Experts in the News

J. Robert Oppenheimer, now the protagonist of a much-anticipated film, is today most known for his scientific leadership of the U.S. Manhattan Project, the World War II–era crash program to build the first-ever atomic bombs. But just a few years earlier, Oppenheimer had found himself pondering very different “weapons” of mass destruction: black holes — although it would be decades before that name arose. “It was influential; it was visionary,” says Feryal Özel, professor and chair of the School of Physics, of Oppenheimer’s work on black holes and neutron stars, the superdense corpses of expired massive stars. “He has a lasting impact.” Özel is a founding member of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, which released the first-ever image of a black hole in 2019 — 80 years after Oppenheimer co-authored a paper theorizing that such objects could exist.

The work of School of Biological Sciences researchers William Ratcliff and Ozan Bozdag makes its way into this Cosmos Magazine column from Redmond Symons, who waxes eloquent how his body developed from a single cell. In May 2023, Ratcliff, an associate professor and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, along with Bozdag, a research scientist, released a study on how they developed multicellular colonies from single cells of snowflake yeast. The team showed how the cells evolved to be physically stronger and more than 20,000 times larger than their ancestor. This type of biophysical evolution is a pre-requisite for the kind of large multicellular life that can be seen with the naked eye. Their study is the first major report on the ongoing Multicellularity Long-Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE), which the team hopes to run for decades.

One of those signs involves being a bit absent-minded, but don't worry. If you’re a deep thinker, you’ll always be lost in your thoughts. Your brain is always busy imagining scenarios and solving problems big and small. This story points to a 2017 Georgia Tech-led study showing that daydreaming may be a sign of a creative, intelligent person. Eric Schumacher, professor in the School of Psychology, and then-Ph.D. scholar Christine Godwin were co-authors of that study.

Membrane efflux pumps play a major role in bacterial multidrug resistance. The tripartite multi-drug efflux pump system from Escherichia coli, AcrAB-TolC, is a target for inhibition to lessen resistance development and restore antibiotic efficacy, with homologs in other ESKAPE pathogens. Our results support a model where an inhibitor forms a molecular wedge within a cleft between the lipoyl and αβ barrel domains of AcrA, diminishing its conformational transmission of drug-evoked signals from AcrB to TolC. This work provides molecular insights into multi-drug adaptor protein function which could be valuable for developing antimicrobial therapeutics. Co-authors of the study include two School of Chemistry and Biochemistry researchers: Associate Professor James Gumbart and Ph.D. candidate Katie M. Kuo. (Gumbart is also an associate professor in the School of Physics.) 

As an organic chemist at Harvard Medical School, Liz Jones loves to study how bonds are made and broken in the molecules in our bodies. She manipulates those bonds when building molecular probes to study the gut microbiome and developing potential new drugs to treat microbiome-related illnesses. She also forges bonds among people, both as a scientist and as an Ultimate Frisbee coach.“I’m super drawn to team environments,” said Jones, research fellow in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. Jones received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. 

Four science instruments at Delta Junction, Alaska, have begun gathering air quality data as part of a multi-state project to determine the chemical content and physical properties of airborne particulate matter. The Delta Junction site, one of 12 in 10 states, is managed by associate professor Jingqiu Mao of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute and College of Natural Science and Mathematics. Nga Lee “Sally” Ng, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is the lead investigator. The instruments began operating June 26. The $12 million project, funded by the National Science Foundation, has created the nation’s first long-term network of monitoring stations on aerosol chemical content and properties.

The heart’s electrical system keeps all its muscle cells beating in sync. A hard whack to the chest at the wrong moment, however, can set up unruly waves of abnormal electrical excitation that are potentially deadly. The resulting kind of arrhythmia may be what caused the football player Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills to collapse on the field after he took a powerful hit during a 2023 National Football League game. In this Quanta podcast, Flavio Fenton, a professor in the School of Physics who studies the electrical dynamics of the heart, tells host Steve Strogatz about a new method under development for treating arrhythmias by stimulating the heart with mild, precisely timed shocks — or possibly even with light.

Ariel Marshall, who received a Ph.D. from the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 2014, is the new Chief of Staff, Office of the Under Secretary for Science and Innovation in the U.S. Department of Energy. Marshall, who joins the DOE after serving as legislative director for Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), will work alongside Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm to implement President Biden’s climate and energy agenda and the Administration’s investments in energy infrastructure across the nation.

With the Powerball lottery once again in the news, people dream about becoming the lucky ones who put the mega in millions. Massive jackpots — that have only gotten more massive in recent years — feed those fantasies of mind-blowing winnings. But lottery games are mostly only lucrative for the private companies that states hire to run them, says Lew Lefton, who retired from the School of Mathematics faculty this year but is still affiliated with the Institute. Lefton is also a former Assistant Dean for Information Technology in the College of Sciences. 

As a deadly heat wave continues to ravage the U.S., new evidence suggests the human body may stop functioning optimally when outside temperatures climb to 104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Research presented at the recent annual Society for Experimental Biology conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, suggests that temperatures in that range raise a person's resting metabolic rate — the amount of energy needed to function at rest. Michael Sawka, adjunct professor and professor of the practice in the School of Biological Sciences, is quoted in the article. 

Human beings for millennia have gazed with awe at the vast torrent of stars — bright and dim — shining in Earth's night sky that comprise the Milky Way. Our home galaxy, however, is now being observed for the first time in a brand new way. Scientists said on Thursday they have produced an image of the Milky Way not based on electromagnetic radiation - light - but on ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos. They detected high-energy neutrinos in pristine ice deep below Antarctica's surface, then traced their source back to locations in the Milky Way - the first time these particles have been observed arising from our galaxy. "This observation is ground-breaking. It established the galaxy as a neutrino source. Every future work will refer to this observation," said Ignacio Taboada, professor in the School of Physics and spokesperson for the IceCube research collaboration in Antarctica that produced the image. (The story was also covered in NPR, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Yahoo! News UK, Yahoo! News Canada, The Jerusalem Post, KPBS, Interactions.org, APS (American Physical Society), Vice, El Pais, VOA Learning English, bdnews24, SciTechDaily, PetaPixel, and Sinc.)

Like a massive, watery battery, the Atlantic Ocean powers hurricanes. As the ocean warms throughout the summer, it sends moisture into the atmosphere—heat energy that combines with wind to spin up storms. And the surface of the North Atlantic has never been hotter at this time of year — the early stages of hurricane season — at least since routine satellite measurements began in the early 1980s. Because of this change, a showdown over this year’s hurricane season is literally heating up in the Atlantic. Hurricanes could feed on that warm ocean water. But at the same time, an El Niño has also formed in the Pacific and could provide conditions that prevent hurricanes. Annalisa Bracco, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, mentions other factors that may influence the 2023 hurricane season.