UT Austin Portugal Newsletter | Fighting climate change with science


Fighting climate change with science. Earth Observation sciences triggered a revolution, and forever changed the way we see and understand our planet - the Earth as a whole system whose dynamics involves a complex set of interactions requiring a holistic approach. This systemic view, along with the pace of technological developments that are leveraging unprecedented advances, allows us to identify cryosphere-hydrosphere-atmosphere-lithosphere interconnections and understand the growing rate of change we are witnessing.This is a precondition for any action towards mitigating climate change. Luísa Bastos, UT Austin Portugal’s Area Director for Space-Earth Interactions and Director of Prof. Manuel de Barros Astronomical Observatory, Portugal The impact of human activity on climate has never been so perceptible: only this year, we saw fast-burning wildfires ravaging California, Greece and Turkey, while torrential rainfalls were sweeping away villages in Germany in high Summer; ice caps melting in the Poles at a fast pace and carrying water into the ocean put coastal towns and villages on alert for potentially devastating floods. The last decade was the warmest ever recorded, with temperatures reaching extreme levels worldwide, triggering unprecedented natural hazards. The alarms went off, and there is a fierce urgency to make the transition to a net-zero economy. It’s now or never, some experts warn. Scientific knowledge gave us the power to understand how our actions affect climate and how we can still turn the tide on climatic changes. In particular, the study of Space-Ocean-Earth interactions has provided us with valuable information and tools to help us monitor the health of our planet and support better evidence-based decision-making to ultimately bring the most benefit to humankind and protect the Earth. In this edition of our newsletter, we bring to your attention how the Program and some of its stakeholders are tackling climate change through science-based projects and international collaboration.

Fighting climate change with science. Earth Observation sciences triggered a revolution, and forever changed the way we see and understand our planet - the Earth as a whole system whose dynamics involves a complex set of interactions requiring a holistic approach. This systemic view, along with the pace of technological developments that are leveraging unprecedented advances, allows us to identify cryosphere-hydrosphere-atmosphere-lithosphere interconnections and understand the growing rate of change we are witnessing.This is a precondition for any action towards mitigating climate change. Luísa Bastos, UT Austin Portugal’s Area Director for Space-Earth Interactions and Director of Prof. Manuel de Barros Astronomical Observatory, Portugal The impact of human activity on climate has never been so perceptible: only this year, we saw fast-burning wildfires ravaging California, Greece and Turkey, while torrential rainfalls were sweeping away villages in Germany in high Summer; ice caps melting in the Poles at a fast pace and carrying water into the ocean put coastal towns and villages on alert for potentially devastating floods. The last decade was the warmest ever recorded, with temperatures reaching extreme levels worldwide, triggering unprecedented natural hazards. The alarms went off, and there is a fierce urgency to make the transition to a net-zero economy. It’s now or never, some experts warn. Scientific knowledge gave us the power to understand how our actions affect climate and how we can still turn the tide on climatic changes. In particular, the study of Space-Ocean-Earth interactions has provided us with valuable information and tools to help us monitor the health of our planet and support better evidence-based decision-making to ultimately bring the most benefit to humankind and protect the Earth. In this edition of our newsletter, we bring to your attention how the Program and some of its stakeholders are tackling climate change through science-based projects and international collaboration.

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PhD grants in the areas of medicine, technology and physics. FCT, UT Austin Portugal’s sponsor, and the ProtoTera Association aim to build a community of PhDs with multidisciplinary training and support the installation and operation in Portugal of cancer treatment centers using proton beam therapy, a goal for which the Program is also contributing through its area of Medical Physics.

The AIR Centre is an international organization that promotes an integrative approach to space, earth, climate, ocean and energy in the Atlantic Ocean.

Carla Silva is one of the Program’s Area Directors for Nanotechnologies in Portugal. Find out more about her work, research and her hopes for the science of the future.

Hernâni Zão Oliveira holds a double degree in Biology and Communication Sciences. He enrolled in the Digital Media UT Austin | Portugal Doctoral Program in 2015, and earned his Ph.D. degree in 2020.

Check out what he has been doing and how the UT Austin Portugal Program has influenced his career.

UT Austin Portugal and its community in the Media

[SOS-WindEnergy ] Probabilistic strain-fatigue life performance based on stochastic analysis of structural and WAAM-stainless steels. Xin, H., Correia, J. A. F. O., Veljkovic, M., Zhang, Y., Berto, F., & de Jesus, A. M. P., Engineering Failure Analysis. (2021).
[SOS-WindEnergy] Stress Concentration Factor Evaluation of Offshore Tubular KT Joints Based on Analytical and Numerical Solutions: Comparative Study. In Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction. Aidibi, A., Babamohammadi, S., Fatnuzzi, N., Correia, J. A. F. O., & Manuel, L., American Society of Civil Engineers. (2021).
[SOS-WindEnergy] A Second Benchmarking Exercise on Estimating Extreme Environmental Conditions: Methodology & Baseline Results. In Volume 2: Structures, Safety, and Reliability. Mackay, E., Haselsteiner, A. F., Coe, R. G., & Manuel, L., ASME 2021 40th International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering. (2021).
[PAStor] MONARCH: Hierarchical Storage Management for Deep Learning Frameworks. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing. Dantas, M., Leitao, D., Correia, C., Macedo, R., Xu, W., & Paulo, J., 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing. (2021).
[PAStor] The Case for Storage Optimization Decoupling in Deep Learning Frameworks. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing. Dantas, M., Leitao, D., Correia, C., Macedo, R., Xu, W., & Paulo, J., 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing. (2021).
[PIEZOFLEX] Structural and Synthetic Modification of Graphitic Foams and Dendritic Graphitic Foams for Thermal Management. Jia, Q., Liu, Y., Fan, D. E., & Shi, L., Physica status solidi (a). (2021).
[ExtreMed] Ultra-broadband few-cycle laser pulses for advanced multi-color FLIM- microscopy. Maibohm, C., Ferreira, R., Silvestre, O. F., Romero, R., Crespo, H., & Nieder, J. B., 2021 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference. (2021).
[NanoCatRed]Processing Methods Used in the Fabrication of Macrostructures Containing 1D Carbon Nanomaterials for Catalysis. Restivo, J., Gonçalves Pinto Soares, O. S., & Ribeiro Pereira, M. F., Processes. (2020).
[NanoCatRed] Influence of organic matter formed during oxidative processes in the catalytic reduction of nitrate. Santos, A. S. G. G., Restivo, J., Orge, C. A., Pereira, M. F. R., & Soares, O. S. G. P., Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering. (2021).
[NanoCatRed] Nitrate Catalytic Reduction over Bimetallic Catalysts: Catalyst Optimization. Santos, A. S. G. G., Restivo, J., Orge, C. A., Pereira, M. F. R., & Soares, O. S. G. P., Journal of Carbon Research. (2020).
[NanoCatRed] Scalable reactor design for electrocatalytic nitrite and nitrate reduction with minimal mass transport limitations. Mubeen, S., Hesterberg, A., Yan, C., Werth, C., Kakuturu, S., & Cwiertny, D., American Chemical Society. (2020).
[BigHPC] S2Dedup: SGX-enabled secure deduplication. Miranda, M., Esteves, T., Portela, B., & Paulo, J.,Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Systems and Storage. SYSTOR ’21: The 14th ACM International Systems and Storage Conference. (2021).
[BigHPC] BDUS: implementing block devices in user space. Faria, A., Macedo, R., Pereira, J., & Paulo, J.,Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Systems and Storage. SYSTOR ’21: The 14th ACM International Systems and Storage Conference. (2021).
[BigHPC] Characterizing Containerized HPC Applications Performance at Petascale on CPU and GPU Architectures. Ruhela, A., Harrell, S. L., Evans, R. T., Zynda, G. J., Fonner, J., Vaughn, M., Minyard, T., & Cazes, J., Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing. (2021).
[BigHPC] Containerization on Petascale HPC Clusters. Ruhela, A., Vaughn, M., Harrell, S. L., Zynda, G. J., Fonner, J., Evans, R. T., & Minyard, T., State of Practice talk in International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. (2020).
[BigHPC] Democratizing Parallel Filesystem Monitoring. Evans, R. T., 2020 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing. (2020).
[BigHPC] WineFS: a hugepage-aware file system for persistent memory that ages gracefully. Kadekodi, R., Kadekodi, S., Ponnapalli, S., Shirwadkar, H., Ganger, G. R., Kolli, A., & Chidambaram, V., Proceedings of the ACM SIGOPS 28th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles. (2021).
[MCTool21] Low peak power deposition regime in HiPIMS: Deposition of hard and dense nanocomposite Ti-Si-N films by DOMS without the need of energetic bombardment. Fernandes, F., Calderon V., S., Ferreira, P. J., Cavaleiro, A., & Oliveira, J. C.,Surface and Coatings Technology. (2020).
[MCTool21] High temperature tribological behaviour of TiSiN(Ag) films deposited by HiPIMS in DOMS mode. Cavaleiro, D., Veeregowda, D., Cavaleiro, A., Carvalho, S., & Fernandes, F., Surface and Coatings Technology. (2020).
[MCTool21] Axisymmetric deformation of compressible, nearly incompressible, and incompressible thin layers between two rigid surfaces. Movchan, A. B., Rebrov, K. R., & Rodin, G. J., International Journal of Solids and Structures. (2021).
[TOF-PET for Proton Therapy] Sono-Biosynthesis and Characterization of AuNPs from Danube Delta Nymphaea alba Root Extracts and Their Biological Properties. Cudalbeanu, M., Peitinho, D., Silva, F., Marques, R., Pinheiro, T., Ferreira, A. C., Marques, F., Paulo, A., Soeiro, C. F., Sousa, S. A., Leitão, J. H., Tăbăcaru, A., Avramescu, S. M., Dinica, R. M., & Campello, M. P. C., Nanomaterials MDPI. (2021).
[TOF-PET for Proton Therapy]Copper-64 Chloride Exhibits Therapeutic Potential in Three-Dimensional Cellular Models of Prostate Cancer. Pinto, C. I. G., Bucar, S., Alves, V., Fonseca, A., Abrunhosa, A. J., da Silva, C. L., Guerreiro, J. F., & Mendes, F., Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences. (2020).
[TOF-PET for Proton Therapy] Dual Imaging Gold Nanoplatforms for Targeted Radiotheranostics. Silva, F., Paulo, A., Pallier, A., Même, S., Tóth, É., Gano, L., Marques, F., Geraldes, C. F. G. C., Castro, M. M. C. A., Cardoso, A. M., Jurado, A. S., López-Larrubia, P., Lacerda, S., & Cabral Campello, M. P., Materials MDPI. (2020).
[TOF-PET for Proton Therapy] Dual Imaging Gold Nanoplatforms for Targeted Radiotheranostics Francisco Silva, António Paulo, Agnès Pallier, Sandra Même, Éva Tóth, Lurdes Gano, Fernanda Marques, Carlos FGC Geraldes, M Margarida CA Castro, Ana M Cardoso, Amália S Jurado, Pilar López-Larrubia, Sara Lacerda, Maria Paula Cabral Campello., Prime Archives in Material Science: 2nd Edition. (2020).
[GEMIS] Tuning the Electronic Properties of Graphane via Hydroxylation: An Ab Initio Study. Buonocore, F., Capasso, A., Celino, M., Lisi, N., & Pulci, O., The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. American Chemical Society. (2021)
[GEMIS] Efficient ReSe2 Photodetectors with CVD Single-Crystal Graphene Contacts. Silva, B., Rodrigues, J., Sompalle, B., Liao, C.-D., Nicoara, N., Borme, J., Cerqueira, F., Claro, M., Sadewasser, S., Alpuim, P., & Capasso, A., Nanomaterials MDPI. (2021).
[GEMIS] Environmentally Friendly Graphene Inks for Touch Screen Sensors. Tkachev, S., Monteiro, M., Santos, J., Placidi, E., Hassine, M. B., Marques, P., Ferreira, P., Alpuim, P., & Capasso, A., Advanced Functional Materials. (2021).
Epitope-imprinted polymers: Design principles of synthetic binding partners for natural biomacromolecules. Teixeira, S. P. B., Reis, R. L., Peppas, N. A., Gomes, M. E., & Domingues, R. M. A., Science Advances. (2021).

UT Austin Portugal Newsletter | Fighting climate change with science (original) (raw)

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