UCR: National transportation center seeks to improve sustainability
UC Riverside was selected to collaborate with a national transportation research center headed by UC Davis to help design sustainable infrastructure and vehicles in the face of global climate change.
The new National Center for Sustainable Transportation received $11.2 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation for the purpose of assisting local, state and federal transportation agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from passenger and freight travel.
Bourns College of Engineering’s Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT) will lead the research effort at UC Riverside. CE-CERT has been at the forefront of emissions measurements and analysis of various transportation modes, vehicle technologies and fuels. The college also pioneered the development of transportation and emission models.
CE-CERT Director Matthew Barth looks forward to heading the Riverside chapter of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. “This new national transportation center not only will bring together researchers among the consortium universities, but will also support organized transportation research across several UCR departments.”
Other consortium members include the University of Southern California, California State University, Long Beach State University, the University of Vermont and Georgia Institute of Technology.
UC Berkeley: Study examines healthier food options for hungry families
A multi-faceted study conducted by researchers at the UC Berkeley Atkins Center for Weight and Health (CWH) seeks to expand nutritional policies and practices within food banks.
Led by Elizabeth Campbell, Michelle Ross and Karen Webb, the study surveyed 200 U.S. Feeding America food banks and identified key nutritional content of distributed items.
According to a CWH media release, “Most food bank managers were supportive of nutrition in food banking practices, and indicated having the intent to improve the nutritional quality of foods. This is a significant shift from the traditional view that food banks’ only mission is to address hunger and not necessarily health.”
Another area of the study focused on improving the nutritional value of the food inventory of six California food banks from 2007-2010. It revealed that there was a noticeable increase in healthier foods over the years, but highly caloric foods still served as part of the main diets of low-income families.
The last component involved using the final results of the study to improve nutrition education among food bank leaders. Recommendations included establishing healthy guidelines through local, regional and national agencies.
The study is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Healthy Eating Research Program, which addresses issues of public health nationwide.
UC Davis: Neanderthals, not humans, made first bone tools
Naomi Martisius, a UC Davis anthropology doctoral student, is carrying out research on a bone tool discovery that she made in 2011. At the time, Martisius discovered the early specialized hunting bone tool, known as lissoirs, during an archeological dig in France. “I had no idea about the impact of my discovery,” Martisius said before she discovered the tool was used by a Neanderthal before homo sapiens, or “modern humans,” arrived in Europe.
The theories of past researchers were dashed with the discovery of the stone tools — once believed to be made by modern humans — among typical Neanderthal habitats some 50,000 years ago. Similar forms of these lissoirs are still used today to smooth and refine leather products.
“However, our identification of these pieces in secure Neanderthal contexts leaves open the possibility that we have found, for the first time, evidence that Neanderthals may have influenced the technology of modern humans,” said UC Davis Associate Professor of Anthropology Teresa E. Steele in a press release.
Martisius’ findings was the result of a decade of research by two international teams and became published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in August 2013.
