Sustainability News

NSF recently recorded a webinar about the requirement to use an NSF-approved format for both the biographical sketch and current & pending support documents as part of proposals submitted to NSF. The policy, outlined in the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 20-1), goes into effect for proposals submitted or due, on or after June 1, 2020.

Webinar topics include:

• the policy guidance for preparation of the biographical sketch and current and pending support sections of the proposal;
• a walk-through of the user experience in accessing these formats in NSF systems;
• detailed guidance from NIH on using SciENcv for preparing both documents; and
• answers to a number of frequently asked questions.

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COVID-19 may have jumped from a wild animal market in Wuhan, China, to people. If so, it’s not the first deadly disease to spring from nature. Middle East respiratory syndrome is said to have a source at a camel market in Saudi Arabia. In the United States, the H1N1 swine flu originated in factory farms where animals are held in extreme confinement. And Ebola likely had its start in a chimpanzee habitat in West Africa.

A rising chorus is calling for wildlife markets to be shut down across the globe.

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The Environmental Humanities Initiative of the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University is collaborating with the University of Texas Humanities Institute in a grant awarded by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), located at the University of Wisconsin System. The grant, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is for the purpose of conducting a Global Humanities Institute (GHI) in summer 2021 on the theme “Climate Justice and Problems of Scale.” This will be the fifth GHI funded through the CHCI-Mellon partnership.

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In his new book, "Environment," author and renowned scientist Rolf Halden explores our essential interconnectedness with our surroundings. In observations both personal and scientific, Halden reflects on how our daily lifestyle decisions are impacting the places we occupy, our health and humanity’s prospect of survival.

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An unfathomable amount of plastic has made its way into our oceans, but Charlie Rolsky believes we can make small changes in our lives to turn the tide of plastic pollution for a cleaner world and healthier ecosystems. Rolsky is a PhD candidate in the Biodesign Institute's Center for Environmental Health Engineering.

Rolsky's talk is part of the ASU KEDtalks series. Short for Knowledge Enterprise Development talks, KEDtalks aim to spark ideas, indulge curiosity and inspire action by highlighting ASU scientists, humanists, social scientists and artists who are driven to find solutions to the universe’s grandest challenges. Tune in to research.asu.edu/kedtalks to discover more.

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As we try to tackle the wicked problem of climate change, one of the biggest and most important hurdles is the transformation of our food systems. While that may sound like a daunting task, the good news is there are little changes we can make each day to bring us closer to that transformation. One of these changes is reducing food waste, a concept that has found a passionate advocate in sustainable restauranteur Danielle Leoni.

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In a new study, ASU researchers Rolf Halden and Olga Hart analyze what can and cannot be measured when tracking SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, and they highlight the economic advantages of the new approach over conventional disease testing and epidemiological surveillance. Their research appears in the current issue of the journal Science of the Total Environment.

A new approach to monitoring the novel coronavirus (as well as other dangerous pathogens and chemical agents) is being developed and refined. Known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), the method mines sewage samples for vital clues about human health. It can potentially identify levels of coronavirus infection at both a local and global scale.

Wastewater-based epidemiology holds the potential to break the coronavirus testing logjam in many developed nations like the U.S., but it could also be an invaluable tool for gathering health data in impoverished regions likely to bear the brunt of the pandemic.

Halden directs the Center for Environmental Health Engineering at ASU's Biodesign Institute, which is working with the City of Tempe to study the city's wastewater. A dashboard is available at covid19.tempe.gov.

Arizona State University ranks top in the U.S. and fifth in the world out of 766 institutions in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The global ranking is a jump from last year’s 35th place.

In the annual rankings published by Times Higher Education magazine, ASU scored 96.3 out of 100 points. It was the top American university in the rankings. Only three American universities placed in the top 100. ASU beat the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Penn State.

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In 2007, Arizona State University was ahead of the curve when it came to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That’s when ASU pledged to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions from campus operations by 2025. To underscore the urgency to act, ASU reached that goal six years early — on June 30, 2019.

Increased energy efficiency in both new buildings and campus retrofits; on-site solar generation; renewable energy purchases from large-scale, off-site generation facilities; and purchase of carbon offsets and renewable energy were all deployed while growing the student population and undertaking a physical expansion of all ASU’s campuses.

This action is one key element of many initiatives that have helped ASU also earn the STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System) Platinum sustainability rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. STARS is a framework for colleges and universities to measure their comprehensive sustainability performance.

Platinum is the highest certification awarded in the STARS program and ASU is one of only six universities in the world to achieve the STARS Platinum rating.

Thirteen years ago, Arizona State University made the pioneering promise to completely eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from its campus operations by the year 2025. But on June 30, 2019, the university accomplished that goal, six years ahead of schedule. This remarkable achievement—completed even as ASU’s student population ballooned—was one of many initiatives that earned the university the prestigious STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System) Platinum sustainability rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

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Since the first Earth Day in 1970, attitudes in the United States concerning environmentalism have gradually evolved from a focus on addressing pollution to a focus on protecting and nurturing our ecosystems. And as that transformation has taken place over the decades, two Arizona State University professors have been there to witness it all.

Joni Adamson, the President's Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Department of English and director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, and Paul Hirt, a professor of history specializing in the American West, environmental history and policy and sustainability studies, shared their thoughts on how the country’s attitude toward saving the planet changed in an interview with ASU Now. Both Adamson and Hirt acknowledged that there’s been a shift in focus each decade, including in Arizona:

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Dedicated to fostering sustainable change through education, School of Sustainability master's student Julia Colbert helped implement nature journaling in local elementary school classrooms.

“Education has always been a significant part of my life. No matter where I go, what I do, and who I spend time with, I find myself gravitating towards education spaces,” Colbert said. Read more from Colbert in her Q&A.

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Sustainability scientist Ariane Middel, an assistant professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and in the School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, has been awarded an NSF CAREER award to further pursue her research in the SHaDE lab, which looks at heat from a human perspective.

The panel that reviewed her work particularly valued Middel’s integration of research and education, with K–12 outreach and a special focus on attracting women to STEM fields, and the academia-practitioner partnerships she is building with cities in the Valley.

“The proposed research will help us understand how people experience heat by including other atmospheric variables, such as mean radiant temperature (MRT),” Middel said. “MRT represents the heat load on a human body and varies significantly if somebody is standing in the shade or sun. We will use an innovative mobile sensor platform called “MaRTy” to measures how people experience heat in Phoenix and Los Angeles.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced rapid, large changes in how we do practically everything. Virtually overnight, a large fraction of U.S. households has transitioned from a reality of long commutes, in-person classes and business meetings, and in-store shopping to one of telecommuting, online classes and business meetings, and online shopping – even for groceries. Many of these changes were happening already, but COVID-19 has pressed the fast-forward button.

Sustainability scientists Deborah Salon and Mike Kuby invite you to take part in a survey-based research study to better understand which of the COVID-19 changes might persist after the pandemic, and for whom. The results will help government agencies and communities recover faster and become more resilient to the next adverse event. They will be making the responses to this survey available to anyone who would like to use them, with the hope that this will increase their usefulness in preparing for the future.

The Public Interest Technology University Network is pleased to announce the launch of the Year 2 Challenge for its 36 members. ASU is a founding member of this network, and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society won a grant in year 1.

The Challenge aims to support the development of Public Interest Technology programs within academia by encouraging new ideas, fostering collaborations, and incentivizing resource- and information-sharing among network members.

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Sustainability scientist Amber Wutich will join the New York Academy of Sciences Anthropology Section as a panelist for a webinar focused on our current pandemic (COVID-19), contextualizing the global comparative, disease and treatment, issues of social and economic inequity, immigrant health, questions of stigma, and policy. The panel will be moderated by Tonya Taylor, assistant professor, College of Medicine, SUNY Downstate.

Wutich is President’s Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Global Health in Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Other panelists include Shirley Lindenbaum (Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, The Graduate Center, CUNY), Merrill Singer (Professor Emeritus of Medical Anthropology, The University of Connecticut and in Community Medicine at The University of Connecticut Health Center), James H. Jones (Associate Professor of Earth System Science & Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University), and Thurka Sangaramoorthy (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Maryland).

A new webinar panel series entitled Don’t Waste the COVID-19 Crisis: Reflections on Resilience and the Commons Revealed by COVID-19, kicks off on April 20 with an event featuring sustainability scientists Brad Allenby and David Manuel-Navarrete.

Tune in to Zoom on Monday at noon for the event, What Does a Post-COVID-19 World Look Like?

Co-hosted by the Center for Behavior Institutions and the Environment (CBIE), the International Association for Study of the Commons (IASC), and the Resilience Alliance, the series was organized by Marco Janssen, Marty Anderies, and Mike Schoon.

Garr Punnett had been working in television production when he realized he wanted something more. Inspired by the environmentally conscious fashion brands he had recently discovered, he decided to obtain a degree in sustainability.

"A sustainability degree has provided me a different lens through which to view the world," said Punnett, who graduated with a Master of Sustainability Solutions. "I believe there is a lack of social and environmental empathy when constructing business models and my degree allow me to act with a better degree of certainty what I believe our future economy should look like."

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We live in an era of rapid societal and environmental changes. Arizona State University's Narrative Storytelling Initiative wants to know: how do you envision the future?

The initiative, in collaboration with the Global Futures Laboratory, the Environmental Humanities Initiative and the Institute for Humanities Research, is holding a story and essay contest to capture your idea of what the future holds.

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Arizona State University Knowledge Enterprise offers free access to Dr. Meg Bouvier’s virtual, on-demand grantsmanship training courses. ASU researchers can take advantage of valuable training from medical writer Meg Bouvier.

To access the training:

1. Visit MegBouvier.com
2. Choose your training workshop
3. Use code "ASU NIH Training" on checkout

Margaret Bouvier works with institutions that conduct biomedical research—from academic medical centers to universities to non-profits. As a full-time NIH grantwriter, she sees dozens of reviewer comments each year. With that broad, current perspective, she knows what is fundable right now.

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