Business & Finance

Stonyfield Farm Inc. — think: organic yogurt — has signed up with Santa Cruz-based SupplyShift to manage its supply chain. SupplyShift was founded by three UC Santa Cruz Ph.D. graduates, Alexander Gershenson, Dustin Mulvaney and James Barsimantov. SupplyShift was one of seven TechCrunch Disrupt New York 2013 finalists. Read more

"Conservationists in low-cost countries have to spend more time and effort overcoming bureaucratic hurdles and ensuring their work does not have negative impacts on local people," said lead author Erin McCreless with the University of California Santa Cruz, who notes that a more holistic approach to conservation priorities would be beneficial. Read more Read the PLOS ONE article

Director and Lead Author Angel Hsu (2012) launched the 2014 Environmental Performance Index at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. The press briefing addresses the best and worst performers on Yale and Columbia Universities’ 2014 Environmental Performance Index, a global ranking of national-level environmental performance, introduce a new Global Scorecard that gives insight into global environmental performance over the past decade.

Switzer Fellows Evan Hansen and Mike Wilson testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works about how we might prevent chemical threats and improve safety at facilities across the country.

Wilmar International, one of the world’s biggest palm oil producers, has agreed to ensure the oil it supplies will not result in any additional loss of rainforests, in a move that could significantly slow the destruction of tropical forests around the world. “If Wilmar is genuine in its commitments to deforestation-free, peat-free, exploitation-free palm oil, this could be a game-changer for the industry,” said Sharon Smith, palm oil campaign manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Forest soil carbon is poorly understood and so it’s often not counted or even removed from some forest carbon protocols,” says Cecilia Danks, a social scientist in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. “I’ve been brought in to this earthworm project to try to figure out: is there a carbon market connection?

There’s a great interview of anthropologist David Howes in the 14 September 2103 NewScientist (subscription access) about the role of synesthesia in marketing products. Synestesia—the sense of mixing senses (experiencing color as a flavor, for example) is often portrayed as a special sense that all of us dabble in, but a select odd few (the Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov, for example) experience in its fullness.

Before joining DTZ as the Energy and Sustainability Program Manager, Julia was the Sustainability Engineer for Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In her role at MIT, she helped facilitate and implement the energy efficiency programs and she was the Department of Facilities sustainability liaison to graduate and undergraduate courses for energy and planning. At MIT she developed a cross-campus energy reduction program for the existing building infrastructure in partnership with the local utility company.

Conservation programs are usually voluntary in nature. Yet, most ignore the perceptions and preferences of the target demographic. Working with social pychologist Mike Sorice at VA Tech University and others, Advanced Conservation Strategies publishes a new article on approaches to increasing participation in incentive programs for biodiversity conservation. This landowner-centered approach focuses on understanding landowners preferences and incentives in relation to biodiversity conservation.