Experts in the News

Eric Schumacher's 2018 research paper on daydreaming and intelligence sets the stage in this column celebrating the power of imagination. Schumacher, professor in the School of Psychology, found that those who let their minds wander score higher on creativity and intelligence tests. Columnist Paul Geisler argues that no matter who many advances the technology world gives us, such as ChatGPT, they will never replace a human's ability to create worlds inside their heads, and possible solutions to problems, via daydreaming. 

Peat, the ingredient that makes bagged soil light and spongy, comes from wetlands. It can increase the amount of water soil holds onto while also, paradoxically, increasing its drainage ability — creating an ideal environment for nurturing plants. But while it does all of those things, extracting it is problematic because it strips the bogs it comes from of their carbon stores, and hinders their ability to keep storing carbon — both important parts of fighting climate change. Caitlin Petro, a research scientist in the School of Biological Sciences who studies peatlands and the plants in them, explains that it can take millennia for just a few feet of peat to form. 

Georgia Tech researchers show that rising temperatures in northern regions may damage peatlands, critical ecosystems for storing carbon from the atmosphere — and could decouple vital processes in microbial support systems. Joel Kostka, professor and associate chair of Research in the School of Biological Sciences, and Caitlin Petro, research scientist who works with Kostka, recently led a collaborative study to investigate how this critical type of ecosystem (and the "missing link" of microbial processes that support it) may react to the increased temperature and carbon dioxide levels predicted to come with climate change.

A group including Georgia Tech is pursuing up to $500 million for a new regional hub focused on clean energy manufacturing, an industry bringing thousands of jobs to the state. The plan is to apply for the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs program, federal funding to build tech hubs in key U.S. regions. The process could open this summer and is expected to be highly competitive. The idea is to create additional areas of tech expertise in the country, similar to Silicon Valley or Seattle, said Julia Kubanek, vice president of Interdisciplinary Research, and a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. It could bring more economic development and secure a more reliable domestic supply chain, Kubanek added.

Buildings equipped to mitigate the heat, flooding and other impacts of climate change — and to limit the structures’ own harm to the environment — are not new. But a new fusion of nature and technology is taking sustainable design a step further to create tangible benefits for people and communities. Projects underway across the world reveal what’s possible in Florida’s future if people begin to reject risky coastal development for homes and workplaces built to keep them safe and healthy and lower carbon emissions. The first example cited in the story is the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at Georgia Tech. Several College of Science classes are taught in the building. 

Nadia Qutob, a fourth-year astrophysics undergraduate in the School of Physics, is one of 413 Goldwater Scholarship winners announced by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. "The Department of Defense’s continued partnership with the Goldwater Foundation ensures we are supporting the development of scientific talent essential to maintaining our nation’s competitive advantage,” said Dr. Jagadeesh Pamulapati, acting deputy director of Research, Technology and Laboratories. Qutob conducts research for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Collaboration at Georgia Tech, and was also a research assistant during the summer of 2022 for the LIGO Collaboration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Qutob plans to work toward a Ph.D. in astrophysics and ultimately conduct research on observational gravitational wave physics, and also hopes to teach at the university level.

Scientists believe the Milankovitch cycles have influenced Earth's climate for millions of years, causing climate shifts such as ice ages and warmer periods. These cycles are the periodic variations that influence a planet's orbital properties. This, in turn, controls how much sunlight the planet receives over time and thus plays an important role in determining the planet's climate and habitability. A new study, inspired by Milankovitch cycles, has attempted to investigate how orbital changes may affect the climate of exoplanets. They investigated orbit variations in compact multiplanet systems for this purpose. Gongjie Li, assistant professor in the School of Physics, was a co-author of the study. (This story was also covered at Phys.org.)

A tiny NASA moon probe continues to battle thruster issues as it attempts to reach its destination, but there's still time left to make a fix. Lunar Flashlight launched in December 2022 on a quest to seek lunar ice. But on the way to the moon, the cubesat experienced thruster glitches on its mission to test a new "green" propellant. NASA officials downgraded its mission from orbiting to lunar flybys weeks ago. NASA and mission partners at the Georgia Institute of Technology emphasize the lunar flybys will still be valuable, as they will bring the Cubesat by the south pole of the moon where NASA's Artemis program aims to land astronauts as soon as 2025. A team from the Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering runs mission control activities, and Georgia Tech's REVEALS (Radiation Effect on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces) team, led by principal investigator Thomas Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and adjunct professor in the School of Physics, will study any data collected on lunar ice.

Toad tongues are ready for their closeup — extremely close closeups — in this video from San Francisco PBS station KQED. The closeups and slow-motion photography are necessary to show the role toad saliva plays in snatching crickets, worms, and other prey in the blink of an eye. Thanks to research from the team of David Hu, professor in the School of Biological Sciences with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics, science learned that a toad’s saliva starts off thick and sticky. But when the saliva hits prey at a high speed, it thins out dramatically, pouring into every nook and cranny the tongue touches. And then, it becomes sticky again, drawing that meal down the hatch.

Green companies across the U.S. have developed innovations geared toward minimizing humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions. While carbon dioxide is naturally released from events like volcanic eruptions and wildfires, it’s also the primary greenhouse gas released by transportation, electricity, industrial processes and other activities. Many climate tech businesses are hard at work developing solutions to shrink our carbon footprint. One of the companies highlighted in this profile is Lithos, a carbon capture innovator focused on the agriculture industry. The company’s rock weathering solution is based on a biogeochemical process that uses volcanic basalt rock dust to decompose carbon in fields, as well as nourish growing crops. Chris Reinhard, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is a Lithos co-founder.

Chia seeds sprouted in trays have experimentally confirmed a mathematical model proposed by computer scientist and polymath Alan Turing decades ago. The model describes how patterns might emerge in nature, such as desert vegetation, leopard spots and zebra stripes. But proving that Turing’s model explains patterns in the real world has been challenging. It could be that the idea is a mathematical just-so story that happens to produce similar shapes in a computer, says Flavio Fenton, professor in the School of Physics. Brendan D'Aquino, a Northeastern University computer science undergraduate student who studied in Fenton's lab in the summer of 2022, described his Turing-based experiment at the recent American Physical Society March meeting. (This story also appeared in LiveScience.)

Two New Orleans high school seniors who say they have proven Pythagoras’s theorem by using trigonometry – which academics for two millennia have thought to be impossible – are being encouraged by a prominent US mathematical research organization to submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal. Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, who are students of St Mary’s Academy, recently gave a presentation of their findings at the American Mathematical Society Southeastern Section meeting at Georgia Tech, hosted by the School of Mathematics. They were reportedly the only two high schoolers to give presentations at the meeting, attended by math researchers from institutions including Georgia Tech and the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana State, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Texas Tech. (This story was also covered in NOLA.com, Essence, BlackNews.com, Complex, Yahoo! Entertainment, Crusader Newspaper Group, Atlanta Black Star, and Greek Reporter.)