Study authors determined that California wildfires consumed five times more area between 1996 and 2021 than in the 25 years prior — an increase chiefly attributed to climate change. Researchers also determined that the 50-year period as a whole saw a 172% increase in burn area. “This is very, very high,” said study co-author Amir AghaKouchak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine.
Today, [Assistant Professor Quinton Smith’s] lab at the University of California, Irvine uses tools often employed in fabricating tiny electronics to craft miniature, lab-grown organs that mimic their real-life counterparts. “Most of the time, when we study cells, we study them in a petri dish,” Smith says. “But that’s not their native form.” Prodding cells to assemble into these 3-D structures, called organoids, can give researchers a new way to study diseases and test potential treatments.
The interhemispheric teleconnection that we have discovered promises earlier and more accurate prediction of winter precipitation in California and the southwestern U.S.,” said study co-author Professor Efi Foufoula-Georgiou. “Knowing how much rain to expect in the coming winter is crucial for the economy, water security and ecosystem management of the region.
An interdisciplinary field that deals with the discovery and design of new materials - materials created to solve major problems in the world related to energy, human health and the environment.
“This is an important contribution to the wildland fire literature,” says Tirtha Banerjee, an expert in turbulent flows in natural environments [and associate professor] at the University of California, Irvine. The research “provides insights into the complex interaction of strong buoyant plumes with canopy turbulence,” he says. Banerjee adds that this information is essential for predictions of the spread of fires through the dispersal of burning pieces of wood. Read More
Amir AghaKouchak, [associate professor] University of California, Irvine; and Ben van der Pluijm, write, “The key question is, What does it take to prevent natural hazards from becoming human disasters? … This leads to another important question: How can the scientific community inform societies about critical thresholds and strengthen their resilience against natural hazards?”
Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, located at UC Irvine, [writes]: You’d have to be completely uninterested in cars or any other type of transportation to not recognize that automobiles are undergoing a major transition.
A powerful storm hit Libya’s northeast coast on Sunday.
As Hurricane Florence nears land, one engineer notes the rising risk of a flooding double whammy as sea levels rise and the climate changes. Guest: Amir AghaKouchak, associate professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Irvine.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine who study the behavior of fire embers have determined the majority of fire damage in major wildfires comes from embers that have the ability to move far away from the actual burn site.
“It’s basically a win-win for almost everybody, the express lanes,” said UC Irvine economics professor Jan Brueckner, a member of the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies. … Sarah Catz, a UC Irvine transportation researcher and former OCTA board member, said another benefit of the express lane tolls is they bring in a consistent revenue stream to be used for maintenance. “There isn’t enough money out there for all the maintenance that has to be done on our roads, unfortunately,” Catz said.
One of the many ways modern societies lose valuable drinking water is through toilets. So says environmental engineer Stanley Grant of the University of California, Irvine. He and colleagues study ways to manage the water supply in urban areas. And given increasing drought due to global warming, the topic has never been more urgent.
More places will have to develop robust programs to restore groundwater that provide multiple “access points” for surface water to seep into the aquifer, University of California, Irvine civil engineer Brett Sanders said. Large basins serve as primary access points for groundwater to filter downward, holding large amounts of runoff and recycled wastewater that trickle into aquifers. Communities also must add smaller green spaces to improve storage and prevent flooding by helping more water get into the ground, he said.
