Global warming and crop relocation; well-being website

Jan. 9, 2024

A worker blows fallen leaves near Humanities Gateway. (Photo: Steve Zylius/UCI)

UCI ANNOUNCEMENTS AND NEWS

Is relocating crops because of global warming a good idea?

A recent article in Wired magazine highlights the danger to world food production posed by global warming. The article prominently mentions a 2020 study co-authored by UCI’s Steven Davis, an Earth system scientist, that revealed corn, wheat, rice and soybean crops all shifted northward between 1973 and 2012. Davis warns that moving crops beyond their natural latitudes is problematic, especially if the more northern locations feature less water or poorer soil. He explains, “You might find the right temperature and precipitation, but it’s an area where the soil hasn’t developed, it’s rocky and not a place you’d want to try to grow a crop.”

Health Promoting University website launches

UCI’s Health Promoting University website went live in December to support the campus Comprehensive Well-being Initiative, which is guided by the Okanagan Charter. UCI was one of the first eight U.S. campuses to adopt the charter, which calls for embedding health into all aspects of campus culture and leading health-promoting action and collaboration locally and globally. To get involved with UCI’s Comprehensive Well-being Initiative, complete the short form on the website’s “Get Involved” tab.

#IamUCI

Professor takes on stress in New York Times podcast

Gloria Mark, a professor emeritus of informatics

The “Ezra Klein Show,” a popular New York Times podcast, started off 2024 with an interview with UCI’s Gloria Mark, a professor emeritus of informatics, about her book Attention Span. In the conversation, Mark cites studies showing that, whereas most Americans in the 1960s through the 1980s spent roughly 30% of their day at their work desks, today, despite technological advances that supposedly make work more efficient, most workers spend 90% of their workday in front of a computer screen. “So, on the one hand, we might think it’s more efficient,” says Mark. “But there’s a cost to it. And the cost is our well-being. The cost is stress.” You can read a transcript of the interview or listen to the entire conversation.

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