Columbia

Frederic Mishkin, former Federal Reserve Board Governor and a Columbia University economics professor, discusses Sen. Dodd's financial reform bill and...

Jon Pittenger Aspen, CO Colorado Jon Pittenger of Glenwood Springs passed away Nov. 3, 2009. He was 50.Jon was born in Columbia, Mo. on J...

Jon Pittenger Post Independent Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado Jon Pittenger of Glenwood Springs passed away Nov. 3, 2009. He was 50. Jon w...

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Michelle Obama and Jill Biden were in the Bronx yesterday to watch the Yankees game. Beforehand, they visited a veterans center in Kingsbridge Heights...

— "The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong With the World's Leading Media Companies" (Portfolio, 272 pages, $26.95), by Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald and Ava Seave: For each of the world's many now-faltering media conglomerates, there are thousands of former writers, artists, actors, managers, sales people and other employees, plus countless investors, consultants and fans.

So there's no shortage of backseat drivers nattering like disillusioned lovers as media companies crash. The dispassionate critique from Columbia University economist and business professor Greenwald, business instructor and former investment banker Knee and media consultant Seave, which grew out of a class at Columbia's business school, contrasts with most recent commentary.

Reviewing the financial and stock market performance by top media companies – GE/NBC, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, Vivendi, News Corp. and other conglomerates that produce and distribute information and entertainment – the authors conclude the companies have fallen short of the stock market, "significantly and relentlessly," for more than a decade.

They see a simple cause: decision-making in which efficiency is almost taboo and the fundamentals of economics and accounting are frequently suspended in favor of historic status as first mover or a belief unrelated businesses will suddenly experience "convergence."

"Without drastic action," the authors warn, "There is little reason to think that performance during the next 10 years will be any better."

Via Flickr/Angela Rutherford In the new stretch of retail and residential that is Columbus Village, between 97th and 100th Streets, Upper West Side...

NEW YORK — Julia Stiles first played the role of life-wrecker Carol in "Oleanna" when she was in college, and the play, about a confused student who accuses her professor of sexual impropriety, stuck with her well beyond the final curtain.

She never felt that she had gotten the part quite right. Now she has a do-over, in a Broadway revival with Bill Pullman.

"I love this play," says Stiles, who took time off from Columbia University to perform the role on London's West End in 2004. "But I always felt I didn't quite get it right, and I really welcomed the chance to get back into it."

Five years later, she is reprising the role in the David Mamet play opposite Pullman who plays John, the object of Carol's ire. The play runs 80 minutes with no intermission, and the story makes the audience twist and squirm with confusion as the heat and intensity rise until the final most shocking moment.

Now 28 and no longer a student – she graduated from Columbia in 2005 – Stiles has a different perspective on both the two-character drama and her role.

[Photo at right via The New York Times.] We're not sure what crazy secrets Columbia University is planning to house in the labs of its new science ...

In August, Worldfocus web producer Ben Piven traveled to the 2009 Arirang Games in Pyongyang, North Korea, with a point-and-shoot camera. A North Kore...

Micah Fink, for the Pulitzer CenterNumbers, statistics and dates are notoriously difficult elements in any television script. Most people find it hard...

NEW YORK — A new study suggests retired National Football League players may have a high rate of Alzheimer's disease or other memory problems.

The telephone survey asked if the retirees had ever been diagnosed with dementia, Alzheimer's disease or other memory-related disease. Nearly 2 percent of the former players ages 30 to 49 said yes. That's 19 times the rate for the same age group in the general population.

For retirees over 50, the rate was about five times higher.

Lead author David Weir emphasized the results don't show football causes memory problems, only that the risk is worth studying. The study of more than 1,000 ex-players was performed by the University of Michigan at the request of the NFL and its Player Care Foundation.

One best-selling book advocating fresh, local foods is shaking up America's Dairyland.

Students across University of Wisconsin-Madison's campus, organic grocers, scientists, and dairy farmers large and small have jumped into the debate on how food is produced and eaten. The discussions started last month when the university began giving Michael Pollan's book, "In Defense of Food," free to all incoming freshmen and school officials urged professors to use it in class.

"I have not seen the students this excited about something in years," Irwin Goodman, a horticulture professor who is vice dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences said of the buzz on campus about Pollan's field-to-table philosophies.

The book urges readers to "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" and criticizes food companies and scientists for replacing traditional foods with unhealthier, highly processed substitutes and confusing consumers with health claims.

Pollan's work has been used on college campuses from the University of California-Berkeley, where he is a journalism professor, to Columbia University in New York City for courses ranging from science journalism to environmental politics. But the program at UW-Madison is unique because the book and related topics are being discussed everywhere from French and political science courses to an exhibit on the history of food. And Pollan is to speak at the 17,000-seat Kohl Center Thursday in the liberal college town.

Abbott Laboratories says results of a large study place its artery-opening Xience stent on equal footing with competitor Boston Scientific in diabetics, a difficult-to-treat group of patients.

Abbott says there was no difference in safety complications between diabetic patients with a Xience drug-coated stent, versus Boston Scientific's Taxus Express stent.

Previous results had suggested fewer heart-related problems with Taxus, helping Boston Scientific protect its share of the market for the mesh-wire tubes.

Stents are used to prop open arteries after they have been surgically cleared of fatty plaque.

Boston Scientific complains Abbott compared Xience to Taxus Express, which has been replaced by the more advanced Taxus Liberte.

Today, the Obama administration adopted a Bush-era salmon plan for the Columbia-Snake rivers in the Northwest. A national coalition of busines...

Jeff Jarvis: Future of Media and the Prospects for Brands Jeff Jarvis, Associate Professor and Director of the Interactive Journalism Program of the ...

It appears as though Rick Scott is expanding his modest health care clinic chain, Solantic, into a larger endeavor.  Scott's previous record (hea...