AirUCI faculty Kim Fortun is quoted in a May 18th Voice of OC article on air pollution in Santa Ana. Also named in the article are Leonel Flores of our partner organization GREEN-MPNA and AirUCI undergrad student Aiden Brown, both part of AirUCI's Beyond the Tailpipe research team. “Part of what we’re doing is working to build an environmental justice archive, one that helps communities document the history of harms that they’re facing,” said Kim. Read the article
News
Here's the latest news from AirUCI — our events, our people, our science.
2023
Friday, May 12, 2023
AirUCI faculty Jane Baldwin was the guest on Third Pod from the Sun, a podcast of the American Geophysical Union. The topic was modeling hurricanes, a field where Jane is known as an expert, with discussions about algorhythms and how she uses them to model extreme weather as well as her background. You can listen to the podcast -- Jane's section starts at the 4 minute 15 second mark with their introduction.
Thursday, May 11, 2023
AirUCI faculty Mike Kleinman is co-author on a new paper describing a study that links air pollution to Alzheimer's Disease. The team conducted tests of memory and cognitive functions and found that both benchmarks were impaired by exposure to particulate matter. “Air pollution is one of the very few prominent, modifiable environmental risk factors in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Mike. “Public and environmental regulatory agencies need to accelerate efforts to reduce particulate matter levels in order to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other serious health conditions.” Read the article
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
Seven students in UCI's School of Physical Sciences are recipients of the prestigious National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship, and among these are Lena Gerritz. Lena is a grad student in AirUCI's Shiraiwa research team and is currently focused on the effect of wildfire air particles on long-term air quality. Congratulations, Lena! Read the article.
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
EcoGovLab anthropologist, videographer, and archivist Tim Schutz, an AirUCI grad student, was part of an interdisciplinary team that was awarded 1st place in an U.S. EPA video competition for work showing initiatives responding to environmental injustice in a particular community. Their winning video, entitled "Civic Bioremediation: Building a Network of Soil Practitioners," focused on lead remediation in Santa Ana. Congratulations, Tim!
Thursday, May 4, 2023
AirUCI founder and Co-Director Barbara Finlayson-Pitts is being awarded an honorary doctorate from McGill University in Toronto, Canada. The degree is Doctor of Science, honoris causa (D.Sc.) and is described as follows: "Honorary doctorates are McGill University’s highest honours, and are awarded to people who have shown exceptional dedication to improving the lives of others, whether through research, art, public service, or philanthropy." Congratulations, Barb!
Friday, April 21, 2023
In recognition of Earth Day, members of AirUCI's Social Sciences group posted an article describing their EcoGovLab project, founded at UCI in 2022 to coordinate a growing array of projects and collaborations supporting next generation environmental governance. An important goal is to help build the knowledge infrastructure needed to support next generation environmental governance — a daunting challenge requiring a multidisciplinary approach to research, data collection and sharing, journalistic dissemination of findings to a wide array of audiences, and new governmental initiatives across agencies. Read the article
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
AirUCI faculty Jun Wu serves on UCI’s Comprehensive Wellbeing Initiative leadership team, formed in response to implementation of the Okanagan Charter on campus. On Sept. 1, 2021, UCI was one of the first eight campuses in the U.S. to adopt the Okanagan Charter as a guiding and aspirational document to become a globally recognized Health Promoting University. Since then, this multidisciplinary leadership team has been working on infrastructure and strategy to move the initiative forward under the name Comprehensive Wellbeing Initiative. On April 19, UCI’s Comprehensive Wellbeing Initiative Town Hall fully introduced the initiative to the campus and shared the history and purpose of this project..
Friday, April 14, 2023
AirUCI Co-Director Barbara Finlayson-Pitts has been invited to speak on April 14th as part of the True Distinguished Lectureship series at the University of Iowa. Her talk is entitled, "Chemistry, Coughing and Climate: Challenges and Opportunities in the Air Quality-Climate Nexus."
Friday, April 7, 2023
AirUCI Co-Director Sergey Nizkorodov and AirUCI collaborator Christian George of the National Center for Scientific Research at the University of Lyon, France, have published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that offers a new understanding of how hydroxide (OH) molecules help clear the atmosphere of human-emitted pollutants and greenhouse gases. They found that a strong electric field that exists at the interface between airborne water droplets and the surrounding air can create OH by a previously unknown mechanism. “OH is a key player in the story of atmospheric chemistry. It initiates the reactions that break down airborne pollutants and helps to remove noxious chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide, which are poisonous gases, from the atmosphere,” says Christian, lead author on the study.
The current common assumption is that sunlight is the chief driver of OH formation in the atmosphere. Their research found that OH production rates in darkness mirror those and even exceed rates from drivers like sunlight exposure. “Enough OH will be created to compete with other known OH sources,” said Sergey. “At night, when there is no photochemistry, OH is still produced and it is produced at a higher rate than would otherwise happen.” " In the pure water itself, OH can be created spontaneously by the special conditions on the surface of the droplets.” Read the article
