For more than 50 years, the 91探花 has recognized Earth Day by engaging students, faculty and staff in a variety of activities and events aimed at creating a more sustainable future.

Over the years, the 91探花has been a champion for sustainable practices on campus, winning awards for recycling and reducing waste. New construction at the 91探花is recognized as state-of-the-art, and now campus officials are aiming to reduce the 鲍奥鈥檚 carbon emissions by improving behind-the-scenes heating, cooling and electrical systems on all three campuses.

In 2023, the 91探花plans to spend $3 million on energy and water conservation efforts, representing a 400% increase from the previous year, officials said. Aging equipment is being replaced, lighting exchanged and new monitoring systems installed allowing for the 91探花to take informed steps to reduce the university鈥檚 carbon footprint. As a result, the 91探花will pay less for energy and water and use those cost savings to pay for future sustainability improvements.

鈥淎s a world leader in climate research and innovation, the 91探花is committed to doing our part to reach a carbon-neutral future by reducing the amount of energy and water used on our own campuses,鈥� said 91探花President Ana Mari Cauce. 鈥淏y focusing on innovative new construction practices, improving energy efficiency in all our existing buildings and updating parts of our core infrastructure, the 91探花is taking a significant step toward increasing sustainability in all our operations.鈥�

New construction at the 91探花is utilizing some of the most advanced sustainable building practices available, minimizing energy and water usage while maximizing space for collaborative interactions. Opened in 2021, the Hans Rosling Center for Population Health earlier this year achieved LEED Platinum, the highest standard in sustainable building practices. And when the Foster School鈥檚 Founders Hall it was the first building at the 91探花to be constructed of engineered wood in place of steel and concrete, and will use 70% less energy and 53% less water than a comparable facility built with conventional materials.

Meanwhile, 91探花Facilities has worked to improve existing buildings, some dating back more than a century. The 91探花resource conservation program, established in 2015, has completed more than $5 million in capital improvement projects. Most of the work involves repair, replacement and modernization of heat and cooling systems, and lighting and electrical components. Antiquated machinery is being replaced with cutting-edge building automation technologies that allow facilities engineers to better monitor and control heating and cooling systems.

鈥淭he 91探花takes seriously its role in the region, the state and the world,鈥� said Lou Cariello, vice president for 91探花Facilities. 鈥淲e are poised to evolve our physical spaces and infrastructure to meet the needs of tomorrow by implementing technologies that will reduce our carbon footprint and create a campus for the future.鈥�

鲍奥鈥檚 lays out a plan to transform and decarbonize the energy system of the Seattle campus and help the 91探花meet the greenhouse gas reduction targets in its . Cariello and other 91探花Facilities officials have been sharing the plan with key stakeholders.

鈥淥ur Energy Strategy provides a roadmap for the 91探花to decarbonize its operations while modernizing our energy systems and adapting our infrastructure,鈥� said Dave Woodson, executive director of Campus Energy, Utilities and Operations. 鈥淭ransforming how energy is used at the 91探花will be a substantial effort and will require everyone鈥檚 involvement. Because the easiest and cheapest energy to be saved is that which doesn鈥檛 need to be used, even small gestures, like switching off lights and unplugging unused devices, help maintain and grow our culture of sustainability.鈥�

The very components that make electronics fast and easy to use also make their disposal an environmental nightmare. Components of smartphones, computers and even kitchen appliances contain heavy metals and other compounds that are toxic to us and harmful to ecosystems.

As electronics become cheaper to buy, e-waste has piled up. A 2019 from the World Economic Forum called e-waste “the fastest-growing waste stream in the world” 鈥� and for good reason. That same year, people generated more than 50 million metric tons of e-waste, the U.N.’s Global E-waste Monitor. Much of it is incinerated, piled up in landfills or exported to lower-income countries where it creates public health and environmental hazards.

Three researchers in the 91探花 College of Engineering are exploring ways to make electronics more Earth-friendly. , an assistant professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and researcher in the 91探花Institute for Nano-engineered Systems, will be presenting at the CHI 2022 conference in May. , an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is indefinitely. And , an assistant professor of materials science and engineering and researcher in the Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute, uses biological materials, such as seaweeds and other algae, to develop alternatives to plastics that can be 3D-printed.

For Earth Day, 91探花News reached out to these engineers to discuss their projects.

What features do you prioritize when designing sustainable electronics?

Vikram Iyer: There are lots of important problems to tackle in designing sustainable electronics, including reducing the environmental impact of e-waste. Our groups are trying to develop creative solutions to this problem, such as using new and more environmentally friendly materials while building functional devices that don鈥檛 compromise performance. For example, the mouse we designed with a biodegradable circuit board works when you plug it into any computer.

What was the design process like for the mouse?

VI: This project was a collaboration with , a principal researcher at Microsoft, and , a 91探花doctoral student in the Allen School. We took several steps to make this mouse:

• We optimized our circuit design to use the fewest number of silicon chips possible, because around 80% of carbon emissions associated with manufacturing electronics comes from the energy-intensive processes used to make chips.
• We use biodegradable materials when possible. For example, the circuit board that holds and connects the chips together typically contains toxic flame-retardants, but we instead pattern our circuits on a board made from flax fibers. Also, the casing for the mouse is made out of biodegradable plastics.
• We use general-purpose, programmable chips, like microcontrollers, in our designs so that we can reuse them in new devices.
• We use software to estimate the environmental impact of each stage of production to quantify the environmental impacts and identify which stages of our design to improve next.

This is just a start, and our long-term vision is to develop new materials and methods that help us generate a production cycle for electronics in which all the materials and components can either be recycled and reused, or degraded and regenerated through the natural biological cycle.

Is it really true that the mouse’s case and circuit board dissolve in water?

VI: When we submerge our circuit board in water, the fibers start to come apart and the whole thing just disintegrates. This takes about five to 10 minutes in hot water, or a few hours at room temperature. After this we鈥檙e left with the chips and circuit traces which we can filter out. We also designed two different cases, one of these can dissolve in water and the other can be commercially composted.

Would a biodegradable mouse be as durable as a conventional mouse, especially up against the body heat and moisture we produce?

VI: There are definitely sustainable methods to ensure biodegradable components are also durable. For example, you could add a thin coating of water-repellent materials to the mouse 鈥� like chitosan, which is found naturally in the outer skeleton of shellfish. We also show that we can print the case out of polylactic acid, a material commonly used to make things like commercially compostable forks. Going forward we’re really excited to partner with researchers like Eleftheria, whose group is making new sustainable materials. And by partnering closely with researchers at Microsoft, we hope to develop solutions that are scalable and deployable for industry.

What types of new materials is the Roumeli group working on?

Eleftheria Roumeli: focuses on developing materials derived from biological matter. In addition to seaweeds and other forms of algae, this includes plant residues and microbial products. Our studies aim to further our understanding of how these natural, versatile materials can be used as composite building blocks for sustainable alternatives to plastics.

How do you manufacture sustainable components 鈥� like biodegradable parts 鈥� for electronics?

ER: The great thing is that today’s manufacturing methods can be used to create sustainable components for electronics. For example, some of the biologically derived materials my group works with can be made into inks and filaments for manufacturing parts using 3D printing. We recently published a 鈥� that鈥檚 a type of blue-green algae 鈥� both with and without cellulose fibers as a filler. Cellulose is the most abundant natural polymer, and these inks are 100% compostable in soil. There鈥檚 no special composting facility required!

What are other alternative filaments you can use for 3D printing?

ER: We can also make hybrid materials that are a blend of both biological matter 鈥� such as spirulina cells 鈥� and commercial, degradable polymers. For the polymer, we use matrix materials such as polylactic acid, which Vikram mentioned before and is the most widely available industrially compostable polymer, or polybutylene adipate co-terephthalate, a soil-compostable polymer. The particular choice of components determines the properties, performance and the compostability of our filaments.

For example, for packaging, which we usually buy and “consume” very fast and then discard immediately, a material made solely of biological components would be preferable. Then, after we use it, it could be disposed of in a backyard or landfill and it would degrade in a few weeks.

But if we want a filament for the , we would need a polymer binder to ensure that the filament meets the requirements of hot-extrusion based printing.

Are there any other new innovations for sustainable electronics?

Aniruddh Vashisth: One thing we鈥檙e working on is recyclable synthetic polymers. Unlike what Eleftheria’s team studies, these polymers are not derived from biological components. Instead, these polymers consist of an adaptive network and can be recycled and reprocessed multiple times.

Unlike other plastics, these materials do not lose their thermo-mechanical properties during reprocessing and recycling. This is exciting since you can reuse the same material again and again! This phenomenon of retaining material properties is possible because the building blocks that make up these materials can detach and reattach, just like Legos.

So when we are recycling, we are disassembling and reassembling the Legos. We have been focusing on aerospace-grade composites, but we are starting to explore other applications with a wide range of target applications.

What impact would that have on the e-waste problem?

AV: Today鈥檚 e-waste is usually a complex composite, with plastics, metal and ceramic components all in the same device. Recycling these materials is a challenging task, so they often just end up in landfills and lead to pollution.

Right now there are more than 250 million computers and 7 billion phones in the world. Most of these have polymer components. Just think if the polymers used in these devices could be recycled multiple times. That would be a great step toward sustainability! Our group has been working on how to design and characterize such recycled polymer composites for a more sustainable future.

For more information, contact Iyer at vsiyer@uw.edu, Roumeli at eroumeli@uw.edu and Vashisth at vashisth@uw.edu.

The 91探花submitted its this fall and received a gold rating, with a score of 77.47 percent. The UW’s score is the best among Pac-12 universities which have submitted a STARS report, and the third-highest of the 252 currently rated schools.

The , administered by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, are good for three years. The UW聽renewed its gold rating with the most recent submission, increasing its score from the previous 70.23 the university聽received in 2012.

“Our STARS gold rating is testimony of the commitment and dedication of 鲍奥鈥檚 students, faculty and staff. 91探花continues to lead other higher education institutions with sustainability leadership, and we strive to continue on this tradition through support and encouragement of collaborations taking place across our campus with leading edge discovery, operations and teaching,” said Ruth Johnston, associate vice president of .

Gold is the second-highest possible rating in STARS. Colorado State University is the only institution to reach a platinum rating, which it did earlier this year.

The 91探花submitted documentation to answer questions for 74 separate credits as part of the review. 91探花Sustainability coordinated the reporting effort, which started in late 2014 for the fall 2015 submission and involved sustainability leaders from more than 30 departments across campus. Information about the UW’s performance in areas including academics, operations, engagement, and planning and administration were included in the report.

The 91探花also received credit for several innovative practices, including the Green Laboratory Certification program, the 91探花Tower Data Center Energy Reduction Initiative, 91探花Transportation Services initiatives to reduce commuter emissions and the on-campus composting program.

All STARS reports are publicly available. The 91探花’s report聽can be viewed .

is a 91探花 associate professor of political science and author of the book “.” She answered a few questions about the book, and her work, for 91探花Today.

Q: What is the main message of “Ecovillages”?

A: After teaching global environmental politics for two decades and watching planetary conditions deteriorate, I grew disenchanted with top-down solutions. I also grew tired of making my students anxious, depressed and guilt-ridden. If our ways of living are unraveling planetary life-support systems, then we must answer the question: How, then, shall we live?

My search for models led me on a one-year journey around the world to ecovillages, intentional communities aspiring to live sustainably. Living in 14 ecovillages on five continents taught me that not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over.

The point, however, is not that we all should live in ecovillages; rather, we need to learn from them and scale up their lessons to existing social structures, from the household to our neighborhoods to our cities, nations and even to the level of global governance.

Q: How did you choose which ecovillages to visit?

A: I took a year to map my journey and arrange the logistics. I selected for “success,” which I conceived as an amalgam of factors including longevity, size and reputation. Most communities I visited, for instance, had a 10-year history with at least 100 members.

Because I wanted to understand the movement’s global character, I also selected for diversity: rural, urban and suburban; ; rich, poor, and middle class; secular, religious and spiritual: high-tech and low-tech. Across this enormous diversity, I then looked for the common strands.

Q: You write amusingly that the term “ecovillage” may conjure images聽of “shabby rural outposts populated by long-haired iconoclasts,” but that you found them less easy to pigeonhole. How instead would you describe them, and what do they have in common?

A: I saw a few scruffy shacks but for the most part, I found tidy, smallish homes that reflected a kind of organic beauty. I also found unusually capable and articulate people committed to integrating the four dimensions of sustainability: ecology, economics, community and consciousness.

I learned that “sustainability” varies with context. Ecovillagers in the global north focus on reducing social alienation, consumption and waste, whereas the global south focuses on “sustainabilizing” traditional rural villages. , for instance, is an island of frugality in the heart of consumer culture, whereas , a Senegal-based village network, works to prevent hunger.

Yet both are drawn to bicycles and permaculture, suggesting common ground between east Hollywood to west Africa.

Most important, I found ecovillages embrace these basic tenets:

• The web of life is sacred and humanity is an integral part of that web.
• Global trends are approaching a crisis point.
• Positive change will come primarily from the bottom up.

If I had to encapsulate ecovillage culture in one word, it would be sharing. Because ecovillages share material resources, both their consumption and incomes can be far below their home country averages.

Material factors like self-built homes and home-grown food tell only part of the story. More important is the prevalence of sharing 鈥� not only of property and vehicles, but of the intangibles that define community: ideas, skills, challenges, and celebrations.

Q: How does the ecovillage movement, if we can call it that, differ from “back to nature” trends of previous decades?

A: Ecovillages are far more integrated into society and many of them are in cities. Rather than separating themselves, ecovillages tend to be educational centers; their members tend to be socially and politically engaged. , for instance, works with the United Nations and the European Union.

Q: You note people saying, “That’s all fine for those lucky ecovillagers, but what about the rest of us?” How do you reply?

A: We should understand that being an ecovillager is more a consequence of inspiration and hard work than luck. And, because sustainability is the nonnegotiable precondition for inhabiting Earth over the long haul, “the rest of us” would be wise to learn from ecovillages.

Q: This has been a very personal journey for you. How has this work changed you?

A: First, the journey gave me a strong sense of grounded hope: I have seen and touched some seedlings for a viable future. Second, while ecovillages are not for everyone, some people yearn for the intimacy, focus and integrated solutions of ecovillage life. I learned that I am such a person.

Third, I wanted to write a book that would be both emotionally and intellectually engaging, which required learning a whole new way of writing 鈥� and therefore thinking.

Q: Based on what you’ve learned, what suggestions would you offer to people looking for sustainability in everyday life?

A: Beyond the green practices that most of us are familiar with 鈥攃onservation, recycling, minimizing fossil fuel consumption, etc.鈥� I would emphasize the social dimension of sustainability.

The stronger the sense of community, the more we are willing to share. Beyond our households and neighborhoods, we need to scale up the lessons to every level of governance.

The UW’s Information School and Law School, and 91探花Tacoma, have been using online evaluations for two years as part of a pilot project. Last quarter, more than 600 courses at the Seattle campus were evaluated online. The Office of Educational Assessment is advertising the service to the entire campus this quarter.

The current total cost of paper evaluations at 91探花Seattle is about $150,000 annually.

“About half of that is associated with paper, both the purchase of the paper itself and the envelopes, plus the staff time to create the evaluation packets and scan the paper forms,” explained Nana Lowell, director of the . “By eliminating paper we’ll save about $75,000 a year, and about a quarter million sheets won’t have to be recycled.”

The Office of Educational Assessment also provides course evaluation services to about 40 other colleges and universities. Those institutions will now have the opportunity to transition to online evaluations, expanding the environmental savings beyond the UW.

Course evaluations are used in three different ways. First and foremost, faculty use them to help improve their teaching, since students can share aspects of the course that are going well and other areas that need to be improved. Second, departments use them to evaluate faculty for merit, promotion and tenure decisions. Third, students can check out the course evaluation catalog to help determine if they want to sign up for a certain class.

Lowell said the most important thing about moving to online evaluations is to maintain the quality and number of responses received. With paper evaluations, students fill out the forms in class and then turn them in.

With online evaluations, students receive an email with a link, which can be easily ignored. Lowell said each department needs to develop deliberate strategies to encourage students to respond. For example, the Law School has students fill out the online evaluations in class, just like they would with paper forms. The evaluations also work on mobile devices, so students who don’t bring a laptop to class can still fill out the online evaluation during class time using their smartphones.

Until now, instructors have been able to evaluate one course of up to 100 students each quarter without charge using paper, and assistant professors can evaluate two courses on paper. Evaluations beyond that are charged to the department at a cost of 19 cents per student plus $1.20 per course. To encourage faculty to go paperless, beginning in the fall, online evaluations will be free but all paper evaluations will cost 19 cents per student.

The development of the database application for online course evaluations is endorsed by UW’s Paper Reduction Committee. Primary funding is provided by Undergraduate Academic Affairs, with additional funding from the offices of the Provost and Planning & Budgeting.

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Q: What’s the concept behind this book?

A: Doing an earlier book on the Federal Theatre Project I kept running across references to Jasper Deeter and I was intrigued by the praise and by the lack of information. So after retiring, I had some time to explore his career at Hedgerow, which he founded in the 1920s, and I was struck by his vision and accomplishments.

It was audacious to found a theater literally in the woods that became a beacon for all the causes that we found ennobling in the 20th century: Equal rights for blacks and minorities, freedom to challenge violence and military conscription, sensitivity to the environment and sustainability, and devotion to the notion that the theater can be about ideas and not just for making money.

Truth and beauty were not just buzz words at Hedgerow but part of a lifestyle that empowered them for 30 years of continuous production and established them as America’s most important repertory theater.

Q: You write that Hedgerow played in repertory fashion. What exactly is meant by repertory, in this context?

A: Repertory is a method of production whereby a company of actors is hired to perform a variety of roles in productions that alternate nightly. It was the way most theaters operated until the mid-19^th century when the “starring system” and the popularity of “long runs” forced them to abandon repertory or modify it into weekly changes of fare. Deeter wanted to restore true repertory with its invitation to “come any night.”

Q: How many plays were in active rotation at once? And what was the benefit of the repertory format to the theater and its audience?

A: Deeter liked to add three to five new titles each year so they kept 18 to 20 in the active repertory. He believed that repertory stretched acting ability and hence was the best training, and for audiences it provided variety and exposure to many more plays.聽聽聽

Q: Deeter believed repertory was “the only model of theater that will allow the actor to grow and discover.” Why?

A: He believed that acting only the “type” that you are was not challenging to performers. He wanted actors to embrace a variety of roles so that they could develop a tool box of skills.

Q: Deeter called Hedgerow the only “rooted growth” theater in the nation. What did he mean?

A: It meant a lot of things to him. He wanted the theater to be rooted in its environment. That meant respect for the natural world as well as a sensitivity to how climate and given circumstances of the material world affected acting choices.

He also wanted his theater to exist in harmony with rural America and for his company to live when possible off the land. He wanted to encourage local actors to participate and become part of a local “company” which would sustain their livelihood in the community. A lot of this sounds very utopian but he did make it work for a long time.

聽Q: What was the Hedgerow Theatre’s connection to the arts and crafts movement, and how did that affect its work?

A: I think the major influence 鈥� other than sculptor ‘s presence 鈥� was devotion to the idea that “honest labor is its own reward” and that the making of theater can be an honest career choice and not a way to accumulate wealth and material objects.

Q: What has the Hedgerow Theatre’s legacy been for regional theater in the United States?

A: I think they demonstrated that repertory could still work. Most of the 1960 regional companies from The Guthrie to the Seattle Rep were founded as “repertory endeavors.” Unfortunately, the economics of 20^th century production could not sustain true repertory work.

The Princeton Review 鈥� known for its education services helping students choose and get into colleges 鈥� annually measures the sustainability of higher education institutions. This green rating 聽considers such things as environmentally-related practices, policies and academic offerings.

The 91探花was among 22 institutions to receive the highest honor, out of 832 universities and colleges reviewed.

鈥淲e are extremely proud of the sustainability efforts of our community,鈥� said Michael K. Young, 91探花president. 鈥淭his honor shows we are making a measurable difference 鈥� both in how we are living and how we are teaching others through how we are living.鈥�

The UW, included last year on 聽 commending sustainability, also recently placed 12^th out of 162 on the Sierra Club鈥檚 鈥溾�� list.

Part-time 91探花gardener designs winning display
Riz Reyes, who works part time as a gardener with the 91探花 Botanic Gardens, claimed the top prize at the this week. Reyes, who earned his bachelor’s in environmental horticulture and urban forestry from the UW, owns in Shoreline.

The flower and garden show proposed movies as the theme for gardens and Reyes said he took inspiration from Jurassic Park, King Kong and Raiders of the Lost Ark for his garden titled “The Lost Gardener 鈥� A Journey from the Wild to the Cultivated.”

Seattle garden writer Valerie Easton , “The cool plant garden that took the Founder’s Cup 鈥� “The Lost Gardener” 鈥� is by Riz Reyes, a F&G Show first-timer. . . How many years has it been since there’s been a real plant collector’s garden? This one is all about unusual and rare plants, used extravagantly to create a jungle of a garden. How good Riz was rewarded with the big prize for being daring with his plant choices.”

Included in the display are more than 75 different kinds of .

At the UW, Reyes works at the Center for Urban Horticulture and is responsible for maintaining the

The flower and garden show continues this weekend.

RecycleMania a chance to increase recycling, composting on campus
You can help the UW’s standings in this year’s RecycleMania by increasing your efforts to recycle and compost between now and March 30.

The competition pits the 91探花against universities nationwide 鈥� including the Pac-12 rivals such as ASU, Stanford and WSU 鈥� to determine the top recycler.

Since Feb. 3, 91探花Recycling has been tracking the amount of recycling, food waste and garbage collected on campus each week. 91探花is competing in four categories: the highest waste diversion rate (recycling compared to what is thrown away); the highest recycling rate per person on campus; the highest gross tonnage of recycling generated on campus; and the highest percentage of food waste composted per person.

91探花Recycling is sharing weekly results on its , where you can also see results of a competition between 91探花residence halls sponsored by Housing and Food Services.

The competitions provides incentives to take waste diversion at the 91探花further, according Jessica Lisiewski, 91探花Recycling & Solid Waste program coordinator. The more participation across campus, the closer the 91探花can get to reaching its waste diversion goal of 70 percent by 2020, she said.

Newborn screening test brings chemical society honor to Gelb, Ture膷ek
and , 91探花chemistry professors, will be presented the for their work in devising methods to detect rare genetic diseases in newborns.

The diseases 鈥� which include Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Krabbe, Pompe, Nieman-Pick, Fabry, and Hurler syndromes 鈥� affect about one in every 5,000 people and cause serious abnormalities in children, often resulting in premature death. Early detection is important for the best chances of effective treatment.

The procedures for newborn screening developed by Gelb and Ture膷ek have proven so reliable and inexpensive that several states now require that every newborn be tested.

The award will be presented by the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society April 4 at Harvard University.

A team led by the 91探花 in Seattle and the Southeast University in China discovered a molecule that shows promise as an organic alternative to today’s silicon-based semiconductors. The findings, published this week in the journal , display properties that make it well suited to a wide range of applications in memory, sensing and low-cost energy storage.

“This molecule is quite remarkable, with some of the key properties that are comparable with the most popular inorganic crystals,” said co-corresponding author , a 91探花associate professor of mechanical engineering.

The carbon-based material could offer even cheaper ways to store digital information; provide a flexible, nontoxic material for medical sensors that would be implanted in the body; and create a less costly, lighter material to harvest energy from natural vibrations.

The new molecule is a ferroelectric, meaning it is positively charged on one side and negatively charged on the other, where the direction can be flipped by applying an electrical field. Synthetic ferroelectrics are now used in some displays, sensors and memory chips.

In the study the authors pitted their molecule against , a long-known ferroelectric material that is a standard for performance. Barium titanate is a ceramic crystal and contains titanium; it has largely been replaced in industrial applications by better-performing but lead-containing alternatives.

The new molecule holds its own against the standard-bearer. It has a natural polarization, a measure of how strongly the molecules align to store information, of 23, compared to 26 for barium titanate. To Li’s knowledge this is the best organic ferroelectric discovered to date.

A recent study in announced an organic ferroelectric that works at room temperature. By contrast, this molecule retains its properties up to 153 degrees Celsius (307 degrees F), even higher than for barium titanate.

The new molecule also offers a full bag of electric tricks. Its dielectric constant 鈥� a measure of how well it can store energy 鈥� is more than 10 times higher than for other organic ferroelectrics. And it’s also a good piezoelectric, meaning it’s efficient at converting movement into electricity, which is useful in sensors.

The organic crystal is made from bromine, a natural element isolated from sea salt, mixed with carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen (its full name is diisopropylammonium bromide). Researchers dissolved the elements in water and evaporated the liquid to grow the crystal. Because the molecule contains carbon, it is organic, and pivoting chemical bonds allow it to flex.

The molecule would not replace current inorganic materials, Li said, but it could be used in applications where cost, ease of manufacturing, weight, flexibility and toxicity are important.

Li is working on a number of projects relating to ferroelectricity. Last year he and his graduate student found the first evidence for . He was co-author on a 2011 paper in Science that in ferroelectric films, showing how such molecules could be used to store digital information.

“Ferroelectrics are pretty remarkable materials,” Li said. “It allows you to manipulate mechanical energy, electrical energy, optics and electromagnetics, all in a single package.”

He is working to further characterize this new molecule and explore its combined electric and mechanical properties. He also plans to continue the search for more organic ferroelectrics.

The joint first authors of the new paper are Yuanming Liu, a 91探花postdoctoral researcher in mechanical engineering, and Da-Wei Fu, a doctoral student working with co-corresponding author Ren-Gen Xiong at Southeast University. Other co-authors are Hong-Ling Cai, Qiong Ye, Wen Zhang and Yi Zhang at Southeast University; Xue-Yuan Chen at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Gianluca Giovannetti and Massimo Capone at the Italian National Simulation Centre.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, China’s National Natural Science Foundation and the European Research Council.

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For more information, contact Li at 206-543-6226 or jjli@uw.edu.

That鈥檚 because the potential harvest of fish is only closely linked to abundance in 18 percent of 230 fish stocks assessed in a 91探花-led study, according to, 91探花professor of . For the other 82 percent of stocks, potential harvest of fish was primarily controlled by irregular shifts in environmental conditions or was random and not controlled by either abundance or shifts in environmental regimes.

Yet targets based on abundance of fish stocks are the mainstay of most management plans in the U.S. and a growing number of other countries: If a stock reaches certain abundance, it is thought, then potential harvest is maximized.

The are being published the week of Jan. 14 in the online early edition of the

鈥淭here have been competing ideas about productivity,鈥� Hilborn said. 鈥淥ne is that it depends primarily on abundance. The other is that productivity of a stock mostly depends on whether there鈥檚 a period of good conditions or a period of bad conditions.鈥�

鈥淲hat we鈥檝e done in this study is take 230 fish stocks and ask which of these explanations explains the data for each fish stock better,鈥� he said.

In contrast to the 18 percent of stocks where abundance controls productivity, there were 39 percent of stocks 鈥� more than two times as many 鈥� where productivity appears to jump between periods of high and low environmental regimes in an irregular fashion. Another 30 percent showed a weak relationship between productivity and abundance mixed in with irregular regime shifts. The remaining 13 percent fluctuated randomly.

鈥淩egime shifts can affect the number of young fish that reach adulthood, their ability to grow or how long they live. A shift can be caused by such things as changing ocean temperatures or increases in predators,鈥� said lead author a 91探花master鈥檚 student in aquatic and fishery sciences.

The authors write, 鈥淎lthough there may be little that fishery managers can do to avert shifts to a lower productivity state, improved methods for early detection of such shifts may permit managers to reduce harvest in time to avoid collapse.鈥�

Study co-author of Rutgers University says, 鈥淲e can think of fisheries like natural savings accounts, where we鈥檙e trying to harvest the interest 鈥� what fisheries scientists call the 鈥榮urplus production鈥� 鈥� without causing a long-term decline in the principal or abundance of mature adult fish.聽 Fisheries scientists have generally operated under the assumption that the 鈥榠nterest鈥� is determined by the abundance of mature adults.鈥�

鈥淥ur research shows that this is rarely the case. Instead of operating like a simple savings accounts, fisheries are more like volatile stocks where the rate of return is determined by a variety of complex factors outside the control of managers,鈥� Jensen said.

The findings don鈥檛 mean we shouldn鈥檛 attempt to manage fisheries or try to maintain fish stocks at high abundance, Hilborn said, because having plenty of fish benefits natural food chains and ecosystems and lowers the costs of harvesting fish.

This deserves particular attention, he said, as plans and timetables are formulated to rebuild an ever-increasing number of fish stocks. In many cases natural causes are the reason stocks are at low abundance, rather than overfishing, although fishing will cause even lower abundance in such cases, he said. Also, rebuilding fish stock abundance often won鈥檛 result in promised increases in sustainable yield, he said.

As the paper says, 鈥淚f fish populations experience substantial shifts in productivity unrelated to stock size, then management based on a single set of management targets (for example maximum sustainable yield) will be either inefficient or risky. If the targets are based on a higher productivity regime, then a shift to a low productivity regime will result in increased risk of overfishing. Conversely, management targets based on a lower productivity phase will result in overly cautious harvest during regimes of high productivity.鈥�

The fish stocks analyzed are part of a database initially created in 2006-7 in an effort led by Hilborn and Dalhousie University鈥檚 Boris Worm.

The fourth co-author is Ricardo Amoroso with the Centro Nacional Patag贸nico in Argentina. Funding came from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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For more information:
–Hilborn, hilbornr@gmail.com
–Jensen, olaf.p.jensen@gmail.com