AirUCI faculty Steve Davis has published a paper in the journal Nature Food which is generating quite a lot of interest. He and his team have modeled the value of reductions in ozone pollution on Californian agriculture, both historically and projected into the future. Ground ozone levels have a negative effect on yields, but past ozone reductions have improved yields of certain crops by as much as 20% although estimates of current damages are still $1 billion per year. Using the results of this study, it is now possible to estimate potential region- and crop-specific agricultural benefits of various energy-emissions scenarios,
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News
Here's the latest news from AirUCI — our events, our people, our science.
2020
Monday, March 16, 2020
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
A Reuters article dated March 11, 2020 discussed potential setbacks to global climate agreements due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus and the collapse in oil prices. Historically, difficult financial times, such as the current shutdown of economies worldwide, have pushed environmental concerns aside in favor of economic growth. AirUCI faculty Steve Davis is quoted about his recent publication in the science journal Nature Communications.
The great recession's impact in the United States was particularly marked, with CO2 emissions falling 10% between 2007-2009, due to factors including less consumption of goods and services, Steve said, and the subsequent growth in U.S. usage of natural gas helped suppress the rebound. “The conclusion that the Great Recession helped decrease emissions is still true,” he said, “but that’s not the way we want to win the war on climate change.” Read the article
Sunday, March 1, 2020
Alison Bain, graduate student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, will be joining the Nizkorodov group as a visiting Junior Specialist from March 1 through June 30, 2020. She will conduct studies of optical properties of atmospheric aerosol particles and other topics in atmospheric chemistry as part of her guided graduate research.
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
Jon Abbatt, AirUCI collaborator and former Fulbright Fellow with our institute, has been awarded the highest honor of the Chemical Institute of Canada, the 2020 CIC Award! This prestigious prize is presented for having made an outstanding contribution to the science of chemistry or chemical engineering in Canada. A professor at the University of Toronto, Jon collaborates with several AirUCI faculty, continuing the work he began as our Fulbright Fellow. Way to go, Jon!
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Tuesday, February 4, 2020
AirUCI faculty Kim Fortun is cited in an article on Citylab.com about the crisis of methamphetamine use in rural and disaffected America. Her concept of "late industrialism" describes the current era as "a time when many workers are overextended and living in precarity," when every social class and region is affected by such events as factories closing, jobs migrating overseas, and few remaining options for the populations left behind. Read the article
Saturday, February 1, 2020
Juan Miguel Gonzalez Sanchez, graduate student at the Université Aix-Marseille in France, is joining the Nizkorodov group as a visiting Junior Specialist from February 1 through May 31, 2020. He will be investigating organic nitrates and other topics in atmospheric chemistry as part of his guided graduate research.
Saturday, February 1, 2020
AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer is quoted in the February 1, 2020 issue of Scientific American in an article about reducing carbon based energy sources. Renewable hydrogen is replacing natural gas in European towns and has great potential to be a major source of power for segments of the worldwide economy that cannot simply plug into a big electrical outlet, such as heavy transport. “Far too many people have been misled into believing that electrification is the entire [carbon] solution,” says Jack, who has been engineering solutions to our region’s dirty air for more than two decades. “And many of our state agencies and legislators have bought in,” without considering how to solve energy storage or to fuel industry, he says, however the new push is to decarbonize electric grids and heavy industry rather than transportation. Read the article
Saturday, February 1, 2020
On Saturday, February 1, 2020, AirUCI faculty Mike Dennin participated in the annual Physics Day sponsored by the UCI School of Physical Sciences. This event is geared toward K-12 students and features demonstrations of physics concepts involving Sir Isaac Newton’s laws, momentum and conservation of momentum, rocketry, chemistry as well as mass and velocity. Mike talked about the powers of superheroes and told the students, “The cool thing about superheroes when it comes to physics is some of what they do is consistent with the law of physics and some of what they do is not.”
Friday, January 31, 2020
AirUCI graduate student Allison Vander Wall (Finlayson-Pitts group) recently submitted a major paper to the journal Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts and it was not only accepted for publication, but is featured on the cover of the first 2020 issue! Today she received the following message from the journal's editors:
"Your article “Evidence for a Kinetically Controlled Burying Mechanism for Growth of High Viscosity Secondary Organic Aerosol” has been selected by the handling Editor as one of the top 10% of papers published in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts. This selection is based on the exceptionally positive referee reports that your manuscript received during peer review, along with the Editor’s assessment of the significance and impact of the paper. We’ve collated your paper, along with other HOT papers recommended by our handling Editors, in this collection: rsc.li/espi-hot"
Congratulaions, Allison!
Thursday, January 30, 2020
AirUCI Grad Student Annie Rohrbacher (Finlayson-Pitts group) received an Outstanding Student Presentation award from the American Geophysical Union for her talk that was given at the annual AGU conference in San Francisco December 9-13, 2019. Annie's talk, entitled "Atmospheric Fate of Neonicotinoid Pesticides as Pure Compounds and in Formulations," was presented on December 12th and was her first presentation at a national meeting. These awards are given to the top 5% of student participants. Congratulations, Annie!
