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martes, 16 de octubre de 2012

NSF Investments Develop a Workforce for Sustainability Research and Education



The research of one SEES Fellow, Sarah Jane White of Harvard's School of Public Health, examines metal-rich acid mine drainage coming from a mine adit near Lake Fork Creek, Colo. For emerging metal contaminants like indium, gallium, germanium, and tellurium, releases from mining and smelting processes are thought to be the largest releases of these metals to the environment.
Credit: Sarah Jane White, Harvard School of Public Health
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (786 KB)
The National Science Foundation's SEES Fellows program today announced 20 new awards that address research questions at the core of environmental and economic sustainability and human well-being.
The SEES Fellows program is part of an NSF portfolio called "Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability," or SEES. The awards will enable promising early-career researchers to establish themselves in independent research careers related to sustainability.
From the practicality of solar energy, the efficacy of biofuels tax policy, techniques in food sustainability and genome sequencing, to ways to promote the health of shoreline ecosystems and mitigate the health effects of understudied metals and their byproducts, this year's Fellows will embark on a diversity of research questions important for America's future.
The SEES Fellows program aims to facilitate investigations that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and address issues of sustainability through a systems approach, building bridges between academic inquiry, economic growth and societal needs.
A SEES Fellow's proposed investigation must be interdisciplinary and allow him or her to obtain research experiences beyond the researcher's current core disciplinary expertise. Fellows must develop research partnerships that advance and broaden the impact or scope of the proposed research and present a plan for their own professional development in the area of sustainability science and engineering.
The complete list of awards, primary institutions and principal investigators follow below:
This study will develop metrics and measurement tools for quantitatively and spatially capturing data on social and cultural human values that can be incorporated into environmental planning, urban development and other land-use decision-making contexts.
This project will explore the impacts of changes in land cover and land use in northwestern Mexico on moisture recycling and transport to both the United States and other areas of Mexico using a coupled land-atmosphere model.
This research will focus on integrating engineering, environmental, economic and policy concepts to biofuels tax policy. A detailed survey of biofuels producers will be used to collect information on the nature of existing market failures, applying models to verify and assess the effectiveness of various tax proposals at multiple scales.
This project will explore the relationship between soil, climate and production variables in predicting agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. swine production. Results will be incorporated into a nationwide life cycle assessment of the U.S. swine and pork industry.
This research will develop solar windows consisting of semitransparent Luminescent Solar Concentrators with optimized efficiency for the utilization of electrical, chemical and thermal solar energy.
This project will leverage high-performance computing to assess key challenges of climate change. The overall goal is to improve understanding of the interactions of climate and socio-economic changes on agricultural commodities, local land use and land cover, and regional and global food sustainability.
This research will address the regulation and economics of shale-gas development to develop an approach for choosing regulations that minimize risk to the environment while allowing for robust development of shale-gas reserves.
This study will integrate the approaches of industrial and political ecology to assess re-localization efforts--a movement to encourage sustainable production and consumption of food, energy and goods--in Hawaii, and their implications for sustainability.
This project will develop statistical methods to enable ecologists to address critical problems in biodiversity modeling, to advance understanding of key aspects of species distributions that can guide conservation efforts.
This research will use advanced genomic sequencing techniques to investigate how biological control agents are established, undergo genetic variation, and adapt to novel environments.
This project will explore the motivations for and outcomes associated with the stewardship of so-called sustainable yard practices--that is, ways to reconcile urban environmental integrity.
This research will investigate a novel approach for converting environmentally-detrimental wastewater nutrients into fertilizing biomass and commodity chemicals.
This study will probe the technical and social challenges of implementing a water reuse technology that integrates the processes of energy production, wastewater treatment and drinking water purification.
Sustainable Energy Infrastructure Planning-- Roshanak Nateghi, Johns Hopkins University
This project will assess the design of a new generation of policy incentives for sustainable modernization and expansion of U.S. electric power infrastructure, a climate resilient infrastructure that can meet society's projected future energy demands.
This research will explore the technological, environmental and socio-economic barriers to adopting solar power, now used to supply only about one-tenth of one percent of worldwide energy demand, despite its having the greatest potential of any sustainable resource.
By studying the Narragansett and Mobile Bays, both large, densely-populated areas that have experienced dramatic declines in nearshore marine habitats, this project will investigate how social, ecological and engineering factors may contribute to coastal resilience.
This research will assess the role of landscapes in maintaining and protecting aquatic resources while allowing for land development and examine how patterns of stream fish and insect community composition relate to land-use patterns at different scales.
This study will explore how socio-economic and soil fertility factors interact to generate unsustainable agricultural practices in Uganda, how the trend of productivity loss might be reversed and how the reversal of productivity declines can be used to protect the Albertine Rift, including Kibale National Park, one of the Earth's most valuable biodiversity resources.
This project aims to expand understanding of how social-ecological systems adapt to change in terms of natural resource use, examining a model island system, the Hawaiian ahupuaa (a traditional Hawaiian unit of land division which organized human communities along watershed boundaries).
This research will address the need for the early assessment of novel industrial materials--understudied metals and their byproducts--that will be used in future semiconductors in order to prevent future adverse environmental and human health impacts.
Information on the FY 2013 SEES Fellows competition can be found on the program website. The proposal deadline is November 26, 2012.
-NSF-
Media Contacts Lisa-Joy Zgorski, NSF (703) 292-8311 lisajoy@nsf.gov
Program Contacts Larry H. Weber, NSF (703) 292-8580 lweber@nsf.gov
Related Websites
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget is $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards nearly $420 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
Useful NSF Web Sites:
NSF Home Page: http://www.nsf.gov
NSF News: http://www.nsf.gov/news/
For the News Media: http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsroom.jsp
Science and Engineering Statistics: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/
Awards Searches: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/
 The National Science Foundation (NSF).
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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