Making Headlines
The following articles reflect our commitment to share sustainability-related accomplishments across the university — representing its colleges, departments, institutes, centers and other units — in the areas of research, student engagement, campus stewardship and collaborations with the public and private sectors.
Traverse City Ticker, August 28, 2019
The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay has received a $150,000 grant from the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation’s Sustain Our Great Lakes (NFWF-SOGL) for a stormwater program in the Village of Elk Rapids focused on green infrastructure. National Fish & Wildlife Foundation funds will be paired with Great Lakes Protection Fund support provided to Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin Sea Grant programs aimed at helping marinas make their facilities more environmentally sustainable by harnessing the power of green infrastructure. The Sea Grant programs will be working with Ohio State University, which will lead monitoring and data collection for the project. ...
Featured expert(s): Ryan Winston
food, agricultural and biological engineering, SI Core Faculty
Lima News, August 28, 2019
Falling ethanol prices, driven by rising corn prices and an oversupply of the corn-based fuel, are forcing major producers such as POET to scale back production. The Midwest-based ethanol producer, which operates a biorefinery in Leipsic, is idling an Indiana bioprocessing facility and cutting production at half of its refineries, with the largest reductions expected in Ohio and Iowa. ...
Featured expert(s): Benjamin Brown
agricultural, environmental and development economics
Business First, August 27, 2019
The private company managing Ohio State University's energy infrastructure wants to build a new energy-efficient joint heating and cooling plant – including a new pedestrian bridge over the Olentangy River – as part of a $393 million capital improvement plan. ...
Journal Gazette and Times Courier , August 25, 2019
An $11.1 million grant to create high-resolution topographical maps of the entire planet will extend the life of the Blue Waters supercomputer by another year. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois landed the grant from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to work with researchers at the University of Minnesota and Ohio State University, who used Blue Waters to create similar digital models of the Arctic and Antarctic for the first time. ...
Featured expert(s): Ian Howat
Bird Polar and Climate Research Center
National Geographic, August 23, 2019
The moment the modern plastic beverage bottle changed the world’s drinking habits is difficult to pinpoint. The day New York supermodels began carrying tall bottles of Evian water as an accessory on fashion show catwalks in the late 1980s surely signaled the future ahead. Billions of bottles were sold on the promise that bottled water is good for hair and skin, healthier than soft drinks and safer than tap water. And it didn’t take consumers long to buy into the notion that they needed water within reach virtually everywhere they went. ...
Featured expert(s): Bart Elmore
history, SI affiliated faculty
Columbus Dispatch, Aug. 22, 2019
Ohio children are feeling the effects of climate change, and that will only worsen unless action is taken, environmentalists said Thursday. “Climate change has, unfortunately, been conceptualized historically in the popular imagination as an issue that will affect animal species in a distant time in place. For example, polar bears in the Arctic Circle 50 years from now,” said Dr. Aparna Bole, a Shaker Heights pediatrician. “But in fact, climate change is fundamentally a public health issue affecting people, and especially children, right here and right now, and that’s why we’re so concerned.” ...
Featured expert(s): Aaron Wilson
Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, SI affiliated faculty
Vanity Fair, Aug. 21, 2019
President Donald Trump raged against the auto industry Wednesday, as car manufacturers continue to balk at his administration's planned rollback of Obama-era fuel emission standards. The Trump administration has long planned to stop Obama's policy, but California, which receives a waiver to enact its own fuel policies, responded by enacting tougher emission standards of its own. Now, automakers are caught in the middle between the two competing standards—but more are taking California's side, including four of the world's largest automakers. And, predictably, Trump isn't thrilled. ...
Featured expert(s): Giorgio Rizzoni
mechanical and aerospace engineering, SI affiliated faculty
Michigan Radio NPR, Aug. 19, 2019
Phosphorus, much from fertilizer run-off, and high temperatures contribute to the explosion of blooms. Scientists say the cyanobacteria blooms are caused, in part, by climate change because of higher averaging temperatures, and freshwater ecosystems around the world will see similar blooms. Ohio researchers are doing all they can to find solutions for this “new normal." The Harmful Algal Bloom Research Initiative is made up of more than 50 science teams including Ohio colleges and universities. ...
Featured expert(s): Chris Winslow
Center Lake Erie Area Research
Statehouse News Bureau, Aug. 15, 2019
A debate is brewing over whether a group can put the state’s new nuclear bailout bill before voters next year as referendum. The dispute questions if the increased rate on electric bills should be considered a tax increase. ...
Featured expert(s): Ned Hill
public affairs, SI affiliated faculty
Green Car Progress, Aug. 10, 2019
Disease-causing air pollution remains high in pockets of America, particularly those where many low-income and African-American people live, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York. The nation’s air on the whole has become cleaner in the past 70 years, but those benefits are seen primarily in whiter, higher-income areas, said Kerry Ard, an associate professor of environmental sociology at The Ohio State University (OSU), who presented the research. ...
Featured expert(s): Kerry Ard
environmental sociology, SI affiliated faculty