Commonly associated with longer days and slower paces, this summer’s record-smashing heat demonstrated a concerning future for our warmest season. From power outages endangering entire neighborhoods and heat-related deaths rising among some of Arizona’s most vulnerable populations, the city of Phoenix found itself in national headlines. As national attention grew, the emerging question became clear: How does anyone live here?

The consequences of extreme heat do not affect Arizona residents alone. Heat made worldwide news this year, including in November when a 23-year-old woman died of cardiorespiratory arrest at a Taylor Swift concert in Brazil where heat indexes that day exceeded 120 degrees. Photo by Arizona State University Download Full Image

Jennifer Vanos, a senior Global Futures scientist and associate professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, studies extreme heat and its health impacts. She is the lead author of a paper recently published in Nature Communications: “A physiological approach for assessing human survivability and liveability to heat in a changing climate,” which explores the temperatures at which humans can survive. The paper demonstrates that the current upper-temperature and humidity limits estimates used for human survivability might not paint the most accurate picture of human health impacts on a warming planet.

“For the past decade or so, we have been using what we call a ‘wet-bulb temperature’ of 35 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit, as the limit for human survivability,” Vanos, also a Senior Global Futures Scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, said.

The wet-bulb temperature limit for human survival indicates the maximum combinations of temperature and humidity that humans can tolerate without suffering inevitable heat stroke over a fixed duration of exposure.

“The idea is that you could survive for up to six hours at that level of heat exposure,” Vanos said. “That number really oversimplifies what happens physiologically in the body when your body is exposed to that temperature, and it doesn’t account for other important variables like age or other vulnerability factors.”

Vanos said the commonly used wet-bulb temperature for human survivability assumes the person is indoors or shaded, unclothed, completely sedentary, fully heat acclimatized and of an “average size.” These assumptions do not align, in most cases, with how humanity navigates the summer season. The paper models scenarios that adjust for factors such as humidity, age, activity level and sun exposure, and provides a range of safe temperatures based on a series of characteristics.

Air temperature survival limits are greatly reduced in humid heat, and more so for older adults. The corresponding wet-bulb temperatures in dry weather are dramatically lower than the previously assumed limit of 95 F or 35 C. A wet-bulb temperature of only 78 F on a dry Phoenix summer day would be considered unsurvivable, yet it would take air temperatures of 128 F under 10% relative humidity to reach that limit. Graphic courtesy the Global Futures Laboratory

“We didn’t only want to better understand the conditions that people could survive in,” Vanos said. “We wanted to understand the conditions that allowed people to live their lives. If the only safe way to live in an area is to be completely sedentary, people won’t want to live there. Being able to spend time outdoors and live your life without seeing a sustained rise in core temperature is a really important metric to understand today and as we move into the future.”

Vanos said Gisel Guzman Echavarria, an ASU student, was instrumental in creating the figures used throughout the paper to demonstrate the research findings.

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, was conducted by a combination of climate scientists and physiologists, a collaboration that Vanos said was crucial in understanding the intertwined nature of heat and human health. Ollie Jay, professor and director of the Heat and Health Research Incubator at the University of Sydney, said the combined perspectives allow for a cohesive understanding of exactly how climate outcomes can impact people on the physiological and biophysical level.

“The existing wet-bulb temperature estimate of 35 degrees Celsius is used very commonly, with one example being the IPCC report,” Jay, who was also the senior author of the paper, said. “These kinds of reports can shape policy efforts, but they are using a model for heat that is a very conservative estimate of what the impacts are going to be on humans. If we start using a more realistic, human-based model, the impacts are going to be more severe. They're going to be more widespread, and they're going to happen sooner than we are projecting.”

Vanos and Jay agree that the survivability ranges provided in the paper can give an important glimpse into the future: one that includes an increased need for cooling infrastructure, a personalized approach to heat protection and possible heat-driven migration.

“One of the most important things I hope people understand from these findings is that conditions that are survivable for one person who is a very healthy young adult may be experienced much differently by someone who has a comorbidity or is taking prescription medication,” Vanos said. “As we move forward in extreme heat conditions, we need to give people the tools they need to make the unsurvivable days survivable.”

How would you tackle patient safety issues in health care?

That was the question asked of nearly 700 first-year students at Arizona State University's Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation this fall. Their responses would serve as the catalyst for a semester-long project that culminated in mid-November at the Health Innovation Exhibition. Edson College first-year students present their ideas to improve patient safety at the Health Innovation Exhibition on Friday, Nov. 17. Photo courtesy the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation Download Full Image

Falepaini Otukolo and her teammates Cecilia Ortiz and Abigale Fajardo landed on an idea to tackle alarm fatigue.

“We learned that in the ICU, alarms can go off as many as 700 times a day. Imagine your iPhone alarm going off 700 times. That’s a lot for nurses,” she said.

Their solution was to program a smartwatch to receive the alarms via a color-coded system with only some auditory alarms so nurses wouldn’t get overwhelmed.

It was one of five ideas to win the top poster prize in its category.

“I had an enjoyable time through the process. They were good teammates,” Fajardo said.

This was the first year that the exhibition had students focus their innovative efforts on a singular issue in health care. The decision was made thanks to a partnership with the Patient Safety Technology Challenge and ASU's Health Entrepreneurship Accelerator Lab (HEALab).

"This is our seventh year doing the competition, but the first partnering with the Patient Safety Technology Challenge," said Michael Collins, director of Health Innovation Programs at Edson. "The five categories they provided were broad enough to allow students to identify a unique problem within the category, and then use technology in an innovative way to create a solution. All of the groups I visited had some really well-thought-out solutions."

This partnership also provided funding to award the grand prize-winning team $1,000 and the other four top teams $500 each. 

With these incentives and parameters in place, students then narrowed their ideas even further to align with one of these five categories:

• Surgical procedure error.

• Diagnostic error.

• Medication error.

• Patient care.

• Infection.

During the exhibition, students presented their posters to judges who picked the top team from each category. Each of the top teams then pitched their poster, and a grand prize winner was selected.

The student team "Telegaming Doc" won the top prize at the Health Innovation Exhibition. Photo courtesy the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation

Sara Peermohammed, Margo Johnson, Elena Zazueta and Karla Camarillo made up the grand prize-winning team. Their idea, “Telegaming Doc,” seeks to address the miscommunication between patient and provider that can lead to poor care through a game-like, online self-evaluation.

“I was always super passionate about health care and I’ve had bad experiences with it. Like, I’ve been on the wrong medications. So this is just something that I was passionate about,” Johnson said.

As the grand prize winners, the group will split the $1,000 prize.

No one was more surprised than the Telegaming Doc creators that they won the whole thing.

“We started out with this idea, and it was really small, and now to expand it and win, it’s just surreal,” Peermohammed said.

Recent gun safety proposals — including requiring gun locks and community beautification efforts that can help quell violence — could possibly earn support from those on both sides of the firearms debate, according to two Arizona State University criminology and criminal justice professors.

Professors Jesenia Pizarro and Beth Huebner recently returned from the second annual conference of the Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms, held Nov. 1–3 in Chicago, where they were panelists at a workshop on how researchers can better collaborate with criminologists. Professor Jesenia Pizarro (left) and Professor Beth Huebner, ASU School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Courtesy photos Download Full Image

Huebner is the Watts Endowed Professor of Public Safety and director of the ASU School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Pizarro, a full professor, is secretary of the society, a national organization of mostly academics in health fields who conduct research but do not engage in advocacy. As a criminologist, Pizarro said she is a rare exception among the society’s membership.

More than 700 mostly academics attended the conference to hear 333 presentations by 299 unique presenters representing 34 states and five countries. More than 18 research disciplines were represented in the presentations, including medicine, public health, anthropology, business, economics, criminology/criminal justice, sociology, social work and engineering. 

The society organized the conference with support from the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, the Columbia Scientific Union for the Reduction of Gun Violence (SURGE) and ASU’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Here is a complete list of the conference’s sponsors.

Read on to learn Pizarro’s and Huebner’s insights from the event.

Editor's note: Answers may have been edited for length or clarity.

Question: Professor Pizarro, you are the national secretary of the Research Society for the Prevention of Firearm-Related Harms. Tell us about its history and goals, as well as some examples of its current research.

Pizarro: The society, and by extension the conference, is rooted in a journey of overcoming obstacles. In 1996, Congress passed the Dickey Amendment, which prohibited the use of federal funds to advocate or promote gun control, which discouraged the Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies from awarding research money targeted for firearm injury prevention.

In 2018, after multiple mass-shooting tragedies and increasing public demand, Congress clarified that the amendment does not prohibit federal funding of research on the causes of gun violence. Subsequently, the Firearm Injury Among Children and Teens Consortium (FACTS) was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. I was one of 25 scientists in the original consortium — and the only criminologist.

Our efforts flourished and led to the 2022 national conference, which was a collaboration between FACTS, the University of Michigan and the RAND Corporation. The society was born from that effort. The society’s goal is to sustain the annual conference, nurture researchers and contribute to evidence-based policies. It is poised to shape the future of firearm injury prevention by offering a robust platform for research, publications and global initiatives combating firearm-related harms.

Q: On Nov. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in United States v. Rahimi, a Texas case about whether the government can restrict the Second Amendment right to bear arms of a person who is subject to domestic violence restraining orders. What might such a decision say about how our legal system treats firearm-related harm?

Acknowledging that I am not a legal scholar or constitutional lawyer, in my opinion, if the Supreme Court sides with the appellate court, it will signal to the country that individual rights supersede public safety and health. If the Supreme Court does not side with the circuit judges and decides to keep the federal statute as is, it will signal that they are committed to a nuanced understanding of the role of firearms in societal harms in light of the constitutional framework.

Q: You are a criminologist in an organization primarily made up of researchers from health fields such as public health, medicine, epidemiology and so on. Why do you think a wider, multidisciplinary approach is needed to help policymakers on issues related to the harms caused by firearms?

Pizarro: Firearm harms is one of those problems that are just too large to be understood and solved by a single discipline. Single-discipline approaches, while offering ease and simplicity for the professionals utilizing them, are insufficient to address the complexity and scale of firearm harms. For example, employing only a criminal-justice-centered approach would not consider trauma-informed services to survivors and primary and tertiary prevention efforts that are so necessary. ... We need everyone at the table so that the problem can be targeted via multiple angles and considering the diverse factors that contribute to these harms. 

Q: Professor Huebner, ASU’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice is one of the most highly ranked schools in the nation. What role can the school play in shaping the research agenda regarding firearms-related harms? What expertise can it bring?

Huebner: Effective interventions to reduce firearm harm require a nuanced understanding of individuals who perpetuate harm and victims of crime, as well as in-depth knowledge of crime data and the criminal justice and social services agencies that work in the community. The multidisciplinary nature of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, specifically, and that of ASU as a whole, makes the school well poised to lead in this field.

We have experts, like Professor Pizarro, who have centered their research program on the multifaceted nature of gun crime, which includes in-depth knowledge of victims of violence and the nationwide landscape of gun crime, particularly homicide trends. Professor William Terrill, who also attended the conference, works with police agencies in the Phoenix area and across the country to better understand police officer perceptions of firearm danger and ways to de-escalate violence among citizens and law enforcement.

Just as important, our faculty partners with other experts at ASU and elsewhere in the fields of public health, medicine, sociology and social work to develop interventions.

Q: Now that you’ve attended this conference, what impressions did you take with you? What opportunities do you see coming out of it for the society as an impartial voice?

Huebner: This was my first time attending the conference, and I found it to be one of the best convenings I have attended. What impressed me most was the diversity of individuals who attended. I was asked to participate in a mentoring session for early-career scholars, and I connected with some of the brightest minds in the field. I also appreciate that the group takes a public health approach and allows those who work on the front lines with victims to have a strong voice in policy change.

Individuals who work in academia often operate in silos, but it will take true collaboration to begin to address the public health emergency that is gun violence in the United States. 

Q: The Washington Post editorialized Nov. 3 that the society has made some novel suggestions for policy changes that, in part because they are new, might have a chance to be implemented. Do you agree?

Pizarro: Yes. A lot of the interventions discussed are already in place in some cities throughout the country. Take, for example, greening and beautification in communities. Cities like Flint, Michigan, and Philadelphia have implemented it, and there is documented success. In fact, The Watts College’s Design Studio for Community Solutions is currently funding a beautification effort in Maryvale (in Phoenix). I am currently working on that initiative with criminal justice (Associate) Professor Cody Telep, and we are excited about the possibilities in that community.

Huebner: Agreed. Interventions, like gun safety locks, are supported by science and are often less controversial than other programs. Yet, many gun owners don’t use them. It is important to have conferences like these to learn more about how to best communicate the science of gun safety to the broader community. Science is only beneficial if it can be translated into community action.

Air travel contributes a significant percentage of the world’s carbon output, with the industry’s activities resulting in 2.1% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, according to the World Resources Institute.

Yet the smartphones ubiquitous in pockets worldwide, along with billions of other electronic devices, are on par with or surpassing jet fuel-burning air travel when it comes to contributing to climate change. Researchers at the U.K.’s Lancaster University estimate that computing technology contributes between 2.1% and 3.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Vidya Chhabria, an assistant professor of electrical engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, is leading research to calculate the carbon footprint of very large-scale integration computing systems to make chip manufacturing more eco-friendly. Graphic by Erika Gronek/ASU/Adobe Firefly Download Full Image

As energy-hungry artificial intelligence systems increase in prominence and humanity becomes more dependent on technology, the need for sustainable computing has become more urgent than ever. Vidya Chhabria, an assistant professor of electrical engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, is working to meet that need with her project that measures the lifetime carbon footprint of very large-scale integration, or VLSI, computing systems and design techniques that can make the field more sustainable.

Protecting the future with an eye on VLSI

VLSI systems are electronic chips built using billions of smaller components consisting of wires and transistors, which regulate electricity flow and voltage. VLSI chips are used in electronic devices people use every day, including laptops, smartphones and cameras.

The high number of transistors provides a considerable amount of computing power in a device using VLSI systems. Emerging frontiers in VLSI include 3D and 2.5D systems using heterogeneous integration of chiplets, which refers to combining smaller chips together in one package to form a larger system stacked vertically or horizontally closer than traditional, or monolithic, chips, reducing the area taken up versus one larger chip and enabling the use of even more computing power.

VLSI system development is often aided by electronic design automation, or EDA, which leverages algorithms to enable design and analysis of these systems. While they do boost modern electronics’ capabilities, today’s VLSI systems require sizable amounts of energy to be designed, manufactured and run.

VLSI-powered electronics contribute large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions throughout their lives, from when they’re designed and manufactured to their eventual disposal. Chhabria and her collaborators, who include Sarma Vrudhula, a Fulton Schools professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, and Chetan Choppali Sudarshan, a doctoral student in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, part of the Fulton Schools, seek to measure the carbon footprint of all aspects of a VLSI system.

“To sustain our current use of technology in our daily lives, it’s essential to assess its environmental impact,” Chhabria says. “The idea is to make the semiconductor industry cognizant of the carbon price tag that comes with computing and realize the importance of considering carbon footprint as a first-order metric of optimization in addition to the traditional power, performance, area and cost metrics.”

Estimating environmental impact

Chhabria and her colleagues have designed tools to estimate the carbon footprint of specific VLSI systems using their individual specifications. After system architecture parameters are entered, the tools can calculate the carbon footprint of a VLSI system at the architectural level across its entire lifetime by considering various factors such as system design time, manufacturing process, scaling and yields of chips or chiplets and packaging.

With the information entered, the tools estimate how the combination of parts, system life cycles and manufacturing processes’ individual carbon footprints add up to form a total number.

The tools estimate a carbon footprint number that will enable chip designers and architects to be aware of a VLSI system’s carbon footprint across its lifetime and compare it to other design alternatives. Chhabria and her cohorts have developed one tool already and submitted their findings in a paper accepted for presentation at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture 2024.

The researchers analyzed different VLSI systems using the tool and found that heterogeneous 2.5D and 3D systems leveraging a predesigned library of chiplets had a lower carbon footprint compared with traditional monolithic chips. Chiplet-based 2.5D and 3D systems have a lower environmental impact by enabling larger yields, enabling mix-and-match design combinations of chiplets in different manufacturing process technologies and allowing the reuse of existing chip designs.

“This is the key time to look at the environmental impact of 2.5D and 3D systems,” Chhabria says. “EDA tools that are used to design these new 2.5D and 3D systems are not yet fully developed to support heterogeneous systems. Because they’re still in their nascent stage, now is the right time to make EDA tools also consider carbon footprint as a metric of optimization.”

The researchers are continuing to develop additional tools that consider more metrics such as chips’ lifespans, power required for operation, number of manufactured parts, the time it takes from design to commercialization and more.

“The hope is for the public and chip design community to take notice of the impact the information and computing technology industry has on the environment and increase the lifetime of their electronic devices,” Chhabria says. “It might involve a straightforward act, such as retaining a fully functional smartphone instead of discarding it simply because a newer model has been launched.”

A potential wide-ranging impact and future applications

For Sudarshan, a newer member of the VLSI research community, the paper represents the first research work he has had published.

“Our work is open source and available on GitHub, contributing to the community’s efforts to advance this field and demonstrate the significance of sustainable architecture designs in reducing VLSI’s overall carbon footprint,” he says.

Chhabria is working with Aman Arora, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the Fulton Schools, to apply the carbon footprint measurement tools to field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, a type of chip with flexible capabilities that can be reprogrammed for a variety of applications.

If successful, the programmability of FPGAs and their potential to serve as sustainable computing alternatives would provide another solution to improve computing’s carbon footprint. The researchers are working on a proposal to gain funding for the work, and Arora is looking for more students interested in sustainable computing.

“If you look at projections of the carbon footprint from computing, it’s going to increase rapidly in the future,” he says. “In one home today, there are probably 50 devices that are running AI workloads. If we can make computing more sustainable by reducing the carbon footprint of the chips we use, that will have a big impact on the ecology of Earth.”