Experts in the News

Ten years ago, Samer Naif made an unexpected discovery in Earth’s mantle: a narrow pocket, proposed to be filled with magma, hidden some 60 kilometers beneath the seafloor of the Cocos Plate. The observation provided an explanation for how tectonic plates can gradually slide, lubricated by partial melting. The study also “raised several questions about why magma is stored in a thin channel — and where the magma originated from,” says Naif, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. Fellow researchers went on to share competing interpretations for the cause of the channel. Naif went looking for clues of mantle magmas that he first observed in his 2013 Nature study. The results of that search are detailed in a new Science Advances article, “Episodic intraplate magmatism fed by a long-lived melt channel of distal plume origin”, co-authored by Naif.  (Coverage of this study also appeared at Phys.org and Interesting Engineering.)

In a study recently published in the journal Chem, respected origin-of-life chemists from Scripps Research and Georgia Tech put forth a new theory about the origin of the first sugars, integral to the evolution of life, on primitive Earth. They postulated that essential sugars required for creating primordial life forms might have been a result of reactions with glyoxylate (C2HO3–), a fairly basic chemical that plausibly existed on Earth before life evolved. The co-author of the study is Charles Liotta, Regents' Professor Emeritus in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. 

Sonification — turning data into sound — and data accessibility were recurring themes at the January 2023 meeting of the American Astronomical Society.  Sonic representations of light echoing off hot gas around a black hole, sonifications designed to make solar eclipses accessible to the blind and visually impaired (BVI) community, and a proposal to incorporate sonification into astronomical data collected by the $600 million Rubin Observatory in Chile, were just three examples. The meeting was a microcosm of a bigger trend in science accessibility. “Astronomy is a leading field in sonification, but there’s no reason that work couldn’t be generalized,” says one astronomer. Bruce Walker, professor in the School of Psychology who runs the Georgia Tech Sonification Lab, is quoted in the article. 

People with weakened immune systems are at constant risk of infection. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common environmental bacterium, can colonize different body parts, such as the lungs, leading to persistent, chronic infections that can last a lifetime — a common occurrence in people with cystic fibrosis. But the bacteria can sometimes change their behavior and enter the bloodstream, causing chronic localized infections to become acute and potentially fatal. How and why the switch happens in humans has remained unknown. However, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have identified the major mechanism behind the transition between chronic and acute P. aeruginosa infections. Marvin Whiteley -- professor in the School of Biological Sciences and Bennie H. and Nelson D. Abell Chair in Molecular and Cellular Biology -- and Pengbo Cao, a postdoctoral researcher in Whiteley's lab, discovered a gene that drives the switch. By measuring bacterial gene expression in human tissue samples, the researchers identified a biomarker for the transition. (This story was also covered in Technology Networks and News Medical Life Sciences.)

Ice is an important facet of Earth’s climate system. Since ice affects our climate and sea levels, understanding the way ice sheets develop and change over time helps us better predict the future of our planet. So, what are researchers finding? Alexander Robel, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who leads the Georgia Tech Ice and Climate Group, joins the Finding Genius podcast to provide updates on the latest research. By studying the causes of ice sheet change, Robel is on a mission to develop conceptual, mathematical, and computational tools to predict future changes.

Researchers at Seton Hill University, Pennsylvania State University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology looked to the mudskipper, the amphibious fish that spends more than half of its adult life on land to study the evolution of blinking. The study, published in an April edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that blinking may be one of the overlooked and yet important traits that allowed for the successful transition to life on land. Simon Sponberg, Dunn Family Associate Professor in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences, was one of the researchers for the study. (The study was also covered in the Los Angeles Times High School Insider.)

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yale University are proposing a novel pathway through which coastal ecosystem restoration can permanently capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Seagrass and mangroves – known as blue carbon ecosystems – naturally capture carbon through photosynthesis, which converts carbon dioxide into living tissue. Chris Reinhard, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was a researcher for the study. 

Dormancy is an adaptation to living in fluctuating environments. It allows individuals to enter a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity when challenged by unfavorable conditions. Dormancy can also influence species interactions by providing organisms with a refuge from predators and parasites. This study tests the hypothesis that, by generating a seed bank of protected individuals, dormancy can modify the patterns and processes of antagonistic coevolution. The study's researchers include Joshua Weitz, professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, and Blaise Pascal International Chair of Excellence at the Ecole Normale Superieure; and Andreea Magalie, Ph.D. Quantitative Biosciences student in the School of Biological Sciences. 

In this story about the puzzling behavior that goes on inside black holes, Quanta Magazine uses the 2017 first-ever image of the black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy captured by an Event Horizon Telescope research team. That team included EHT founding members Feryal Özel, professor and chair of the School of Physics, and Dimitrios Psaltis, a professor in the School. The story also includes the recent machine learning-enhanced version of the image. 

Excess greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are a major driver of climate change. Mitigating climate change in the future will require both decarbonization — such as transitioning to renewable energy sources — and carbon dioxide removal, which involves extracting already existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A recent study led by Georgia Tech and Yale University has proposed a unique approach to permanently capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through coastal ecosystem restoration. Chris Reinhard, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is one of the study's authors. (The study was also covered in ScienceDaily.)

Cooperation is everywhere. Cells cooperate in multicellular organisms, individuals cooperate in societies, and different species cooperate. Why would it not be the case that microbes cooperate with each other? Researchers have known for more than 20 years that bacteria participate in collective behaviors such as forming biofilms and acquiring nutrients from the environment. But being part of a cooperative group does not necessarily mean that every individual bacterium plays by the rules. Occasionally, cheaters arise. Steve Diggle, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of Georgia Tech's Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection, weighs in on what keeps microbial cheaters from ruining biofilm structures. 

The Planetary Society has announced the second round of winners of its Science and Technology Empowered by the Public (STEP) grant program, in which society members and donors have crowdfunded science and technology projects that advance space science and exploration. A winner of a 2023 STEP grant is a team led by Dartmouth College, which was awarded for their project to study small, extremely salty lakes in British Columbia, Canada, that may be analogous to ancient Mars as well as some of the Solar System’s ocean moons, places of key interest in the search for life. A member of that research team is Emily Hughes, a graduate student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.