Experts in the News

Hurricane Helene’s destructive and deadly rampage through multiple Southeastern states after coming ashore on Florida’s Gulf Coast exemplifies the potential expanding impact of extreme tropical weather. Assistant Professor Ali Sarhadi in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences says “this tragedy highlights the increasing vulnerability of inland regions to the impacts of hurricanes. As climate change intensifies storm behavior, including increased rainfall and slower storm movement, areas previously considered less susceptible are now facing heightened risks.” 

A fire at a chemical plant in Rockdale County sent a colossal plume of smoke into the sky. Chemicals released from the fire at the BioLab in Conyers include chlorine, chloramine and chlorine compounds, according to the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency. Additionally, bromine — another chemical used in spa and pool treatments as an alternative to chlorine and has a bleach-like odor — was also detected, though at lower levels.

Love Family Professor Nga Lee (Sally) in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences says "a system known as the Atmospheric Science and Chemistry Measurement Network detected a 1,400-times increase in the amount of chlorine-containing particles in the air, and a 170-times increase in the amount of bromine-containing particles in the air over Decatur on Monday morning. Typically, there is little of either element in the air." 

A chemical cloud has been emanating from Conyers since Sunday, when a fire broke out at the facility of a company that makes pool and spa treatments and sprinkler system water reacted with chemicals on site. The chemical plume put residents in Rockdale County into a shelter-in-place order. Associate Professor Joseph Sadighi in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry explained in a Q&A with 11Alive meteorologist Melissa Nord what is lingering in the air over the Conyers BioLab plant. He began with explaining the difference between chlorine and chlorine compounds. 

"Chlorine is an element that is very common in everyday life," says Sadighi. "Table salt is sodium chloride, which means it's chlorine that has picked up an electron and it's in a salt lattice that makes it very, very stable. If you run an electrical current through it, you can turn it into chlorine gas, that's a molecule made up of two chlorine atoms, and it is a gas under ordinary conditions. If we have it in a cylinder under pressure, at about eight atmospheres and room temperature, you have a liquid under the pressure of its own headspace like we do in propane gas cylinders for our grills."

When deciding on what music to improve productivity at work, you may want to consider two important variables: predictability and novelty. Associate Professor Thackery Brown in the School of Psychology has been working with Yiren Ren, a sixth-year PhD student, on examining how music affected a subject’s ability to process or remember new information. “Music is just such an emotional medium,” says Ren. “It can not only modulate how you feel at that moment, it can also modulate the memory you’re recalling at that moment and how you perceive that memory itself.”

Tropical Storm Isaac developed over the ocean, becoming the ninth named storm of the hurricane season. The storm formed rapidly from a tropical disturbance.

"A tropical disturbance is called a tropical depression whenever the winds are between 25 and 38 mph," says Annalisa Bracco, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "When the wind speeds are between 39 and 73 mph it is classified as a tropical storm. Above 74 mph it is called a hurricane or typhoon." 

Hurricane Helene formed from an area of low pressure in the Caribbean and strengthened rapidly over a few days.

"Two main conditions behind intensification are warm surface waters (the cyclone can extract energy from it and the warmer the water, the more energy it can extract to grow), and low wind shear (high wind shear tends to disrupt vortices, both cyclones and anticyclones)," says Bracco. 

One group of birds is relatively scarce in the lowlands of South Asia: insect eaters. A study published in Ecology Letters may explain why. Weaver ants—forest-dwelling ants that live in the lowlands and ferociously prey on small invertebrates—might be gobbling up the birds’ food source and pushing them to higher elevations.

“That’s a big-time idea, that it’s ants that shape insect-eating bird communities,” says School of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Ben Freeman. He added though, while it’s an intriguing pattern, he would like to see future work test the hypothesis experimentally.

Professor and Georgia Tech Ocean Science and Engineering Co-Director Annalisa Bracco serves as the scientific advisor for Around the Blue, a new docufilm on ocean sustainability that follows ocean navigator Giovanni Soldini as he sails around the world, interviewing scientists working towards solutions for our oceans at each stop.

Presented at the Venice Film Festival on September 7 and endorsed by the UN Ocean Decade, the film will be released on Amazon towards the end of this year. Stay tuned at AroundtheBlue.org for the film’s public release in November, with English subtitles.

Related coverage: Giornale della Vela, Corriere della Sera, CNR, Style Magazine, Ciak Magazine, Press Mare, Seven Press, Il Messaggero, Daily Media/ecostampa.it, PUBBLICOMNOW, Touchpoint Today, SKYTG24, Rai Radio1, fattitaliani.it, spettacolomusicasport.com, orgoglionerd.it, and more.

Researchers at Georgia Tech, led by School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor M.G. Finn , along with researchers from MIT, revealed a new strategy for enabling immune system mobilization against cancer cells. The work, which appears in ACS Nano, produces exactly the type of anti-tumor immunity needed to function as a tumor vaccine - both prophylactically and therapeutically. Finn's research, along with two other groups, had previously identified a synthetic DC-SIGN binding group that directed cellular immune responses when used to decorate virus-like particles. But it was unclear whether this method could be utilized as an anticancer vaccine. Collaboration between researchers in the labs at MIT and Georgia Tech demonstrated that in fact, it could.

A study on the magnitude M 7.6 earthquake Noto Hanto, which struck Japan's Noto Peninsula on January 1st, 2024, shows it was preceded by a series of foreshocks including three significant events (M 5.5, M 4.6, and M 5.9). These foreshocks occurred just seconds to minutes before the main shock and underscores a complex behavior change from the long-term swarm-like activities to the burst-like foreshock activities. School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Zhigang Peng talks about the importance of this study. 

"While other recently published studies focused on one aspect of the Noto sequence, such as the mainshock rupture or relocation of small earthquakes, this study combines results from many different angles, including relocations of all seismic events since 2018," says Peng. "Hence, it is likely one of the most complete analyses so far for this sequence."

New research shows that improving wintertime air quality in Fairbanks, Alaska — particularly in frigid conditions around 40 below zero Fahrenheit — may be less effective than intended. 

Led by a team of University of Alaska Fairbanks and Georgia Tech researchers that includes School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Rodney Weber, the researchers' latest findings are published in Science Advances. 

In the study, the team leveraged state-of-the-art thermodynamic tools used in global air quality models, with an aim to better understand how reducing the amount of primary sulfate in the atmosphere might affect sub-zero air quality conditions.

The project stems from the 2022 Alaskan Layered Pollution and Chemical Analysis project, or ALPACA, an international project funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European sources. It is part of an international air quality effort called Pollution in the Arctic: Climate Environment and Societies.

Read the full story in the University of Alaska Fairbanks newsroom.

Evolution is the process by which a species' genes or physical appearance changes gradually over time. By the early to mid-20th century, scientists realized that evolution can happen much more quickly than ever realized. Several factors can lead to rapid evolution. School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Assistant Professor James Stroud explains that "evolution is always occurring." Stroud and other researchers are using nonnative green iguanas as a case study for rapid evolution. The warm-adapted lizards are known to freeze and fall out of trees during Miami's infrequent cold snaps. 

"What we saw is that some die, but some survive — and the ones that survive can actually tolerate colder temperatures than the ones we measured before," Stroud says. "So it suggests that evolution might be happening."

Despite the fact that Antarctica is extraordinarily difficult to get to, astronomers love it and have chosen it as the location for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. What could possibly make such a remote location so desirable for space science that it’s worth all that trouble? 

In this article, scientists including Georgia Tech's Brandon Pries from the School of Physics explain why the South Pole is such a hotspot for astronomers. The answer? At the South Pole, you can best view neutrons and neutrinos in space. 

Pries compares the benefits of the South Pole to the North Pole. “The North Pole is more difficult because ice coverage there fluctuates,” explains Pries. “There is a foundation of bedrock underneath Antarctica that serves as a solid base for the IceCube instruments.” This bedrock is also why Antarctica is home to the South Pole Telescope, a radio observatory that helped take the first ever photo of a black hole.