Tags: Earth

transporting miscanthus
New genetics research: direct conversion of biomass

More potentially transformative new research from the department of genetics, this time in the realm of transportation fuels. For sometime now, biofuels have held great promise - and have been the focus of great controversy. But the economics of the conversion process of grasses to fuels may have finally seen its last barrier fall: Pre-treatment of the biomass feedstock—non-food crops such as switchgrass and miscanthus—is the step of…

group photo with students
Atmospheric sciences students place 3rd at WxChallenge

Whether it is weather forecasting or climate trends, our atmospheric sciences students in the department of geography are in the middle of the one of the most interesting and complex professional fields of our current day. And they continue to hone their skills against the best students in the country, earning a rightful place among them as they represent the Franklin College and UGA: A team of students in the University of Georgia's atmospheric…


Joye: Deepwater Horizon spill effects require long-term study

A new study in Nature Geoscience by UGA marine scientist Samantha Joye questions the fate of methane released from the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf and provides evidence that microbes may not be capable of removing contaminants as quickly and easily as once thought. "Most of the gas injected into the Gulf was methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global climate change, so we were naturally concerned that this potent greenhouse…


2014 Sustainable UGA Awards

  The UGA Office of Sustainability, as part of Athens-Clarke County Greenfest, awarded the 2014 Sustainable UGA Awards to outstanding students, faculty and staff. The Franklin College is proud to be the home of the Sustainable Outstanding Faculty Award winner and the Outstanding Student Award: Landon Bubb, a senior anthropology major from Lilburn, Georgia, is being honored with the 2014 Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award.  As a…


Climate Change Road Trip

Seeking to better understand the environmental dangers posed by global climate change, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D - Rhode Island) is making a multi-state tour of the Southeast coast that included a visit to Sapelo Island and the UGA Marine Institute: Whitehouse toured several sites along Sapelo Island's salt marshes and tidal creeks, learning about climate-related research projects being conducted on the Georgia coast. Organized by the…


A Culture of Sustainability: Interior Design

There are many places to start when it comes to how we might address, if not mitigate, the environmental impact of the space we take up, the resources we consume and the waste created by the combination of these two. We could even start with re-imagining our space itself, for one example.  The UGA Office of Sustainability, the UGA Special Collections Library and the Interior Design area of the Lamar Dodd School of Art have teamed up to…


Chiral metamaterials

Most materials in nature take their properties from the atoms of which they are made-we can see through glass because it is made from silicon dioxide, which has an atomic structure that does not impede visible light. Scientists can arrange matter to interact differently with light, or to interact in specific ways. The resulting metamaterials take their properties both from their structure and the materials from which they are made. This is a…


Deep-sea plumes


Ice sheet melt into the oceans: what to expect

  Image: meltwater runoff from the ice sheet margin in Greenland during summer 2013, courtesy of Thomas Mote.


2014 CURO Symposium

Once again the best in UGA undergraduate research, heavy with Franklin College students, will be presented at the annual symposium by the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities March 31 and April 1 at the Classic Center in downtown Athens: Since its inception in 1999, the CURO Symposium has provided a public space for students from all academic disciplines to share their research with their peers, the UGA research community and…


AAAS on Climate Change: What We know

"We're the largest general scientific society in the world, and therefore we believe we have an obligation to inform the public and policymakers about what science is showing about any issue in modern life, and climate is a particularly pressing one," said Dr. Alan Leshner, CEO of AAAS. "As the voice of the scientific community, we need to share what we know and bring policymakers to the table to discuss how to deal with the issue." The Nobel…


Faculty in the Media, March 2014

Our faculty continue to do an outstanding job of offering comments and quotes in a variety of media. A sampling from this month: Chimps outsmart kids at computer games – News Track India article quotes professor of psychology Dorothy Fragaszy, director of UGA’s Primate Cognition and Behavior Laboratory  Athens Banner Herald article, Little flying machine is new research tool for UGA scientists , quotes Tommy Jordan, director of…


Assessing the Gulf

instrument in ocean
Sulfur into clouds

In a naturally-occuring process, sulfur makes its way from microbes in the ocean up into the atmosphere where it plays a part in the formation of clouds. The phenomenon has long been know, but now scientists are learning more about how it actually happens: A new $2 million National Science Foundation grant will allow the UGA-led research group to further document how genes in ocean microbes transform sulfur into clouds in the Earth's atmosphere…


Hopkinson awarded Sloan Foundation Fellowship

“As CO2 in the atmosphere increases, CO2 increases in the ocean and evidence suggests these increases cause higher rates of photosynthesis in the ocean,” said Hopkinson. “The molecular details of how that works were not very well understood.  But in some of our recent research, we established a decent explanation for how that happens.” A very prestigious award - the Sloan Foundation announced the awards in a full page ad in the New York…


Marshall Shepherd on CBS' Face the Nation

Atheltic Association Professor Marshall Shepherd was a guest on CBS' Face the Nation yesterday. He not only represented UGA extraordinarily well, as usual, he also made a great deal of sense talking about weather and climate:     The blog Living in the Real World offered some thoughts and critiques on Shepherd's interview: [Dr.] Shepherd makes navigating such interviews seem deceptively easy. The reality? The questions come fast,…


Athens Science Café

And as if on cue from the post below, another terrific collaboration that has been in the work for a while comes to fruition. This one is aimed at taking science into the community - the Athens Science Café: Regular meetings held in various locations around Athens where people can come learn about interesting scientific topics in a fun, interactive environment. Each meeting will be led by a professional scientist who is there to introduce some…


World's Most Influential Scientists

If you wanted to create a list of the 50 most influential scientists in the world today, and someone has, the list would be incomplete without UGA computational chemist Henry F. Schaefer. The Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Chemistry, Schaefer was named in thebestschools.org list of influential scientists at number 38. A Humboldt Award winner and slated to receive the Peter Debye Award from the…


Focus on the faculty: Lisa Donovan

Great Q & A on the UGA homepage with professor of plant biology Lisa Donovan:   When did you come to UGA and what brought you here? I came to the University of Georgia in 1995 and was attracted by the diversity and excellence of the plant biologists here. What are your favorite courses and why? At the undergraduate level, I enjoy contributing to BIOL 1108, “Principles of Plant Biology II” for biology majors, because it provides…


Student Reports from Antarctica

 


Two genetics professors receive CAREER awards

The National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program supports junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars, providing crucial laboratory support to promising young researchers. Congratulations to assistant professors Andrea Sweigart and Dave Nelson of department of genetics, who were each awarded five-year, $1 million grants by this program: Sweigart is an evolutionary biologist who studies quantitative genetics…


Shepherd on PBS' Nova: Killer Typhoon

On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the Philippines, whipping the low-lying and densely-populated islands with 200 mph winds and sending a two-story-high storm surge flooding into homes, schools, and hospitals. The PBS NOVA dcomentary Killer Typhoon featured perspectives from some of the world's leading climate scientists, including AMS president and UGA professor Marshall Shepherd. The program aired last night. The…

chicago with ice
Shepherd to be part of White House discussion of 'Polar Vortex'

Professor of geography and president of the American Meteorological Society J. Marshall Shepherd will join weather and climate experts in a White House discussion on the 'Polar Vortex' at 2 pm ET on Friday, Jan. 10: "We the Geeks: ‘Polar Vortex' and Extreme Weather" will be a conversation with leading meteorologists, climate scientists and weather experts about why temperatures dipped to such frigid lows this week, how weather experts turn raw…


Top science and space stories of 2013

AMS president and Georgia Athletic Association Professor of geography Marshall Shepherd is quoted in CNN's rundown of the top science stories of 2013. On climate change: Scientists are also hoping to help our own species understand the perils associated with climate change. The phenomenon raises the likelihood of severe weather events and is predicted to damage agriculture, forestry, ecosystems and human health. A key symbolic moment was when…


Newly sequenced genome addresses Darwin's 'abominable mystery'

The origin and early evolution of flowering plants, based at least in part on his frustration with the fossil record of the time, was a particularly puzzling subject for Charles Darwin. His correspondence between 1875 and 1881 reveals that he was deeply bothered by the apparent origins and rate of diversification of flowering plants in the mid-Cretaceous. A newly sequenced genome of the Amborella trichopoda plant addresses Darwin's mystery and…
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