Community Briefs

Monday, November 30, 1998

Community Briefs

Science foundation announces fellows

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Lucent Technologies Foundation have named 11 researchers, including UC Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Paul Sheng, as 1998 winners of Industrial Ecology Research Fellowships.

The fellowships, totaling $1.1 million in all, award up to $50,000 per year for two years to support researchers who are focusing on research or teaching to help industry design processes that prevent pollution and create environmentally friendly products. The awards were announced Nov. 19.

Industrial ecology incorporates both competitive and environmental concerns into industrial process and product design. Like a biological system, it rejects the concept of waste, and seeks ways to efficiently reuse all materials.

"As 'industrial ecology' becomes a familiar term, researchers from many disciplines will collaborate on solutions to common environmental problems," said Janie Fouke, director of NSF's division of Bioengineering and Environmental Systems.

"It is incumbent on the NSF to encourage basic research that may help and encourage businesses to integrate conservation and pollution prevention practices into their strategies and their day-to-day operations," Fouke added. "Our intent with the Industrial Ecology Research Fellowships is to spur innovations that provide industry with both human and financial incentives to adopt more ecologically sound business approaches."

"The field of industrial ecology is central to achieving an environmentally sustainable economy," said Deborah Stahl, executive director of the Lucent Technologies Foundation.

"Since 1993, these fellowships have stimulated a wide variety of research projects that address the problems of pollution reduction and elimination in a highly industrialized society. In addition, they have helped to foster an academic community focused on industrial ecology that has developed curricula at institutions around the country and enabled industry interactions with university faculty."

Disease threatens California's grapes

A new form of phylloxera - related to the subterranean insect that cost California's premium wine grape industry more than $1 billion in replanting costs during the last decade - has appeared in three grape nurseries over the last two years. One of the University of California's experts on the pest says the new type of phylloxera does not pose a major threat to growers who have switched to resistant rootstock.

"Our friend phylloxera is back," Andrew Walker, a UC Davis viticulture and enology professor, told a large crowd of perhaps 500 concerned growers during the recent Napa Valley Viticultural Fair. "I hope we can calm some of the hysteria

Walker explained in some detail during his presentation at the fair and in a follow-up interview what scientists know about the pest. The new form of phylloxera is a foliar or leaf-feeding pest. Telltale galls form on the underside of fresh grape leaves in addition to attacking roots like the typical California strains of the pest. The finds thus far have all been on the leaves of rootstock varieties. To the relief of the grape growing community, however, the pest does not appear to have an affinity for vinifera varieties such as merlot, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon.

Although cases of the foliar phylloxera have been noted on wild grape plants in Southern California and elsewhere in the Southwest, the foliar form of this pest has only very rarely appeared in California's wine country before and never stayed more than a portion of a season.

Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.

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