer cameras that are solar-powered, no plugs necessary. Researchers at Columbia University have developed a novel design in which each of the camera's pixels can both collect light as an energy source and capture an image. The researchers are presenting their work next week at the International Conference on Computational Photography in Houston, Texas.

We caught up with Steve Morse, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, to talk about the outbreak and where it might go from here. Below are four key things we learned:

“There’s a lot of hype around this issue,” says Upmanu Lall, professor of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University and director of its Water Center. But, he says, we’re in little danger of running out of water overall. One could conceive of a scenario in which we’ve used up all the freshwater locked in ice or aquifers.

The largest current study of a potential AIDS vaccine, a $77 million project led by a Columbia University doctor, has been shut down due to "futility." The patients will be monitored to see any long-term effects, but the message is clear: it doesn't work, shut it down.

Well timed to coincide with our feature on the Joplin tornado and its relation to climate, scientists from Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society are looking into climate indicators that tell us when tornadoes will appear.