Drinking water quality findings from the 2019 Sustainable LA Grand Challenge (SLA GC) Environmental Report Card for Los Angeles County Water were featured in a Cronkite News/Arizona PBS story about lead contamination in California public schools and communities. Lead can leak into drinking water from old pipes and infrastructure, and there is no state requirement for testing drinking water at the tap in homes.
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A New York Times article about the City of Los Angeles’ efforts to increase shade in underserved neighborhoods referenced a Alex Hall et al.’s 2015 study on climate modeling published in the Journal of Climate which found that the number of days in Downtown L.A. when temperatures top 95 degrees could nearly triple by 2050.
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A new report from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation examines the workforce implications of transitioning 100% of California’s existing and new buildings to clean electricity and offers recommendations for workforce planning and engagement around building decarbonization.
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The UCLA Grand Challenges program was referenced in a Chronicle Review piece written by Nicholas Lemann (professor of journalism and dean emeritus at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism; director of Columbia World Projects). Other campuses referenced included Georgia Tech, University of Minnesota, Texas A&M, and Indiana University.
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A Science Times article highlighted the development of an artificial material that mimics the circadian rhythm of the sunflower created by scientists from UCLA and Arizona State University. Currently, solar panels are installed with solar cells fixed in one position. The new sunflower-like biomimetic omnidirectional tracker, known as SunBOT, regulates its own movements to face the sun at an optimal position to absorb light from the sun more efficiently.
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