Tags: Earth

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Kudos, Nov-Dec. 2019

Students and alumni lead the kudos as we count down to the end of 2019. Congratulations all: Herb Girls Athens, a two-woman team, won the 2018-19 FABricate competition with its signature product, a healthy coffee additive called Rally Coffee. The FABricate competition is designed to empower students to turn their great ideas into working businesses. Eileen Schaffer, an agribusiness master’s degree student, and …

black white photo of beakers and test tubes, arms of a man
Noted and Quoted, November 2019

Gray's reef, the global carbon cycle and statistical significance were a few of the recent headlines supported with Franklin College faculty expertise. A sampling of the stories that appeared over the past month:   Scientists race to track oil from capsized ship – Regents Professor Samantha Joye quoted by GPB   After a giant ship goes belly up, many fear a shoreline is next – Samantha Joye quoted at…

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Faculty receive First-Year Odyssey Teaching Awards

First-Year Odyssey Seminars are some of the most important early academic experiences students can have at UGA. Broadly-themed courses taught by senior faculty feed a sense of discovery in students about knowledge, about the world, and importantly, about themselves as students begin to learn and cultivate their own interests. Four UGA faculty members, two from the Franklin College have received a 2019 First-Year Odyssey Teaching Award in…

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NOAA's GOES-R Satellite Series: Revolutionizing Earth Observations

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), known as the GOES-R Series, is the nation’s most advanced fleet of geostationary weather satellites. Geostationary satellites orbit the Earth’s equatorial plane at a speed matching the Earth’s rotation. This allows them to stay in a fixed position in the sky, remaining stationary with respect to a point on the…

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STEMzone brings research to Saturday tailgate

Students and faculty from anthropology, genetics, marine sciences and cellular biology offered up-close interaction with UGA research to young fans attending the UGA-Missouri game this past Saturday: STEMzone, now in its third year, hosted more than a dozen hands-on opportunities to engage people of all ages on research being done at UGA in the science, technology, engineering and math fields. “We are glad to report that STEMzone fall…

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Scientists identify mechanism of coastal water flow

Great new work by marine scientists Patricia Medeiros, Caitlin Amos and Renato Castelao published in Nature: The 200-mile zone that hugs the curvature of the coast bursts with life, from phytoplankton to whales. Out in the open ocean, this activity is comparatively diminished. Understanding how coastal water is moved offshore fertilizing the open ocean is a long-standing goal of ocean scientists. Now, a new study from…

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Ocean Sciences Instructional Center

UGA and the Franklin College celebrated the renovation of a 71-year old cattle barn as a modern classroom and laboratory building in a dedication ceremony on Oct. 22 at the University of Georgia’s Skidaway Institute of Oceanography: UGA President Jere W. Morehead presided over the ceremony, which capped the yearlong renovation of the reinforced concrete and steel beam structure that is now known as the Ocean Sciences Instructional…

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Noted and Quoted, October 2019

Franklin faculty contributed popular press articles about issues of the day and had their research reported around the world. A sample from over the past month: The grimy history of the Attorney General’s Office, associate professor of history Stephen Mihm in his regular column at Bloomberg Here’s your answer when someone asks “How can it be so cold if there’s global warming?”  Georgia Athletic Association…

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Ancient marine molecules, bursting from the sea

Waves crash in the ocean and inject tiny particles into the air, which contain molecules of organic carbon more than 5,000 years old. New research published in Science Advances by Steven Beaupré of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) and a national team of scientists, helps to solve a long-standing mystery about what finally happens to these ancient marine…

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Study provides framework for 1 billion years of green plant evolution

Gene sequences for more than 1,100 plant species have been released by an international consortium of nearly 200 plant scientists, the culmination of a nine-year research project. The One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative (1KP) is a global collaboration to examine the diversification of plant species, genes and genomes across the more than 1 billion-year history of green plants dating back to the ancestors of flowering…

twitter screen shot of the eclipse path across the U.S.
Viral Maps: when content catches on

When you think about content going viral, maps don’t typically come to mind, but “The Eclipse: Smothered and Covered,” a map with the 2017 eclipse path of totality overlaid with the best Waffle House locations for viewing, did just that. The map was created by University of Georgia assistant professor of geography Jerry Shannon. After being retweeted by Waffle House, Shannon’s map quickly went viral. Almost 200,000 people viewed the tweet, and…

satellite map of three rivers converging on a green background
Plant physiology and river flooding

Earth system scientists have identified another culprit (other than rain) that causes a river to overflow its banks: leafy plants. In a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the UCI researchers describe the emerging role of ecophysiology in riparian flooding. As an adaptation to an overabundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees, plants and grasses constrict their stomatal pores to regulate the amount of…

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Sharing the Knowledge: NIH Award Supports Expanded Genomics Data Resource

A team led by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Georgia provides thousands of researchers around the world with access to the Eukaryotic Pathogen Genomics Database (EuPathDB.org), a collection of resources for analyzing large-scale datasets associated with microbial pathogens. These include the parasites responsible for malaria, sleeping sickness, and toxoplasmosis; the fungi responsible for thrush, aspergillosis and…

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New research traces the spread of Neolithic practices into Europe

The spread of agriculture from the Near East and Fertile Crescent through Turkey and into Europe around 10,000 years ago was a complex and multifaceted process, one that archaeologists are trying to understand using one of the latest scientific techniques: stable isotope analysis.  A new paper published in the journal PLOS One by Suzanne Pilaar Birch, assistant professor of geography and anthropology at the University of Georgia, and…

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Lab, supplementary course material fees are being eliminated

From art students who need paint, brushes and paper to create their works, to chemistry students needing chemicals and test tubes to complete experiments in labs, starting in spring 2020 UGA students will not have to pay additional laboratory and supplementary course material fees for those supplies: “All students at UGA should have the same access to the classes required for their degrees,” said UGA President Jere W.…

aerial photo of a coastal marsh, with bridge
Scientists assess storage value in blue carbon ecosystems

When Hurricane Dorian roared up the East Coast during the first week of September, the places where people live and work in several states were under threat. The first line of protection against storm damage was made up of coastal vegetated ecosystems, including nearly 300,000 acres of salt marshes in Georgia. The salt marsh, seagrass, and mangrove ecosystems that bore the brunt of pounding waves are not, however, immune from damage.…

black and white photo of man and test tubes with graphic
1970's graduate student revolutionized biochemical research

Biochemist and Franklin College alumnus Marion Bradford spent most of his career developing new ways to use a common item found in kitchens and nurseries around the world—cornstarch. He is also the author of one of the most cited research papers in history: He was part of a team recognized in 2003 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Chemical Society for creating an organic compound from corn sugar used in…

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Amazing student: Sarah Saddoris

For plant biology major and Goldwater Scholar Sarah Saddoris, research has played a primary role in defining her goal to improve the production of the global food supply: As my primary focus, research has played a defining role in my studies. I have spent my fair share of Friday nights in the lab finishing experiments at 2 in the morning and many game days in Davison Life Sciences (benchwork waits for no man!). I have…

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Kudos, September 2019

Fulbright grants, SEC Leadership Development and excellence in research, visual art and career experiences for graduate students highlight Franklin College awards and achievements in September. Congratulations all: Get Installed: Installation at Valdosta State University by Jon Swindler, associate professor of art and associate director of Lamar Dodd School of Art, and Mike McFalls, professor of art at Columbus State University…

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Noted and Quoted, September 2019

A few of the top stories featuring the scholarship and expertise of Franklin College faculty members during September: Tiny Albino lizards are the first gene-edited, mutant reptiles, research by associate professor of genetics Doug Menke reported in Newsweek, Courthouse News Service, News Atlas, Science Codex, Earth.com, EcoWatch, Sci-News, The Scientist Magazine   Evacuating for a hurricane…

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Franklin College podcast series, Unscripted

The University of Georgia Bulldogs and the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish will meet in Athens on Saturday, September 21 for the second leg in the home-and-home series between two college football powers. Off the field, the two universities share a vision for scholarly collaboration also in its second year: the Berlin Seminar in Transnational European Studies. A joint initiative of the Franklin College and the Willson Center…

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AIR lecture features Muscogee Creek Sarah Deer, Sept. 19

Sarah Deer, 2014 MacArthur Fellow, Chief Justice for the Prairie Island Indian Community Court of Appeals, and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies professor at the University of Kansas, is the featured speaker for the fifth annual American Indian Returnings (AIR) lecture September 19, 4:30 p.m. in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium at the Georgia Museum of Art. Th event is supported by the Eidson Foundation Fund, the…

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Studying the impact of climate change on Georgia archaeology sites

In the world of climate change studies, there are extensive global and regional models but fewer site-specific models. Lindsey Cochran, a postdoctoral research associate with the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology, is working with digital data from the Georgia coast to recreate models that simulate site-specific changes from now until 2100. “Archaeologists care a lot more about the context in which an artifact was found than the…

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Amazing student: Kaitlin Luedecke

Goldwater Scholar, chemistry major and Chicago native Kaitlin Luedecke is on track to become a chemistry professor and hopes to inspire a new generation of scientists both in the classroom and in the laboratory: University highlights, achievements, awards and scholarships: Spring break 2019 I traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Colonia, Uruguay, with some other UGA Foundation Fellows, and I had the time of my life! I attended some…

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‘Flipped’ classroom experience gets students more involved

Our colleagues in the UGA College of Education share a story about the new ways students study science and also, appropriately enough, about football: As it turns out, laws of physics that apply to gases are a difficult topic—students in the university’s General Chemistry class often find themselves fumbling the topic. But in the past year, students in the College of Education and the Franklin College of Arts and…
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