In the News

Nearly a decade ago, global news outlets reported vast ice melt in the Arctic as sapphire lakes glimmered across the previously frozen Greenland Ice Sheet, one of the most important contributors to sea-level rise. A new study reveals the long-term impact of that extreme melt. Using a new approach to ice-penetrating radar data, a team of scientists, including Winnie Chu, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has shown that this melting left behind a contiguous layer of refrozen ice inside the snowpack. Most importantly, the formation of the melt layer changed the ice sheet’s behavior by reducing its ability to store future meltwater.

As studies show that the stress of the Covid-19 pandemic significantly contributes to rising alcohol consumption, two alumni of the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Engineering now offer an increasingly popular solution to curb or eliminate alcohol abuse: a sobriety app called Reframe. Kimberly French, assistant professor in the School of Psychology, explains how feelings of isolation, with limited remote options for seeking help, caused a spike in alcohol abuse during the pandemic. 

Free electron lasers (FELs), which are driven by kilometer-long linear accelerators, emit bursts of short-wavelength light lasting one quadrillionth of a second. As a result, they can act as strobe lights for viewing the fastest events in nature — atomic or molecular motion — and therefore promise to revolutionize our understanding of almost any kind of matter. New research shows how to measure the super-short bursts of high-frequency light emitted from FELs. One of the co-authors of this study is Rick Trebino, professor in the School of Physics. 

This edition of Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine focuses on the ethical considerations of recent science and technological developments, and how the Institute's vision and values play into researching these issues. Included in articles about top ethical issues such as artificial intelligence, social media, and data privacy, is this explanation from Michael Goodisman, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences, about genetic testing. 

The American Chemical Society's 2021 winner of its prestigious Priestley Medal is a pioneer who devloped now-widely-used solution-phase colloidal chemistry methods for synthesizing and precisely controlling the fundamental components — the nanocrystals — that underpin much of nanotechnology. Georgia Tech's own nano pioneer, National Medal of Science winner Mostafa El-Sayed, Regents' Emeritus Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, shares his thoughts on A. Paul Alivisatos' contributions to science. 

UrbanHeatATL is using community-driven science to map urban heat islands in Atlanta to better understand how extreme heat impacts Atlanta’s most vulnerable residents. During a kickoff panel hosted by the Atlanta Science Festival, experts noted the strong links between extreme heat and historic racism, including redlining, that place low-income communities of color at disproportionate risk. 

Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, President and Dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine who received a B.S. in 1983 from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, joins GPB host Bill Nigut to talk about a successful initiative to address vaccine skepticism among African-Americans. And as more shots get into arms, Joshua Weitz, School of Biological Sciences professor who has been heavily involved in modeling Covid-19's spread, speaks on the impact of Georgia's decision to drop pandemic restrictions. 

It's what we should have told our middle school teachers when they caught us staring off into space in class: Daydreaming can be "a powerful mental health tool," according to this Popular Science story. The argument is backed up by a 2019 study led by School of Psychology researchers who noted that participants improved work performance and emotional states thanks to some mind wandering. 

The study's researchers, led by the University of Auckland, found a mass exodus of nearly 50,000 species including fish, mollusks, birds and corals that have moved poleward since 1955. Kim Cobb, Georgia Power Chair and Advance Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, wasn't involved in the study, but weighs in on how fast the Earth's temperature has risen due to human activity. 

On this episode of the Connected Aircraft Podcast, Sally Ng, associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, who has a joint appointment with the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, discusses the results of a study on in-flight cabin air quality recently published in the Journal of Indoor Air. Supported by Delta Air Lines, the research may be the first to comprehensively measure particle concentrations likely to be encountered by passengers from terminal to terminal. (Ng also has a joint appointment with the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.)