Metrics of positive Ricci curvature on bundles

We construct new examples of manifolds of positive Ricci curvature which, topologically, are vector bundles over compact manifolds of almost nonnegative Ricci curvature. In particular, we prove that if E is the total space of a vector bundle over a compact manifold of nonnegative Ricci curvature, then the product of E and R^p admits a complete metric of positive Ricci curvature for all large p.