College of Sciences

Chris Reinhard, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, teamed with a colleague to run models on Earth's climate and its biochemical processes in an attempt to determine the evolution of our planet's atmosphere. The scientists determined that the future lifespan of Earth's atmosphere is approximately one billion years. (The original research study in Nature Geoscience can be found here.)

Agriculture is responsible for more than 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and some in the industry are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. One of those efforts is replacing the kind of crushed rock farmers use to neutralize their soil’s acidity, from limestone to basalt. Chris Reinhard, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is one of the researchers involved in the study. (National Public Radio's Morning Edition picked up the story, which can be heard here.) 

Ahead of the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting next week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned governments that climate change is proceeding faster than predicted, and fossil fuel emissions have already bounced back from a pandemic dip. Kim Cobb, Georgia Power Chair and ADVANCE Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was the lead author for the recent U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report. Cobb says limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius isn't out of reach yet, but "this new report is a stark reminder of the difference between the emissions pathways required to achieve that target, and the reality on the ground. Simply put, we are way off course.” (This story also appears in The Independent; registration required.)

How did cells first glom together, learn to cooperate, and yield organisms that contain millions, billions, or even trillions of cells? In a new experiment, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology oversaw the evolution of clusters of yeast that each grew to contain hundreds of thousands of cells—the largest of their kind—enabling the scientists to study the possible origins of complex multicellular structures. One of those scientists is Will Ratcliff, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences in the School of Biological Sciences. Quanta Magazine also reported on this experiment.