Media Watch
Foothill wins Vital Link electric race car competition at UC Irvine
Daily Pilot -
High school students saw their ideas hit the pavement Saturday morning at UC Irvine. The annual Vital Link Energy Invitational took place at a parking lot on campus, with 11 high school teams racing their self-built electric cars in four heats. Two different teams from Foothill High placed first and third in the contest, which judged cars based on their efficiency using the following formula: 10 million, divided by (watt hours times total seconds). [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.] Read More
Should utilities rethink the power transmission model?
Marketplace -
Brian Tarroja, [senior scientist], a researcher at the University of California, Irvine, said …. “What we should talk about is not so much the question of whether the grid is ‘ready for it,’ but what are the steps that need to be taken to accommodate these new resources?” he said. According to Tarroja, building the solar plants, wind farms and battery storage is the first part of the equation. Then states have to build the infrastructure to get that electricity from the power plants into people’s homes and businesses. Read More
High school students go green for Energy Invitational race car competition
Daily Pilot -
Twenty-six high school teams from Orange County and Long Beach have been tasked with building the most efficient electric car they can. Their cars were inspected last weekend, and it’s all been leading up to race day Saturday morning at Parking Lot 70 at UC Irvine. … The teams will be back on track racing this year for the competition, originally created by UC Irvine engineering [Distinguished] Professor Michael McCarthy. [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.] Read More
Southeast Asia’s months-long heat wave is untenable for human health
Popular Science -
This extreme weather is “part of a broader climate-change signal,” Amir AghaKouchak, [professor of civil and environmental engineering and Earth system science], a climate researcher at the University of California, Irvine, told Tech Review. Even incremental increases in global temperature will cause extreme heat events like this to become more and more frequent. Read More
100 x 100 Beaches Project to measure changes in SoCal
Spectrum News 1 -
A team of students at the University of California, Irvine is working to document how much the beaches have narrowed using just pictures of the beach. One of the students is Victoria Lee, third-year civil engineering major. … She is part of the university’s 100 by 100 Beaches Project. Lee explained that it's a “project where we measure beach change over 100 years, every 100 meters.” The focus, according to Lee, is beach erosion. … Daniel Kahl is a graduate student helping the team of undergrads. Read More
South Asia’s scorching heat wave comes as climate action stalls
The Washington Post -
“Heat waves happen more frequently now and they are spread around throughout the year,” Amir AghaKouchak, a University of California, Irvine professor [of civil and environmental engineering and Earth system science], told my Capital Weather Gang colleagues. “This is the new normal and most likely it will only get worse in the future unless we take serious actions.” [Subscription required, campus-wide access provided by UCI Libraries. Sign-up here: https://guides.lib.uci.edu/news/post] Read More
Hydrogen Is Every U.S. Gas Utility's Favorite Hail Mary Pass
Bloomberg -
In addition, hydrogen behaves differently with certain metals and as result it can degrade and embrittle steel pipelines that are typically found in the nation’s high-pressure gas transmission system, said Jack Brouwer, director of the Advanced Power and Energy Program at the University of California, Irvine. Compressor stations designed to move natural gas don’t work well with hydrogen either, Brouwer said, so those would also need to be upgraded. Read More
Advanced Casting Research Center opens new metal process facility
Modern Casting -
The Advanced Casting Research Center (ACRC) unveiled its new state-of-the-art metal processing lab at University of California-Irvine on March 3. Researchers, professors, and leading metallurgists from around the country gathered for the grand opening event. Read More
Temperatures top 110 in Delhi as punishing heat wave builds in India
The Washington Post -
While this part of the world is no stranger to extreme heat, scientists say conditions have been worsened because of climate change. “Heat waves happen more frequently now and they are spread around throughout the year,” said Amir AghaKouchak, a professor [of civil and environmental engineering and Earth system science], at University of California, Irvine, in an email. “This is the new normal and most likely it will only get worse in the future unless we take serious actions.” [Subscription required, campus-wide access provided by UCI Libraries. Sign-up here: https://guides.lib.uci.edu/news/post] Read More
Climate change is making India’s brutal heat waves worse
MIT Technology Review -
“It’s part of a broader climate-change signal,” says Amir AghaKouchak, [professor of civil and environmental engineering and Earth system science], a climate researcher at the University of California, Irvine. India’s average annual temperature increased at a rate of 0.62 °C per 100 years between 1901 and 2020, according to data from the World Bank. And maximum temperatures have climbed even more quickly, at a rate of 0.99 °C every 100 years. “People think a degree or two might not matter,” AghaKouchak says, but when average temperatures increase by even small amounts, it means extreme events are becoming more likely. Read More