Experts in the News

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. 

One of the primary drivers of climate change is excess greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Mitigating climate change in the coming century will require both decarbonization — electrifying the power grid or reducing fossil fuel-guzzling transportation — and removing already existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a process called carbon dioxide removal. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yale University have released research proposing a novel pathway involving seagrass and mangroves — known as blue carbon ecosystems — that naturally capture carbon through photosynthesis, which converts carbon dioxide into living tissue. Chris Reinhard, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is a co-author of the research.

Georgia Tech researchers have been selected by NASA to lead a $7.5 million center that will study the lunar environment and the generation and properties of volatiles and dust. The Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER) will be led by Thomas Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics. CLEVER is the successor to Orlando’s pioneering REVEALS (Radiation Effects on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces) center, and both are part of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) program. 

Ocean temperatures have been off the charts since mid-March 2023, with the highest average levels in 40 years of satellite monitoring, and the impact is breaking through in disruptive ways around the world. The sea of Japan is more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) warmer than average. The Indian monsoon, closely tied to conditions in the warm Indian Ocean, has been well below its expected strength. Spain, France, England and the whole Scandinavian Peninsula are also seeing rainfall far below normal, likely connected to an extraordinary marine heat wave in the eastern North Atlantic. Annalisa Bracco, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, partially blames El Niño, but underlying everything is global warming — the continuing rising trend of sea surface and land temperatures for the past several decades as human activities have increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. (This story was also covered by The Conversation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Bloomberg, Reuters, Fast Company, U.S. News & World Report, Idaho Press, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq, Daily Mail, Today (Singapore), The Straits Times, Times of San Diego, Lake County News, and Pressenza.) 

Deep sonar and more high-tech ships were involved in the search to find a missing submersible which disappeared June 18 on the way to the ruins and wreckage of the Titanic with five people aboard. The search area grew exponentially to twice the size of Connecticut. Susan Lozier, Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair of the College of Sciences, and a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said the spot where the RMS Titanic wrecked in 1912 is home to treacherous conditions both above and below the water. “The thing to keep in mind, just the surface conditions, boats and everything involved in this rescue operation, this part of the ocean is where the Gulf Stream continues up northward very energetically, and interacts with the atmosphere, a stormy area,” said Lozier, a physical oceanographer who has researched ocean currents in the North Atlantic. (Lozier was also interviewed by Atlanta News First.)