Environmental & Public Health

The Los Angeles Times also ran an excellent story on this subject: "An exquisite Mexico beach, cursed by plastic" (January 27. 2012)

Babies born to women pregnant during wildfires in Southern California in 2003 tended to have slightly lower birthweights than babies born to women pregnant in the same area at other times, according to a recently released study out of UC Berkeley.

Sue Chiang, pollution prevention co-director of the Oakland, California-based Center for Environmental Health, spoke with CIO Journal about how IT departments can make their work greener. Read the full story

"I've worked on contaminated sites for more than 20 years and I've never seen anything on the scale that I saw in Nigeria," said Donna Vorhees, an adjunct assistant professor of environmental health at BUSPH. "They're not just exposed – these people are actually living in petroleum." Read the full story

Nexleaf Analytics announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Nithya Ramanathan, President, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled “ColdTrace: Cellphone Sensor for Cold Chain Monitoring.”

Joe Creek has been a biological desert for decades. This small and unassuming stream flows north out of the Red Buttes Wilderness in Siskiyou County, California, and passes below the abandoned Blue Ledge Mine, after which its otherwise pristine water turns into a toxic brine as acidic as vinegar where only algae survives.

That closeness has a dollars-and-cents value. Cyclists travel at what Portland Bike Coordinator Roger Geller calls a “human-scale speed” that allows them to “stop and buy something.” Read the full story

When he became chief, many people wondered whether Mr. Cook, a skilled manager of Apple's operations, could ever rival the visionary influence of Mr. Jobs on Apple products. Instead, it appears Mr. Cook could make his earliest and most significant mark by changing how Apple's products are made. ''I want to give credit to Tim Cook for this,'' said Dara O'Rourke, associate professor of environmental and labor policy at the University of California, Berkeley. ''He's admitting they've got problems.''