Princeton University researchers have received a $2.5 million federal grant to lead an interdisciplinary effort with academic, city government and nonprofit partners that will develop a scientific process for establishing urban food systems that are less wasteful and environmentally detrimental. The grant will be administered by the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI).
The intensive fires in the Amazon, the rapid melting of glaciers and ice sheets, and continued loss of biodiversity all illustrate that our planet is changing at a dangerous pace. At the same time, we are entering a period of unprecedented technological change.
A group of Princeton University physicists has been awarded a two-year grant by the American Physical Society (APS) Innovation Fund to educate and re-engage the U.S. physics community on the globally important issue of the risk posed by nuclear weapons and the pressing need to reduce this threat.
At Princeton, the work will be led by:
Just how valuable are Yelp and Amazon ratings?
An international team of researchers tested the idea that free online ratings are less trustworthy than those that have some cost to them, drawing from the ecological theory known as “costly signaling theory.”
It’s a classic policy dispute: How much should the current generation invest in reducing carbon emissions for the benefit of future generations?
A study published in Nature Communications helps answer this question by quantifying whether reducing carbon emissions — which will have global benefits in the future — also improves air quality now. Preventing many of the human health burdens that result from air pollution would be a powerful positive incentive to act sooner than later.
As the planet continues to warm, multi-day heat waves are projected to increase in frequency, length and intensity. The additive effects of these extreme heat events overwhelm emergency service providers and hospital staff with heat-related maladies, disrupt the electrical grid and can even cause delays in air travel.
But existing studies do not consider the increased loss of life and economic hardship that could come from back-to-back — or compound — heat waves, which bring cycles of sweltering temperatures with only brief periods of normal conditions in between.
The National Academy of Sciences has elected four Princeton faculty members to join its ranks. They are among 100 new members and 25 foreign associates who were selected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Those elected bring the total number of active members to 2,347 and the total number of foreign associates to 487. Foreign associates are nonvoting members of the academy, with citizenship outside the United States.
Health care-associated infections — illnesses that people contract while being treated in a hospital or other health care facility — sicken millions of people each year and cost billions of dollars in additional treatment. While there has been some improvement over the years, on any given day, about 3 percent of the hospitalized population in the United States has at least one health care-associated infection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
