Experts in the News

A recent study finds that concerns about the health effects of Covid-19 are a key variable in determining whether people are hesitant to get vaccinated against the virus. The study also found that an individual’s tendency to plan for the future plays a surprising role in people’s vaccine hesitancy. At issue is a psychological trait called proactive coping that refers to a person’s tendency to think about and plan for the future. The study's first author is MacKenzie  Hughes, Ph.D. student in the School of Psychology; Clara Coblenz, Georgia Tech alumna (B.S. PSYCH) who is now a research technician in the School of Psychology's Adult Cognition Lab, is a co-author.

One of those sessions, Looking to Our Ocean for Climate Solutions, featured Susan Lozier, College of Sciences Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair. As greenhouse gases warm our planet, our ocean plays a significant role in regulating heat and absorbing carbon dioxide, absorbing a third of the carbon and more than 90 percent of the extra heat we add to our atmosphere. There are consequences to this, as scientists track warming temperatures, depleting oxygen zones, a more acidic ocean, and rising sea levels. The ocean can also be a potential solution if we can leverage the ocean’s existing ability to remove carbon dioxide.

Plants, like animals and people, seek refuge from climate change. And when they move, they take ecosystems with them. To understand why and how plants have trekked across landscapes throughout time, researchers are calling for a new framework. The key to protecting biodiversity in the future may be understanding the past. Jenny McGuire, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences, spearheaded a U.S. National Science Foundation-supported paper on the topic in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. McGuire and her collaborators highlight the outstanding needs for successful future conservation efforts. The paper brings together conservation research that illuminates the complex and constantly evolving dynamics brought on by climate change and the ever-shifting ways humans use land. These factors, McGuire said, interact over time to create dynamic changes and illustrate the need to incorporate time perspectives into conservation strategies by looking deep into the past. (This research was also covered in Time Magazine.)

A small but growing group of researchers is working to make science more accessible to scientists with limited vision. Innovative software and modes of presentation are helping to broaden access to scientific literature. Sonification provides a way for scientists with visual limitations to "see" data; by translating numerical values into sounds with certain parameters — for example, a star’s brightness might be encoded as pitch — researchers can home in on important changes. Highcharts, a charting library service, developed its free tool for exploring charts with sonification at Georgia Tech's Sonification Lab, an interdisciplinary research group based in the School of Psychology and the School of Interactive Computing.

Even if you failed chemistry in high school, there is guaranteed to be something that sparks your intrigue at the Atlanta Science Festival. With over 150 events taking place across the city leading up to one big scientific soiree in Piedmont Park, dive into myriad topics, from coding to astronomy, and enjoy the fresh air. Several College of Sciences faculty, staff, and students are taking part in many of the events. The Champion Newspaper in DeKalb County also previews the festival, as does the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (More information on the Atlanta Science Festival can be found here.) 

A School of Mathematics alumna has been elected as the new chief insurance officer for GuideStone, which provides retirement solutions, insurance coverage and investment products and services to churches, ministries, organizations and institutions as well as ministry-minded individuals. Nadeena Kersey, B.S. MATH, will provide executive leadership and oversight to the insurance line of business, including product development, sales and marketing, services and operations of life and health plans, property and casualty coverage and ancillary products.

Even if you failed chemistry in high school, there is guaranteed to be something that sparks your intrigue at the Atlanta Science Festival. With over 150 events taking place across the city leading up to one big scientific soiree in Piedmont Park, dive into myriad topics, from coding to astronomy, and enjoy the fresh air. Several College of Sciences faculty, staff, and students are taking part in many of the events. The Champion Newspaper in DeKalb County also previews the festival, as does the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (More information on the Atlanta Science Festival can be found here.) 

A School of Mathematics alumna has been elected as the new chief insurance officer for GuideStone, which provides retirement solutions, insurance coverage and investment products and services to churches, ministries, organizations and institutions as well as ministry-minded individuals. Nadeena Kersey, B.S. MATH, will provide executive leadership and oversight to the insurance line of business, including product development, sales and marketing, services and operations of life and health plans, property and casualty coverage and ancillary products.

Even as some parts of West Antarctica rapidly melt, raising sea level, large swaths of the ice remain stable for the time being. Scientists have now explored one of those stable spots — an isolated nook where the ocean meets the ice. This environment is “really at the edge” between melting and freezing, says Justin Lawrence, Ph.D. student with the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The delicate balance between these two processes is shaping the ice into those strange textures, and the result, at Kamb Ice Stream, is that massive cracks in the underside of the ice appear to be freezing back together. Ben Hurwitz, Ph.D. student in Ocean Science and Engineering, and Anthony Spears, Ph.D. student with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, also contributed to the study, published in Nature Geoscience. (The study was also covered at Astrobiology.com, AZO Robotics, Eos, and India Education Daily.) 

Even as some parts of West Antarctica rapidly melt, raising sea level, large swaths of the ice remain stable for the time being. Scientists have now explored one of those stable spots — an isolated nook where the ocean meets the ice. This environment is “really at the edge” between melting and freezing, says Justin Lawrence, Ph.D. student with the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The delicate balance between these two processes is shaping the ice into those strange textures, and the result, at Kamb Ice Stream, is that massive cracks in the underside of the ice appear to be freezing back together. Ben Hurwitz, Ph.D. student in Ocean Science and Engineering, and Anthony Spears, Ph.D. student with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, also contributed to the study, published in Nature Geoscience. (The study was also covered at Astrobiology.com, AZO Robotics, Eos, and India Education Daily.) 

Billions of years ago, before there were beasts, bacteria or any living organism, there were RNAs. These molecules were probably swirling around with amino acids and other rudimentary biomolecules, merging and diverging, on an otherwise lifeless crucible of a planet. Did one of those biomolecules lead to the development of 'protoribosomes' that would work their magic to kickstart life on early Earth? An Israeli biologist won a share of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for that theory. That scientist and another in Japan say they're closing in on building that protoribosome in their labs. Nature asked scientists to weigh in on that prospect, and one of them is Anton Petrov, research scientist and evolutionary biologist in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Petrov is also a member of Georgia Tech's Center for the Origins of Life (COOL).

Billions of years ago, before there were beasts, bacteria or any living organism, there were RNAs. These molecules were probably swirling around with amino acids and other rudimentary biomolecules, merging and diverging, on an otherwise lifeless crucible of a planet. Did one of those biomolecules lead to the development of 'protoribosomes' that would work their magic to kickstart life on early Earth? An Israeli biologist won a share of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for that theory. That scientist and another in Japan say they're closing in on building that protoribosome in their labs. Nature asked scientists to weigh in on that prospect, and one of them is Anton Petrov, research scientist and evolutionary biologist in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Petrov is also a member of Georgia Tech's Center for the Origins of Life (COOL).