Companies around the world are increasingly committed to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions to slow and ultimately reverse climate change.

One indicator is the number of companies that have set emissions targets as part of the Science Based Targets initiative, or SBTi, a global nonprofit organization. That number grew from 164 companies in late 2018 to over 6,600 by November 2024. And thousands more have committed to lower their emissions.

It’s not always a smooth road, however. Some of those companies – including big names like Microsoft and Walmart – have had to pull back on some of their SBTi commitments.

We study the history of SBTi pledges to understand these commitments and what can undermine them. We believe there is more to the story of these pullbacks than meets the eye.

What is Net Zero?

To understand corporate climate commitments, let’s start with the concept of “net zero.”

The Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and ideally to 1.5 C (2.7 F). Meeting the more ambitious target of 1.5 C will require reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by around 2050.

Net zero is the point at which the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere is balanced by greenhouse gases removed, either through natural sources like forests or technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

The Science Based Targets initiative, developed alongside the Paris Agreement in 2015, provides a framework to help companies align their efforts with the 1.5 C goal.

SBTi Commitments Have Grown Quickly

To join the initiative, companies begin by signing a letter of commitment to set near-term (2030) and long-term (2050) targets for reducing their emissions. Companies have 24 months to develop targets that adhere to SBTi guidelines. If the targets are validated and approved by SBTi, the company announces its targets publicly. The targets must be revalidated every five years, or they expire.

The number of global companies committing to and setting targets with SBTi has grown rapidly in recent years.

By the end of 2023, 7,929 companies representing 39% of global market capitalization had committed to set targets, and 4,205 had targets already validated by SBTi. By November 2024, that number had grown to 6,614.

This impressive participation is particularly significant given SBTi’s high expectations. SBTi requires near-term targets to be set so companies reduce emissions by at least 42% by 2030 from 2020 levels.

Why Some Companies Have Pulled Back

So, why are companies like, Walmart, Microsoft and Amazon scaling back their commitments with SBTi?

While some people attribute these moves to political pressure from fossil fuel supporters, a closer look at data since 2013 reveals a more complex set of factors that may better explain their actions.

We found that, over the past decade, 695 companies either withdrew near- or long-term commitments or had a commitment that expired and was terminated by SBTi. These actions were concentrated in two distinct periods.

The first period followed SBTi’s decision in April 2019 to update its criteria, including tightening the minimum target from under 2 C to either “well below 2 C” or 1.5 C. We believe several companies were unprepared to meet the new requirements. Among the 500 companies that had either committed to or set a target by the end of 2018, 94 (18.8%) terminated their initial commitments after the criteria changed.

The second period was after January 2023, when SBTi introduced a new compliance policy and began removing commitments that had expired. In this period, 531 commitments were terminated – 497 of them because the commitment expired, and 16 because the company withdrew.

It’s important to recognize that SBTi strategically raised the bar to encourage companies to accelerate their progress in addressing climate change.

Reasons Some Companies Have Struggled

In a report in March 2024, SBTi provided a candid look at companies’ climate commitments from 2019 to 2021 and, importantly, where they struggled.

Approximately half of the companies that responded to its survey identified the complexity of addressing Scope 3 emissions – emissions from a company’s supply chain and use of its products – as a primary obstacle to setting net-zero targets. The supply chain is often considered a blind spot for measuring environmental impact and is difficult for companies to control.

On the day the report was released, SBTi removed the long-term commitments of 239 companies. About 60% of those companies had near-term targets that remained.

This helps explain the news around companies such as Walmart, Microsoft and Amazon.

Walmart’s and Microsoft’s long-term net-zero commitments were terminated, though both companies still have valid near-term targets with SBTi.

Moreover, both reaffirm their environmental commitments in their annual reports. Walmart is currently finalizing its Scope 3 emissions analysis to inform future strategy development, and Microsoft is investing in carbon removal technologies to become carbon-negative by 2030.

Amazon presents a more challenging case. The company may have faced difficulty meeting SBTi’s stringent mandate, particularly around supply chain emissions. Amazon has said it is still committed to reaching net-zero emissions and plans to explore setting targets with other organizations.

Many Companies are on Track

Our analysis of SBTi’s progress data, which includes all companies that had set a target by 2022 for which SBTi has emissions data, reveals that companies are cutting their emissions by a median annual rate of 5.4%.

Looking just at direct emissions from companies’ operations (Scope 1) and their purchased electricity (Scope 2), companies did even better. The median annual emissions decrease was 7.25% for companies with both Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets.

Scope 2 emissions are the low-hanging fruit and frequently align with cost-saving measures like improving energy efficiency.

Scope 3 emissions, those generated by companies’ suppliers and by consumer use of their products, are the biggest challenge. Companies with a separate Scope 3 target only reduced those emissions by a median annual rate of about 3%.

In 2024, SBTi announced plans to revise its Net-Zero Standard and allow companies to use carbon offsets to meet their Scope 3 emissions targets, drawing intense criticism. Carbon offsets allow companies to pay projects to reduce emissions on their behalf, such as by planting trees or managing forests.

SBTi’s challenge lies in finding a balance that maintains the integrity of its standards while encouraging broader participation, especially from high-impact industries.

Other Ways Companies are Reducing Emissions

While setting and achieving SBTi targets signals a strong commitment to combating climate change, many companies are setting emissions goals and working toward them without joining SBTi.

An example is the Drawdown Georgia Business Compact. It was created to accelerate the adoption of 20 technology- and market-ready solutions and includes nearly 70 companies, from multinationals headquartered in Georgia like Delta and UPS to small- and medium-size enterprises operating in the state.

Through the compact, companies are advancing initiatives with local economic benefits. For example, they are exploring ways to maximize Georgia forests’ ability to remove carbon and discussing effective ways to deploy sustainable aviation fuels.

The road to net-zero emissions will be bumpy. Yet the rapid growth of global corporate commitments, as well as action by a wider range of companies at the regional level, suggests corporate efforts are nevertheless moving forward.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why does a rocket have to go 25,000 mph (about 40,000 kilometers per hour) to escape Earth? – Bo H., age 10, Durham, New Hampshire

There’s a reason why a rocket has to go so fast to escape Earth. It’s about gravity – something all of us experience every moment of every day.

Gravity is the force that pulls you toward the ground. And that’s a good thing. Gravity keeps you on Earth; otherwise, you would float away into space.

But gravity also makes it difficult to leave Earth if you’re a rocket heading for space. Escaping our planet’s gravitational pull is hard – not only is gravity strong, but it also extends far away from Earth.

Like a Balloon

As a rocket scientist, one of the things I do is teach students how rockets overcome gravity. Here’s how it works:

Essentially, the rocket has to make thrust – that is, create force – by burning propellant to make hot gases. Then it shoots those hot gases out of a nozzle. It’s sort of like blowing up a balloon, letting go of it and watching it fly away as the air rushes out.

More specifically, the rocket propellant consists of both fuel and oxidizer. The fuel is typically something flammable, usually hydrogen, methane or kerosene. The oxidizer is usually liquid oxygen, which reacts with the fuel and allows it to burn.

When going into space and escaping from Earth, rockets need lots of force, so they consume propellant very quickly. That’s a problem, because the rocket can’t carry enough propellant to keep thrusting forever; the amount of propellant needed would make the rocket too heavy to get off the ground.

So what happens when the propellant runs out? The thrust stops, and gravity slows the rocket down until it gradually begins to fall back to Earth.

Fortunately, scientists can launch the rocket with some sideways momentum so that it misses the Earth when it returns. They can even do this so it continuously falls around the Earth forever. In other words, it goes into orbit, and begins to circle the planet.

Many launches intentionally don’t completely leave Earth behind. Thousands of satellites are orbiting our planet right now, and they help phones and TVs work, display weather patterns for meteorologists, and even let you use a credit card to pay for things at the store or gas at the pump. You can sometimes see these satellites in the night sky, including the International Space Station.

Escaping Earth

But suppose the goal is to let the rocket escape from Earth’s gravity forever so it can fly off into the depths of space. That’s when scientists do a neat trick called staging. They launch with a big rocket, and then, once in space, discard it to use a smaller rocket. That way, the journey can continue without the weight of the bigger rocket, and less propellant is needed.

But even staging is not enough; eventually the rocket will run out of propellant. But if the rocket goes fast enough, it can run out of propellant and still continue to coast away from Earth forever, without gravity pulling it back. It’s like riding a bike: build up enough speed and eventually you can coast up a hill without pedaling.

And just like there’s a minimum speed required to coast the bike, there’s a minimum speed a rocket needs to coast away into space: 25,020 mph (about 40,000 kilometers per hour).

Scientists call that speed the escape velocity. A rocket needs to go that fast so that the momentum propelling it away from Earth is stronger than the force of gravity pulling it back. Any slower, and you’ll go into an orbit of Earth.

Escaping Jupiter

Bigger, or more massive, objects have stronger gravitational pull. A rocket launching from a planet bigger than Earth would need to achieve a higher escape speed.

For example, Jupiter is the most massive planet in our solar system. It’s so big, it could swallow 1,000 Earths. So it requires a very high escape speed: 133,100 mph (about 214,000 kilometers per hour), more than five times the escape speed of Earth.

But the extreme example is a black hole, an object so massive that its escape speed is extraordinarily high. So high, in fact, that even light – which has a speed of about 670 million mph (over a billion kilometers per hour) – is not fast enough to escape. That’s why it’s called a black hole.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The recently published Georgia Tech Sustainable Procurement Guide, developed in partnership with the Office of Sustainability and the Office of Procurement and Business Services, reflects Georgia Tech’s commitment to sustainability. This guide provides faculty, staff, and departments with actionable recommendations to make environmentally responsible purchasing decisions. 

The demand for electricity to power AI data centers is skyrocketing, placing immense pressure on traditional energy sources.  

In collaboration with subject matter experts in Infrastructure and Sustainability, the Office of Sustainability is offering a series of Living Learning Campus Pathways to provide unique, immersive learning opportunities that connect classroom knowledge with real-world experience in sustainability. Applications for the Living Campus Student Fellowship, the newest offering, will open this month for students interested in gaining paid experience. 

It’s almost impossible to study this phenomenon in a lab, though, because water crystallizes into ice so quickly at such low temperatures. Now, new research from the Georgia Institute of Technology uses machine learning models to better understand water’s phase changes, opening more avenues for a better theoretical understanding of various substances. With this technique, the researchers found strong computational evidence in support of water’s liquid-liquid transition that can be applied to real-world systems that use water to operate.

“We are doing this with very detailed quantum chemistry calculations that are trying to be as close as possible to the real physics and physical chemistry of water,” said Thomas Gartner, an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. “This is the first time anyone has been able to study this transition with this level of accuracy.”

The research was presented in the paper, “Liquid-Liquid Transition in Water From First Principles,” in the journal Physical Review Letters, with co-authors from Princeton University.

Simulating Water

To better understand how water interacts, the researchers ran molecular simulations on supercomputers, which Gartner compared to a virtual microscope.

“If you had an infinitely powerful microscope, you could zoom in all the way down to the level of the individual molecules and watch them move and interact in real time,” he said. “This is what we’re doing by creating almost a computational movie.”

The researchers analyzed how the molecules move and characterized the liquid structure at different water temperatures and pressures, mimicking the phase separation between the high and low-density liquids. They collected extensive data — running some simulations for up to a year — and continued to fine-tune their algorithms for more accurate results.

Even a decade ago, running such long and detailed simulations wouldn’t have been possible, but machine learning today offered a shortcut. The researchers used a machine learning algorithm that calculated the energy of how water molecules interact with each other. This model performed the calculation significantly faster than traditional techniques, allowing the simulations to progress much more efficiently.

Machine learning isn’t perfect, so these long simulations also improved the accuracy of the predictions. The researchers were careful to test their predictions with different types of simulation algorithms. If multiple simulations gave similar results, then it validated their accuracy.

“One of the challenges with this work is that there's not a lot of data that we can compare to because it's a problem that's almost impossible to study experimentally,” Gartner said. “We're really pushing the boundaries here, so that's another reason why it's so important that we try to do this using multiple different computational techniques.”

Beyond Water

Some of the conditions the researchers tested were extremes that probably don’t exist on Earth directly, but potentially could be present in various water environments of the solar system, from the oceans of Europa to water in the center of comets. Yet these findings could also help researchers better explain and predict water’s strange and complex physical chemistry, informing water’s use in industrial processes, developing better climate models, and more.  

The work is even more generalizable, according to Gartner. Water is a well-studied research area, but this methodology could be expanded to other difficult-to-simulate materials like polymers, or complex phenomena like chemical reactions.

“Water is so central to life and industry, so this particular question of whether water can undergo this phase transition has been a longstanding problem, and if we can move toward an answer, that’s important,” he said. “But now we have this really powerful new computational technique, but we don't yet know what the boundaries are and there’s a lot of room to move the field forward.”

CITATION: T.E. Gartner, III, P.M. Piaggi, R. Car, A.Z. Panagiotopoulos, P.G. Debenedetti, “Liquid-liquid transition in water from first principles,”* Phys. Rev. Lett., 2022.

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.255702

About the Talk

The event is part of the School of Physics “Inquiring Minds” public lecture series, and will be held at the Ferst Center for the Arts. The talk is free and open to campus and the Atlanta community, and no RSVP is required. Refreshments begin at 4:30, and the lecture will start at 5 p.m. ET.

“The multiple industrial and agricultural revolutions have transformed the world,” Chu recently shared in an abstract for the lecture. “However, an unintended consequence of this progress is that we are changing the climate of our planet. In addition to the climate risks, we will need to provide enough clean energy, water, and food for a more prosperous world that may grow to 11 billion by 2100.” 

The talk will discuss the significant technical challenges and potential solutions that could provide better paths to a more sustainable future. “How we transition from where we are now to where we need to be within 50 years is arguably the most pressing set of issues that science, innovation, and public policy have to address,” Chu added. 

The event’s faculty host is Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech.

About Steven Chu

Steven Chu is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and a professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology in the Medical School at Stanford University.

Chu served as the 12th U.S. Secretary of Energy from January 2009 until the end of April 2013. As the first scientist to hold a U.S. Cabinet position and the longest serving Energy Secretary, Chu led several initiatives including ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy), the Energy Innovation Hubs, and was personally tasked by President Obama to assist in the Deepwater Horizon oil leak.

In the spring of 2010, Chu was the keynote speaker for the Georgia Tech Ph.D. and Master's Commencement Ceremony.

Prior to his cabinet post, Chu was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he was active in pursuit of alternative and renewable energy technologies, and a professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford, where he helped launch Bio-X, a multi-disciplinary institute combining the physical and biological sciences with medicine and engineering. Previously he also served as head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

He is the co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to laser cooling and atom trapping. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Pontifical Academy Sciences, and of seven foreign academies. He formerly served as president, and then chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Chu earned an A.B. degree in mathematics and a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as 35 honorary degrees.

He has published over 280 papers in atomic and polymer physics, biophysics, biology, bio-imaging, batteries, and other energy technologies. He holds 15 patents, and an additional 15 patent disclosures or filings since 2015.

The SDGs were adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They address the world’s most monumental challenges, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, and peace and justice. Some of the objectives are improved industry, innovation, and infrastructure; affordable and clean energy; and sustainable cities and communities. The SDGs appear by name in the Institute’s strategic plan as long-term goals that should guide teaching, research, and operations.

SDG Action and Awareness Week 2023 will focus primarily on SDG13: Climate Action and intersecting SDGs. Georgia Tech strives to be a leader in climate action across the Institute in operations, education, research, and economic development, and the development of a comprehensive Climate Action Plan is underway. President Ángel Cabrera encourages the Tech community to participate in virtual and in-person climate action events throughout the week.

On Thursday, March 9, at 8:30 a.m., Cabrera will convene a panel of faculty to discuss climate action. Joining him will be: Marilyn Brown, Regents’ Professor and the Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy; Andrea Calmon, assistant professor in the Scheller College of Business and faculty fellow in the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems; Tim Liewen, Regents’ Professor, David S. Lewis Chair, and executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute; and Brian Stone, professor in the School of City and Regional Planning and director of the Urban Climate Lab.

The panel is a hybrid event, with remote or in-person participation (at the Scholars Event Network Theater in Price Gilbert Library). RSVP here.

Other events during the week include a Green Cleaning DIY Workshop through the Office of Sustainability, a Social Impact Careers Alumni Panel through the Alumni Association, a Community Market through Auxiliary Services, a session on How to Afford Study Abroad and SDG Interactive Art Hours through the Office of International Education, a Seminar on Race and Gender through the Black Feminist Think Tank and the School of History and Sociology, two micro-workshops on aligning course objectives with the SDGs through the Center for Teaching and Learning and Serve-Learn-Sustain, a Corporate Carbon Accounting panel through Scheller College of Business, an information session and ice cream social through the EcoCar Vertically Integrated Project team, and a Climate Action Plan Stakeholder Engagement Session through the Office of Sustainability. View a listing of the week’s events for details and registration.

SDG Action and Awareness Week is part of a larger global effort through the University Global Coalition (UGC), which Cabrera chairs and helped found. The UGC is comprised of higher education leaders from around the world who work to advance the SDGs through education, research, service, and campus operations.

SDG Action and Awareness Week is an annual event occurring in early March. To collaborate next year, contact Drew Cutright, Office of Strategic Consulting.

“Our Strategic Plan commitment to bring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into our teaching is part of our vision for transformative teaching and learning more broadly,” explains Larry Jacobs, Senior Vice Provost for Education and Learning. “Helping students identify connections between disciplinary concepts and skills and complex societal challenges enhances learning and supports Georgia Tech’s mission to equip students to improve the human condition.”

The Jamboree featured lightning presentations from the award winners, as well as presentations about related initiatives at Georgia Tech to help instructors, students, and staff better understand the landscape of sustainability education innovation on campus. Instructors engaged in course design or re-design through the awards will have opportunities to collaborate with and learn from their peers through a Community of Practice on Transformative Teaching with the SDGs and a SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) research group. Many began identifying potential collaborators at the event, as they heard from other award winners. “The afternoon of lightning presentations by fellow faculty was exhilarating,” Sabir Khan, Associate Professor, Schools of Industrial Design and Architecture, shared. “I came away impressed and excited at the range of projects and have already invited a few instructors to join my class in the fall to discuss their approaches to tackling the UN SDGs."

Presenter Kate Williams, Interim Director, Transformative Teaching and Learning, Faculty Initiatives, shared connections between the Sustainability Innovation Awards and Georgia Tech’s Transformative Teaching and Learning (TTL) strategic initiative. “The success of the first round of Sustainability Education Innovation Grants demonstrates our faculty's commitment to creating innovative experiential learning opportunities for students,” Dr. Williams noted.

For more information about future award opportunities or the communities of practice described above, please contact Jennifer Leavey (Assistant Dean for Faculty Mentoring, College of Sciences) or Rebecca Watts Hull (Assistant Director, Faculty Development for Sustainability Education Initiatives, Center for Teaching and Learning).

Review all 21 awarded Undergraduate Sustainability Education Innovation projects.

Our Milky Way galaxy is an awe-inspiring feature of the night sky, viewable with the naked eye as a horizon-to-horizon hazy band of stars. Now, for the first time, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has produced an image of the Milky Way using neutrinos — tiny, ghostlike astronomical messengers.

In an article to be published June 30, 2023, in the journal Science, the IceCube Collaboration, an international group of over 350 scientists, presents evidence of high-energy neutrino emission from the Milky Way.

The detected high-energy neutrinos hold energies millions to billions of times higher than those produced by the fusion reactions that power stars.

IceCube was built and is operated with National Science Foundation (NSF) funding and additional support from the fourteen countries that host institutional members of the IceCube Collaboration. IceCube Observatory searches for signs of high-energy neutrinos originating from our galaxy and beyond, out to the farthest reaches of the universe.

A cubic-kilometer neutrino detector operating at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station observes these high-energy neutrinos, explains Ignacio Taboada, spokesperson for IceCube and a physics professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. “IceCube is truly unique,” Taboada says. “Built deep in Antarctic ice, its over 5,000 light sensors search for the flashes of blue light — Cherenkov radiation produced by neutrinos in the upper atmosphere, the Milky Way, and deep into the cosmos.”

Searching the southern sky

“What's intriguing is that, unlike the case for light of any wavelength, in neutrinos, the universe outshines the nearby sources in our own galaxy," says Francis Halzen, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and principal investigator of IceCube.

"As is so often the case, significant breakthroughs in science are enabled by advances in technology," says Denise Caldwell, director of NSF's Physics Division. "The capabilities provided by the highly sensitive IceCube detector, coupled with new data analysis tools, have given us an entirely new view of our galaxy — one that had only been hinted at before. As these capabilities continue to be refined, we can look forward to watching this picture emerge with ever-increasing resolution, potentially revealing hidden features of our galaxy never before seen by humanity."

Interactions between cosmic rays — high-energy protons and heavier nuclei, also produced in our galaxy, and galactic gas and dust inevitably produce both gamma rays and neutrinos. Given the observation of gamma rays from the galactic plane, the Milky Way was expected to be a source of high-energy neutrinos.

“A neutrino counterpart has now been measured, thus confirming what we know about our galaxy and cosmic ray sources,” says Steve Sclafani, a physics Ph.D. student at Drexel University, IceCube member, and co-lead analyzer.

The search focused on the southern sky, where the bulk of neutrino emission from the galactic plane is expected near the center of our galaxy. However, until now, the background of muons and neutrinos produced by cosmic-ray interactions with the Earth’s atmosphere posed significant challenges.

To overcome them, IceCube collaborators at Drexel University developed analyses that select for "cascade" events, or neutrino interactions in the ice that result in roughly spherical showers of light. Because the deposited energy from cascade events starts within the instrumented volume, contamination of atmospheric muons and neutrinos is reduced. Ultimately, the higher purity of the cascade events gave a better sensitivity to astrophysical neutrinos from the southern sky.

Machine learning in the Milky Way

However, the final breakthrough came from the implementation of machine learning methods, developed by IceCube collaborators at TU Dortmund University, that improve the identification of cascades produced by neutrinos as well as their direction and energy reconstruction. The observation of neutrinos from the Milky Way is a hallmark of the emerging critical value that machine learning provides in data analysis and event reconstruction in IceCube.

“The improved methods allowed us to retain over an order of magnitude more neutrino events with better angular reconstruction, resulting in an analysis that is three times more sensitive than the previous search,” says IceCube member, TU Dortmund physics Ph.D. student, and co-lead analyzer Mirco Hünnefeld.

The dataset used in the study included 60,000 neutrinos spanning 10 years of IceCube data, 30 times as many events as the selection used in a previous analysis of the galactic plane using cascade events. These neutrinos were compared to previously published prediction maps of locations in the sky where the galaxy was expected to shine in neutrinos.

The maps included one made from extrapolating Fermi Large Area Telescope gamma-ray observations of the Milky Way and two alternative maps identified as KRA-gamma by the group of theorists who produced them.

“This long-awaited detection of cosmic ray-interactions in the galaxy is also a wonderful example of what can be achieved when modern methods of knowledge discovery in machine learning are consistently applied.” says Wolfgang Rhode, professor of physics at TU Dortmund University, IceCube member, and Hünnefeld’s advisor.

The power of machine learning offers great future potential, bringing other observations closer within reach.

“The strong evidence for the Milky Way as a source of high-energy neutrinos has survived rigorous tests by the collaboration,” says Taboada, the IceCube spokesperson. “Now, the next step is to identify specific sources within the galaxy.”

These and other questions will be addressed in planned follow-up analyses by IceCube.

“Observing our own galaxy for the first time using particles instead of light is a huge step,” says Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, professor of physics at Drexel University, IceCube member, and Sclafani’s advisor. “As neutrino astronomy evolves, we will get a new lens with which to observe the universe.”

About IceCube Neutrino Observatory

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is funded and operated primarily through an award from the National Science Foundation to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The IceCube Collaboration, with over 350 scientists in 58 institutions from around the world, runs an extensive scientific program that has established the foundations of neutrino astronomy. IceCube’s research efforts, including critical contributions to the detector operation, are funded by agencies in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including NSF. IceCube construction was also funded with significant contributions from the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS & FWO) in Belgium; the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Germany; the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, and the Swedish Research Council in Sweden; and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund.

About Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its more than 45,000 undergraduate and graduate students, representing 50 states and more than 148 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

Mantle melts are buoyant and typically float toward the surface — think underwater volcanoes that erupt to form strings of islands. But Naif’s imaging instead showed a clear slice of semi-molten rock: low-degree partial melts, still sandwiched at the base of the plate some 37 miles beneath the ocean floor.

Then, 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 — including studies that argued against magma being needed to explain the observation.

So Naif went straight to the source.

“I basically went on a multiyear hunt, akin to a Sherlock Holmes detective story, looking for clues of mantle magmas that we first observed in the 2013 Nature study,” he says. “This involved piecing together evidence from several independent sources, including geophysical, geochemical, and geological (direct seafloor sampling) data.”

Now, 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”, authored by Naif and researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey at Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center, Northern Arizona University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and GNS Science of Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

Zeroing in

A relatively young oceanic plate — some 23 million years old — the Cocos Plate traces down the western coast of Central America, veering west to the Pacific Plate, then north to meet the North American Plate off the Pacific coast of Mexico.

Sliding between these two plates caused the devastating 1985 Mexico City earthquake and the 2017 Chiapas earthquake, while similar subduction between the Cocos and Caribbean plates resulted in the 1992 Nicaragua tsunami and earthquake, and the 2001 El Salvador earthquakes.

Scientists study the edges of these oceanic plates to understand the history and formation of volcanic chains — and to help researchers and agencies better prepare for future earthquakes and volcanic activity.

It’s in this active area that Naif and fellow researchers recently set out to document a series of magmatic intrusions just beneath the seafloor, in the same area that the team first detected the channel of magma back in 2013.

Plumbing the depths

For the new study, the team combined geophysical, geochemical, and seafloor drilling results with seismic reflection data, a technique used to image layers of sediments and rocks below the surface. “It helps us to see the geology where we cannot see it with our own eyes,” Naif explains.

First, the researchers observed an abundance of widespread intraplate magmatism. “Volcanism where it is not expected,” Naif says, “basically away from plate boundaries: subduction zones and mid-ocean ridges.”

Think Hawaii, where “a mantle plume of hot, rising material melts during its ascent, and then forms the Hawaii volcanic chain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” just as with the Cocos Plate, where the team imaged the volcanism fed by magma at the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary — the base of the sliding tectonic plates.

“Below it is the convecting mantle,” Naif adds. “The tectonic plates are moving around on Earth's surface because they are sliding on the asthenosphere below them.”

The researchers also found that this channel below the lithosphere is regionally extensive — over 100,000 square kilometers — and is a “long-lived feature that originated from the Galápagos Plume,” a mantle plume that formed the volcanic Galápagos islands, supplying melt for a series of volcanic events across the past 20 million years, and persisting today.

Importantly, the new study also suggests that these plume-fed melt channels may be widespread and long-lived sources for intraplate magmatism itself — as well as for mantle metasomatism, which happens when Earth’s mantle reacts with fluids to form a suite of minerals from the original rocks.

Connecting the (hot spot) dots

“This confirms that magma was there in the past — and some of it leaked through the mantle and erupted near the seafloor,” Naif says, “in the form of sill intrusions and seamounts: basically volcanoes located on the seafloor.”

The work also provides compelling supporting evidence that magma could still be stored in the channel. “More surprising is that the erupted magma has a chemical fingerprint that links its source to the Galápagos mantle plume.”

“We learned that the magma channel has been around for at least 20 million years, and on occasion some of that magma leaks to the seafloor where it erupts volcanically,” Naif adds. 

The team’s identified source of the magma, the Galápagos Plume, “is more than 1,000 kilometers away from where we detected this volcanism. It is not clear how magma can stay around in the mantle for such a long time, only to leak out episodically.”

Plume hunters wanted

The evidence that the team compiled is “really quite subtle and requires a detailed and careful study of a suite of seafloor observations to connect the dots,” Naif says. “Basically, the signs of such volcanism, while they are quite clear here, also require high resolution data and several different types of data to be able to detect such subtle seafloor features.”

So, “if we can see such subtle clues of volcanism here,” Naif explains, “it means a similar, careful analysis of high resolution data in other parts of the seafloor may lead to similar discoveries of volcanism elsewhere, caused by other mantle plumes.”

“There are numerous mantle plumes dotted across the planet. There are also numerous seamounts — at least 100,000 of them! — covering the seafloor, and it is anyone’s guess how many of them formed in the middle of the tectonic plates because of magma sourced from distant mantle plumes that leaked to the surface.”

Naif looks forward to continuing that search, from seafloor to asthenosphere.

###

Funding: National Science Foundation: OCE-0625178, U.S. Science Support Program

Citation: DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.add3761

About Georgia Tech 

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its more than 45,000 undergraduate and graduate students, representing 50 states and more than 148 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning.

As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

The paper, published in Science Advances, “Contemporary Ice Sheet Thinning Drives Subglacial Groundwater Exfiltration with Potential Feedbacks on Glacier Flow,” is co-authored by Colin Meyer (Dartmouth), Matthew Siegfried (Colorado School of Mines), and Chloe Gustafson (USGS).

While there are pre-existing methods to understand subglacial flow, these techniques involve time-consuming computations. In contrast, Robel and Sim developed a simple equation, which can predict how fast exfiltration, the discharge of groundwater from aquifers under ice sheets, using satellite measurements of Antarctica from the last two decades.

“In mathematical parlance, you would say we have a closed form solution,” explains Robel, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “Previously, people would run a hydromechanical model, which would have to be applied at every point under Antarctica, and then run forward over a long time period.” Since the researchers’ new theory is a mathematically simple equation, rather than a model, “the entirety of our prediction can be done in a fraction of a second on a laptop,” Robel says.

Robel adds that while there is precedence for developing these kinds of theories for similar kinds of models, this theory is specific in that it is for the particular boundary conditions and other conditions that exist underneath ice sheets. “This is, to our knowledge, the first mathematically simple theory which describes the exfiltration and infiltration underneath ice sheets.”

“It's really nice whenever you can get a very simple model to describe a process — and then be able to predict what might happen, especially using the rich data that we have today. It’s incredible” adds Sim, a research scientist in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “Seeing the results was pretty surprising.”

One of the main arguments in the paper underscores the potentially large source of subglacial water — possibly up to double the amount previously thought — that could be affecting how quickly glacial ice flows and how quickly the ice melts at its base. Robel and Sim hope that the predictions made possible by this theory can be incorporated into ice sheet models that scientists use to predict future ice sheet change and sea level rise.

A dangerous feedback cycle

Aquifers are underground areas of porous rock or sediment rich in groundwater. “If you take weight off aquifers like there are under large parts of Antarctica, water will start flowing out of the sediment,” Robel explains, referencing a diagram Sim created. While this process, known as exfiltration, has been studied previously, focus has been on the long time scales of interglacial cycles, which cover tens of thousands of years.

There has been less work on modern ice sheets, especially on how quickly exfiltration might be occurring under the thinning parts of the current-day Antarctic ice sheet. However, using recent satellite data and their new theory, the team has been able to predict what exfiltration might look like under those modern ice sheets.

“There's a wide range of possible predictions,” Robel explains. “But within that range of predictions there is the very real possibility that groundwater may be flowing out of the aquifer at a speed that would make it a majority, or close to a majority of the water that is underneath the ice sheet.”

If those parameters are correct, that would mean there's twice as much water coming into the subglacial interface than previous estimates assumed.

Ice sheets act like a blanket, sitting over the warm earth and trapping heat on the bottom, away from Antarctica’s cold atmosphere — and this means that the warmest place in the Antarctic ice sheet is at the bottom of a sheet, not on the surface. As an ice sheet thins, the warmer underground water can exfiltrate more readily, and this heat gradient can accelerate the melting that an ice sheet experiences.

“When the atmosphere warms up, it takes tens of thousands of years for that signal to diffuse through an ice sheet of the size, of the thickness, of the Antarctic ice sheet,” Robel explains. “But this process of exfiltration is a response to the already-ongoing thinning of the ice sheet, and it's an immediate response right now.”

Broad implications

Beyond sea level rise, this additional exfiltration and melt has other implications. Some of the places of richest marine productivity in the world occur off the coast of Antarctica, and being able to better predict exfiltration and melt could help marine biologists better understand where marine productivity is occurring, and how it might change in the future.

Robel also hopes this work will open the doorway to more collaborations with groundwater hydrologists who may be able to apply their expertise to ice sheet dynamics, while Sim underscores the need for more fieldwork.

“Getting the experimentalists and observationalists interested in trying to help us better constrain some of the properties of these water-laden sediments — that would be very helpful,” Sim says. “That's our largest unknown at this point, and it heavily influences the results.”

“It's really interesting how there's a potential to draw heat from deeper in the system,” she adds. “There's quite a lot of water that could be drawing more heat out, and I think that there's a heat budget there that could be interesting to look at.”

Moving forward, collaboration will continue to be key. “I really enjoyed talking to Joyce (Sim) about these problems,” Rober says, “because Joyce is an expert on heat flow and porous flow in the Earth's interior, and those are problems that I had not worked on before. That was kind of a nice aspect of this collaboration. We were able to bridge these two areas that she works on and that I work on.”

DOI: doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh3693

Funding: This work was supported by startup funds from the Georgia Tech Research Corporation (A.A.R. and S.J.S.) and NASA grant 80NSSC21K0912 (M.R.S.). Alex Robel (A.A.R.) is also the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER grant.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have published a perspectives piece on the different tools used throughout the world that are aiding in the conservation of wildlife and biodiversity.

They highlight advances in technology, including both hardware and software, as well as frugal resources that are changing the way animals are protected. The research was published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface in August.  

“We are experiencing technological advancements of low-cost hardware, open-source software, machine learning, and more that can help with global conservation efforts,” said Andrew Schulz, postdoctoral researcher in the haptic intelligence department at Max Planck Institute and recent Ph.D. graduate from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “For researchers and people interested in learning about the ways conservation technology and tools are created, this piece serves as a starter guide to the field.”

In the article, the researchers presented five case studies of conservation tools, including open-source innovation, environmental DNA, computer vision, game theory and optimization, and frugal technology. Researchers also highlighted the importance of indigenous design in these conservation tool interventions and warned not to employ toxic practices, such as colonization of conservation or parasitic conservation. These practices take advantage of native lands, where conservationists refuse to work with local or indigenous populations and often do not cite or credit their help or expertise.    

One case study looked at AudioMoth, a device that allows low-cost access to bioacoustics research. Recently, an AudioMoth was paired with an animal observation tower to track bird migrations over Georgia Tech’s campus. AudioMoth can also monitor aquatic environments, like coral colonies, to assist with species identification and habitat restoration. It’s used in a wide range of fields to monitor the biodiversity of a habitat or even help with the early detection of poachers to prevent wildlife decline.

“One of the best parts about this project was working with so many excellent researchers,” Schulz said. They included Suzanne Stathatos from Caltech and the project’s co-leaders, Cassie Shriver and Benjamin Seleb, from Georgia Tech’s quantitative biosciences Ph.D. program. “As early-career researchers working together, it is great to see that the conversations about conservation tool construction are growing and being led by outstanding Ph.D. students.”

At Georgia Tech, conservation tools are constantly being built and implemented. The Tech4Wildlife student organization is working to implement conservation tech solutions, including a rabies dispenser for our campus foxes, bird monitors in the EcoCommons, and forage feeders for Zoo Atlanta’s gorillas.

"I'm proud to see Cassie, Ben, and Andrew collaborating across fields and institutions to move conservation technology forward, and it inspires me about the future of conservation science,” said William Ratcliff, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of the quantitative biosciences program.

CITATION: Conservation tools: the next generation of engineering–biology collaborations Andrew K. Schulz., Cassie Shriver, Suzanne Stathatos, and Benjamin Seleb et. Al, Journal of The Royal Society InterfaceVolume 20, Issue 205. Published:16 August 2023. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2023.0232

Georgia Tech researchers were recently awarded $11.6 million from the NNSA to address this growing need — and to study and expand on existing models of transuranic chemistry, a branch of chemistry dedicated to studying elements with atomic numbers greater than that of uranium.

Led by School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Associate Professor Henry “Pete” La Pierre, the funding will serve to establish the Transuranic Chemistry Center of Excellence. Directed by La Pierre, the Center will house a collaborative network of five other universities and six national laboratories across the United States conducting both theoretical and applied research.

“Scientifically, actinides and transuranic elements present unique challenges to existing models of chemical bonding,” explains La Pierre. These elements are man-made radioactive metals, many of which are not available in large quantities. “There are amazing open-ended questions that are fundamental to our understanding of chemical bonding and activities, that serve to transform our knowledge of how the elements form bonds across the Periodic Table.”

Joining seven other universities, this funding comes to Georgia Tech as part of NNSA’s $100 million program establishing Stewardship Science Academic Alliances Centers of Excellence. A main goal of this program is to recruit, train, and educate the next generation of researchers in nuclear science and engineering.

“These cooperative agreements will allow NNSA to train the smartest and most skilled individuals while creating a direct pathway into our workforce with a diverse group of experts that can meet the evolving needs of the nuclear security enterprise,” said Kevin Greenaugh, Chief Science and Technology Officer for Defense Programs, in a recent press release.

“The science and engineering collaboration of this center is a true synergy,” says Martha Grover, professor and associate chair for Graduate Studies in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and one of the collaborators for the Center. Anna Erickson, Woodruff Professor and associate chair for Research in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, is another Georgia Tech collaborator. “This center provides a new example of the growing prominence of Georgia Tech in the nuclear field.”

Pushing the bounds of chemistry

“We are at core a synthetic inorganic chemistry group, which means we make new molecules and characterize them,” La Pierre explained. In his research as part of the Center, La Pierre will “be handling both radioactive and chemically reactive species to make new forms of matter.”

Characterizing new forms of matter is no easy task, requiring advanced techniques that allow scientists to envision and measure the properties of chemical bonds. Exposing the molecules to X-rays or neutrons and measuring how they scatter or diffract (depending on the experimental design), gives researchers insights into the chemical bonds that are formed.

Using a combination of these advanced techniques as well as theoretical models, La Pierre and the collaborators of the Center will be creating new molecules out of actinides and lanthanides — metallic elements on the bottom of the periodic table — and studying the details of their structures and behavior during chemical reactions. As these elements are not found naturally, the structures and properties of many of these compounds have never been studied before.

“We are creating systems that challenge existing bonding models, which we then have to go back and build new theoretical techniques in order to understand what we're seeing,” La Pierre explained. “So, this does push the forefront of our understanding of basic chemical model systems.”

To push those boundaries, scientists and engineers will be working together across the country — led by Georgia Tech. 

“There are so many faculty at Georgia Tech working in nuclear science and technology,” says Grover. “This center gives me the opportunity to collaborate with Prof. La Pierre and Erickson for the first time, in the area of flow chemistry and separations.”

“I'm looking forward to working with some incredibly talented colleagues whom I don't normally get a chance to work with,” says La Pierre. “And now we have the opportunity to work together every week with fantastic students that I would never have met otherwise. That's the main draw for me.”

In response to rising global temperatures, many plants and animals are moving to higher elevations to survive in cooler temperatures. But a new study from the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) and Georgia Tech finds that for flying insects — including bees and moths — this escape route may have insurmountable issues that could mean their doom.

The research team examined more than 800 species of insects from around the world and discovered that many winged insects are moving to higher elevations much slower than their non-flying counterparts. This is because the thinner air at higher elevations provides less oxygen for species to use. Because flight requires more oxygen to generate energy for movement than other styles of movement, such as walking, these species are migrating more slowly. 

The team’s findings were published in this week’s Nature Climate Change journal. Jesse Shaich, postbaccalaureate student at CU Denver, is also a member of the research team.

“When we think about where species will be able to live under climate change in the coming decades, we need to remember that animals are sensitive to more than just how hot or cold they are,” said CU Denver Assistant Professor of Integrated Biology Michael Moore, who led the study. 

Declining insect biodiversity has direct impact on humans

If flying insects’ native habitats get too warm too quickly, and they can’t find a suitable alternative or adapt in time, that will likely lead to their extinction. Beyond just being bad for the bugs themselves, loss of insects is bad news for humans as well. Most crop pollinators are the flying species the researchers expect to be vulnerable, and their extinction would be catastrophic to global food supply. Not only would this have implications for agriculture and food supply chains, but similar challenges are likely true for other species that need a lot of oxygen to live.

“Our earth’s biodiversity is rapidly declining, especially amongst insects. The global loss of insects will be ecologically catastrophic, so we urgently need to understand why and how this is happening,” said James Stroud, assistant professor of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech.

Broadening research on high elevation challenges

To conserve as many species as possible, researchers need to grasp the full scope of challenges plants and animals face, whether they can overcome these challenges, and to predict the locations where they can survive. High elevation environments are also difficult for new species because of the scarcity of food, stronger winds, more extreme cold snaps, and increased ultraviolet radiation.

Moore concludes, “If we want to design effective conservation strategies, we must consider a broader range of environmental factors that species need to live.” 

About Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its more than 45,000 undergraduate and graduate students, representing 50 states and more than 148 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

About the University of Colorado Denver
The University of Colorado Denver is the state’s premier public urban research university and equity-serving institution. Globally connected and locally invested, CU Denver partners with future-focused learners and communities to design accessible, relevant, and transformative educational experiences for every stage of life and career. Across seven schools and colleges in the heart of downtown Denver, our leading faculty inspires and works alongside students to solve complex challenges through boundary-breaking innovation, impactful research, and creative work. As part of the state’s largest university system, CU Denver is a major contributor to the Colorado economy, with 2,000 employees and an annual economic impact of $800 million. For more information, visit ucdenver.edu.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01794-2

Acknowledgments: Support was generously provided by the University of Colorado Denver (to M.P.M. and J.S.) and Washington University in St. Louis and the Georgia Institute of Technology (to J.T.S.). Conversations with J. de Mayo, J. Grady and A. Lenard and input from three reviewers improved this study.

While rarely in the news, these ice cage formations, known as methane clathrates, have garnered attention because of their potential to affect climate change. During offshore drilling, methane ice can get stuck in pipes, causing them to freeze and burst. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill is thought to have been caused by a buildup of methane clathrates.

But until now, the biological process behind how methane gas remains stable under the sea has been almost completely unknown. In a breakthrough study, a cross-disciplinary team of Georgia Tech researchers discovered a previously unknown class of bacterial proteins that play a crucial role in the formation and stability of methane clathrates.

A team led by Jennifer Glass, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Raquel Lieberman, professor and Sepcic-Pfeil Chair in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, showed that these novel bacterial proteins suppress the growth of methane clathrates as effectively as commercial chemicals currently used in drilling, but are non-toxic, eco-friendly, and scalable. Their study, funded by NASA, informs the search for life in the solar system, and could also increase the safety of transporting natural gas.

The research, published in the journal PNAS Nexus, underscores the importance of fundamental science in studying Earth’s natural biological systems and highlights the benefits of collaboration across disciplines.

“We wanted to understand how these formations were staying stable under the seafloor, and precisely what mechanisms were contributing to their stability,” Glass said. “This is something no one has done before.”

Sifting Through Sediment

The effort started with the team examining a sample of clay-like sediment that Glass acquired from the seafloor off the coast of Oregon.

Glass hypothesized that the sediment would contain proteins that influence the growth of methane clathrate, and that those proteins would resemble well-known antifreeze proteins in fish, which help them survive in cold environments.

But to confirm her hypothesis, Glass and her research team would first have to identify protein candidates out of millions of potential targets contained in the sediment. They would then need to make the proteins in the lab, though there was no understanding of how these proteins might behave. Also, no one had worked with these proteins before.

Glass approached Lieberman, whose lab studies the structure of proteins. The first step was to use DNA sequencing paired with bioinformatics to identify the genes of the proteins contained in the sediment. Dustin Huard, a researcher in Lieberman’s lab and first author of the paper, then prepared candidate proteins that could potentially bind to the methane clathrates. Huard used X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of the proteins.

Creating Seafloor Conditions in the Lab

Huard passed off the protein candidates to Abigail Johnson, a former Ph.D. student in Glass’ lab and co-first author on the paper, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Georgia. To test the proteins, Johnson formed methane clathrates herself by recreating the high pressure and low temperature of the seafloor in the lab. Johnson worked with Sheng Dai, an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, to build a unique pressure chamber from scratch.

Johnson placed the proteins in the pressure vessel and adjusted the system to mimic the pressure and temperature conditions required for clathrate formation. By pressurizing the vessel with methane, Johnson forced methane into the droplet, which caused a methane clathrate structure to form.

She then measured the amount of gas that was consumed by the clathrate — an indicator of how quickly and how much clathrate formed — and did so in the presence of the proteins versus no proteins. Johnson found that with the clathrate-binding proteins, less gas was consumed, and the clathrates melted at higher temperatures.

Once the team validated that the proteins affect the formation and stability of methane clathrates, they used Huard's protein crystal structure to carry out molecular dynamics simulations with the help of James (JC) Gumbart, professor in the School of Physics. The simulations allowed the team to identify the specific site where the protein binds to the methane clathrate.

A Surprisingly Novel System

The study unveiled unexpected insights into the structure and function of the proteins. The researchers initially thought the part of the protein that was similar to fish antifreeze proteins would play a role in clathrate binding. Surprisingly, that part of the protein did not play a role, and a wholly different mechanism directed the interactions.

They found that the proteins do not bind to ice, but rather interact with the clathrate structure itself, directing its growth. Specifically, the part of the protein that had similar characteristics to antifreeze proteins was buried in the protein structure, and instead played a role in stabilizing the protein.

The researchers found that the proteins performed better at modifying methane clathrate than any of the antifreeze proteins that had been tested in the past. They also performed just as well as, if not better than, the toxic commercial clathrate inhibitors currently used in drilling that pose serious environmental threats.

Preventing clathrate formation in natural gas pipelines is a billion-dollar industry. If these biodegradable proteins could be used to prevent disastrous natural gas leaks, it would greatly reduce the risk of environmental damage.

“We were so lucky that this actually worked, because even though we chose these proteins based on their similarity to antifreeze proteins, they are completely different,” Johnson said. “They have a similar function in nature, but do so through a completely different biological system, and I think that really excites people.”

Methane clathrates likely exist throughout the solar system — on the subsurface of Mars, for example, and on icy moons in the outer solar system, such as Europa. The team’s findings indicate that if microbes exist on other planetary bodies, they might produce similar biomolecules to retain liquid water in channels in the clathrate that could sustain life.

“We’re still learning so much about the basic systems on our planet,” Huard said. “That’s one of the great things about Georgia Tech — different communities can come together to do really cool, unexpected science. I never thought I would be working on an astrobiology project, but here we are, and we’ve been very successful.”

Citation: Dustin J E Huard, et al. Molecular basis for inhibition of methane clathrate growth by a deep subsurface bacterial protein, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 8, August 2023.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad268

Funding: National Aeronautics & Space Administration, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund

Georgia Tech co-authors included Zixing Fan, Ph.D. student, and two undergraduates, Lydia Kenney (now a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University) and Manlin Xu (now a Ph.D. student in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program). Ran Drori, associate professor of chemistry at Yeshiva University, also contributed.

The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia has approved two new specific degrees within the School: Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) and Solid Earth and Planetary Sciences (SEP). Regents also approved Environmental Science (ENVS) as an interdisciplinary College of Sciences degree between the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences. The existing Earth and Atmospheric Sciences B.S. degree will sunset in two years for new students.

“We are really excited to be able to offer this new interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Environmental Science,” said Jean Lynch-Stieglitz, ADVANCE Professor in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS). “While it was developed jointly between the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Biological Sciences, it brings together Georgia Tech’s broad expertise and course offerings related to the Earth’s environment from across the Institute.”

“We are excited to see these new programs develop,” added Andrew Newman, professor and the School’s undergraduate coordinator, “as these degrees highlight the quantitative and computational skills of Georgia Tech students, and align better with their interests in global understanding of problems related to environmental impact and sustainability, natural hazards and landscape development, as well as planetary evolution, habitability, and exploration.”

“Students looking for specific types of programs will also be more understanding of what their program offers,” Newman said. “Under our current degree, a student interested in ocean science, planetary science, and environmental chemistry all would be looking at the same degree that doesn’t define their interests. Now, having programs with those interests in their name, and described well on the upcoming webpage, will greatly increase their interest in our program.”

The Evolution of EAS at Georgia Tech 

Newman also shared that, in Fall 2021, the School surveyed current EAS undergraduate students and recent alumni for feedback and thoughts on the potential degrees. Responses from the community highlighted that the plan for transitioning the existing major could not only help new students hone their academic and career plans, but also help them communicate beyond EAS about their chosen major. 

“These degrees make it more clear what the student is studying,” shared one student. “Before, people would ask what my major ‘even is’ and what kinds of jobs I could get with it. I think the new majors make it more clear.” 

“Finally, Planetary Science!” said another student. “This degree would go well with a Physics or AE (Aerospace Engineering) certificate or dual degree.”

All about the new Georgia Tech EAS degrees

The expanded undergraduate degree offerings are designed to continue Georgia Tech’s reputation for academic rigor — and also reflect trends in student interests, as well as current and forecasted needs in the job marketplace. 

“A key aspect of the new Environmental Science degree program will be its flexibility,” said Lynch-Stieglitz. “Students will be able to focus their study to support their interests and career goals whether those be in conservation, climate change, or environmental health. We’ve also left space in their program to encourage participation in especially impactful experiences such as study abroad and research projects. Georgia Tech students are fantastic — well prepared, diverse, smart, hard-working, and passionate. This flexible approach will allow them to become the broadly educated leaders who will envision the solutions to environmental problems that are so urgently needed.”

More on the new undergraduate degrees and what they will require:

B.S. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) Degree

AOS uses the current Meteorology track as its foundation and will include aspects of Atmospheric Sciences, Oceanography and Climate Sciences.

• EAS will continue to offer courses needed for American Meteorological Society (AMS) certifications as well as those required for eligibility for National Weather Service meteorology jobs.

• Some courses will be reduced and others added (e.g. the existing course Physics of Weather will now be formally required instead of Earth Processes; the National Weather Service Practical Internship course in partnership with NWS Peachtree City will continue).

The AOS degree is designed to take advantage of Atlanta as a “hotspot” for major meteorological organizations including The Weather Channel, CNN, local stations in a top 10 TV market, and the National Weather Service (NWS) Peachtree City, Georgia office. The degree also builds on Georgia Tech’s existing expertise in Atmospheric Chemistry, Oceanography, Climate Dynamics, Paleoclimatology and Paleoceanography, and meteorological research.

AOS degree recipients looking for jobs or graduate research can target the energy sector, insurance risk modeling, broadcast meteorology, consulting, data analytics, aviation, military, and K-12 education, among other positions.

B.S. Environmental Science (ENVS) Degree

ENVS was developed by a joint committee involving EAS and the School of Biological Sciences.

• ENVS requires core content in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, Earth sciences, and public policy.

• Upper level coursework allows students to customize their program of study based on interest.

• Students will complete a capstone research project that integrates the knowledge they have gained through the program.

This degree takes advantage of Georgia Tech’s expertise in Environmental Chemistry, climate science, marine science, Aquatic Chemical Ecology, microbial dynamics, and Environmental Policy. Newman added that there is a critical emerging market need for scientists with expertise in the Earth’s environmental systems.

The ENVS degree will provide a strong base for students pursuing graduate programs and careers in environmental policy, environmental law, medicine, and other master’s and Ph.D. programs in environmentally related disciplines.

B.S. Solid Earth and Planetary Sciences (SEP) Degree

SEP builds on the existing Earth Science track to include Planetary Sciences. 

• There is an opportunity to reduce some courses.

• Some courses will now be required (e.g. Physics II, Physics of Planets, Introduction to Geophysics).

According to an SEP prospectus, “the degree will support Georgia Tech’s mission to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition, through developing holistically minded students that can put human development in context of the environment for which we live, including resource availability, hazards that affect sustainability, and our exploratory nature to understand our place on the planet and solar system.” 

Career and graduate opportunities include energy sector positions, NASA, NOAA, U.S. Geological Survey, environmental remediation, hazard assessment and data analytics.

Learn more, contact EAS Undergraduate Advising, and apply: 

• eas.gatech.edu/undergraduate 

• eas.gatech.edu/aos

• eas.gatech.edu/envs

• eas.gatech.edu/sep

The bioproduction process would use three resources native to the red planet: carbon dioxide, sunlight, and frozen water. It would also include transporting two microbes to Mars. The first would be cyanobacteria (algae), which would take CO2 from the Martian atmosphere and use sunlight to create sugars. An engineered E. coli, which would be shipped from Earth, would convert those sugars into a Mars-specific propellant for rockets and other propulsion devices. The Martian propellant, which is called 2,3-butanediol, is currently in existence, can be created by E. coli, and, on Earth, is used to make polymers for production of rubber.  

The process is outlined in a paper, “Designing the bioproduction of Martian rocket propellant via a biotechnology-enabled in situ resource utilization strategy,” published in the journal Nature Communications.

Rocket engines departing Mars are currently planned to be fueled by methane and liquid oxygen (LOX). Neither exist on the red planet, which means they would need to be transported from Earth to power a return spacecraft into Martian orbit. That transportation is expensive: ferrying the needed 30 tons of methane and LOX is estimated to cost around $8 billion. To reduce this cost, NASA has proposed using chemical catalysis to convert Martian carbon dioxide into LOX, though this still requires methane to be transported from Earth.

As an alternative, Georgia Tech researchers propose a biotechnology based in situ resource utilization (bio-ISRU) strategy that can produce both the propellant and LOX from CO2. The researchers say making the propellant on Mars using Martian resources could help reduce mission cost. Additionally, the bio-ISRU process generates 44 tons of excess clean oxygen that could be set aside to use for other purposes, such as supporting human colonization.

“Carbon dioxide is one of the only resources available on Mars. Knowing that biology is especially good at converting CO2 into useful products makes it a good fit for creating rocket fuel,” said Nick Kruyer, first author of the study and a recent Ph.D. recipient from Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE).

The paper outlines the process, which begins by ferrying plastic materials to Mars that would be assembled into photobioreactors occupying the size of four football fields. Cyanobacteria would grow in the reactors via photosynthesis (which requires carbon dioxide). Enzymes in a separate reactor would break down the cyanobacteria into sugars, which could be fed to the E. coli to produce the rocket propellant. The propellant would be separated from the E. coli fermentation broth using advanced separation methods.

The team’s research finds that the bio-ISRU strategy uses 32% less power (but weighs three times more) than the proposed chemically enabled strategy of shipping methane from Earth and producing oxygen via chemical catalysis.

Because the gravity on Mars is only a one-third of what is felt on Earth, the researchers were able to be creative as they thought of potential fuels.

“You need a lot less energy for lift-off on Mars, which gave us the flexibility to consider different chemicals that aren’t designed for rocket launch on Earth,” said Pamela Peralta-Yahya, a corresponding author of the study and an associate professor in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry and ChBE who engineers microbes for the production of chemicals. “We started to consider ways to take advantage of the planet’s lower gravity and lack of oxygen to create solutions that aren’t relevant for Earth launches.”

“2,3-butanediol has been around for a long time, but we never thought about using it as a propellant. After analysis and preliminary experimental study, we realized that it is actually a good candidate,” said Wenting Sun, associate professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, who works on fuels.

The Georgia Tech team spans campus. Chemists, chemical, mechanical, and aerospace engineers came together to develop the idea and process to create a viable Martian fuel. In addition to Kruyer, Peralta-Yahya, and Sun, the group included Caroline Genzale, a combustion expert and associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and Matthew Realff, professor and David Wang Sr. Fellow in ChBE, who is an expert in process synthesis and design.

The team is now looking to perform the biological and materials optimization identified to reduce the weight of the bio-ISRU process and make it lighter than the proposed chemical process. For example, improving the speed at which cyanobacteria grows on Mars will reduce the size of the photobioreactor, significantly lowering the payload required to transport the equipment from Earth.

“We also need to perform experiments to demonstrate that cyanobacteria can be grown in Martian conditions,” said Realff, who works on algae-based process analysis. “We need to consider the difference in the solar spectrum on Mars both due to the distance from the Sun and lack of atmospheric filtering of the sunlight. High ultraviolet levels could damage the cyanobacteria.”

The Georgia Tech team emphasizes that acknowledging the differences between the two planets is pivotal to developing efficient technologies for the ISRU production of fuel, food, and chemicals on Mars. It’s why they’re addressing the biological and materials challenges in the study in an effort to contribute to goal of future human presence beyond Earth.

“The Peralta-Yahya lab excels at finding new and exciting applications for synthetic biology and biotechnology, tackling exciting problems in sustainability,” added Kruyer. “Application of biotechnology on Mars is a perfect way to make use of limited available resources with minimal starting materials.”

The research was supported by a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Award.

Citation: Kruyer, et al. “Designing the bioproduction of Martian rocket propellant via a biotechnology-enabled in situ resource utilization strategy” Nature Communications. 10.1038/s41467-021-26393-7.

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

An annular eclipse is set to take place Saturday, Oct. 14. It will cross North, Central, and South America with varying degrees of visibility.

"The entire country will see at least a partial eclipse," Sowell said. "Go out and experience it and see it for yourself."

In Atlanta, viewers will see a partial solar eclipse and notice the sky is darker than usual. In parts of the country where the eclipse will be seen in totality, it will look like a "ring of fire" around the moon. This rare event won’t happen again in the U.S. for more than 20 years.

The Georgia Tech Observatory will be open for viewing of the event on Oct. 14 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., with telescopes on the grounds of the Howey Physics Building. All viewing events are contingent on clear weather; monitor astronomy.gatech.edu for updates.

Video courtesy of The Weather Channel.

Sulfates usually are produced by atmospheric oxidation in the summer, when ample sunlight facilitates the oxidation that turns sulfur dioxide into dangerous aerosol particles. How is it that China can produce such extreme pollution loaded with sulfates in the winter, when there’s not as much sunlight and atmospheric oxidation is slow?

Yuhang Wang, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, and his research team have conducted a study that may have the answer: All the chemical reactions needed to turn sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide, and then quickly into sulfate, primarily happen within the smoke plumes causing the pollution. That process not only creates sulfates in the winter in China, but it also happens faster and results in larger sulfate particles in the atmosphere.

“We call the source ‘in-source formation,’” Wang says. “Instead of having oxidants spread out in the atmosphere, slowly oxidizing sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide to produce sulfate, we have this concentrated production in the exhaust plumes that turns the sulfuric acid into large sulfate particles. And that's why we're seeing these large sulfate particles in China.”

The findings of in-source formation of larger wintertime sulfate particles in China could help scientists accurately assess the impacts of aerosols on radiative forcing — how climate change and global warming impact the Earth’s energy and heat balances — and on health, where larger aerosols means larger deposits into human lungs. 

“Wintertime Formation of Large Sulfate Particles in China and Implications for Human Health,” is published in Environmental Science & Technology, an American Chemical Society publication. The co-authors include Qianru Zhang of Peking University and Mingming Zheng of Wuhan Polytechnic University, two of Wang’s former students who conducted the research while at Georgia Tech. 

Explaining a historic smog

China still burns a lot of coal in power plants because its costs are lower compared to natural gas, Wang says. It also makes for an easy comparison between China’s hazy winters and a historic event that focused the United Kingdom’s attention on dangerous environmental hazards — the Great London Smog.

The event, depicted in the Netflix show “The Crown,” saw severe smog descend on London in December 1952. Unusually cold weather preceded the event, which brought the coal-produced haze down to ground level. UK officials later said the Great London Smog (also called the Great London Fog) was responsible for 4,000 deaths and 100,000 illnesses, although later studies estimated a higher death toll of 10,000 to 20,000.

“From the days of the London Fog to extreme winter pollution in China, it has been a challenge to explain how sulfate is produced in the winter,” Wang says. 

Wang and his team decided to take on that challenge. 

Aerosol size and heavy metal influence?

The higher sulfate levels in China, notably in January 2013, defy conventional explanations that relied on standard photochemical oxidation. It was thought that nitrogen dioxide or other mild oxidants found in alkaline or neutral particles in the atmosphere were the cause. But measurements revealed the resulting sulfate particles were highly acidic. 

During Zheng’s time at Georgia Tech, “She was just looking for interesting things to do,” Wang says of the former student. “And I said, maybe this is what we should do — I wanted her to look at aerosol size distributions, how large the aerosols are.” 

Zheng and Wang noticed that the size of the sulfate particles from China’s winter were much larger than those that resulted from photochemically-produced aerosols. Usually measuring 0.3 to 0.5 microns, the sulfate was closer to 1 micron in size. (A human hair is about 70 microns.) Aerosols distributed over a wider area would normally be smaller. 

“The micron-sized aerosol observations imply that sulfate particles undergo substantial growth in a sulfur trioxide-rich environment,” Wang says. Larger particles increase the risks to human health.

“When aerosols are large, more is deposited in the front part of the respiratory system but less on the end part, such as alveoli,” he adds. “When accounting for the large size of particles, total aerosol deposition in the human respiratory system is estimated to increase by 10 to 30 percent.”

Something still needs to join the chemical mix, however, so the sulfur dioxide could turn into sulfur trioxide while enlarging the resulting sulfate particles. Wang says a potential pathway involves the catalytic oxidation of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid by “transition metals.”

High temperatures, acidity, and water content in the exhaust can greatly accelerate catalytic sulfur dioxide oxidation “compared to that in the ambient atmosphere. It is possible that similar heterogeneous processes occurring on the hot surface of a smokestack coated with transition metals could explain the significant portion of sulfur trioxide observed in coal-fired power plant exhaust,” Wang says.

“A significant amount of sulfur trioxide is produced, either during combustion or through metal-catalyzed oxidation at elevated temperatures.”

An opportunity for cleaner-burning coal power plants

The impact of in-source formation of sulfate suggests that taking measures to cool off and remove sulfur trioxide, sulfuric acid, and particulates from the emissions of coal-combustion facilities could be a way to cut down on pollution that can cause serious health problems.

“The development and implementation of such technology will benefit nations globally, particularly those heavily reliant on coal as a primary energy source,” Wang says.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c05645

Funding: This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 41821005 and 41977311). Yuhang Wang was supported by the National Science Foundation Atmospheric Chemistry Program. Qianru Zhang would also like to thank the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2022M720005) and China Scholarship Council for support. Mingming Zheng is also supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Peking University (7100604309).

That’s how Rachel Moore describes the view from the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet. “It's a really challenging environment, but it was really, really interesting to be there. I was there for nearly 50 days.”

Moore is an expert at collecting data in difficult research environments, traveling to some of the most extreme places on Earth in order to research microbes, and what hints they might give regarding astrobiology. 

“It all started in grad school, when I joined a microbial ecology lab,” Moore recalls. “I pretty quickly learned that I love to do really difficult, challenging projects. I got interested in working around fire, biomass burning and forests, and I started collecting bacteria from the air. That was a challenge in and of itself, just trying to collect these really tiny things while standing in the smoke from the forest fires. But from that I learned that I loved to go out into the environment and collect things and try to understand everything around me.”

“I have a lot of different projects, but they all connect through astrobiology,” Moore says. “I’m interested in anything that hasn't been answered yet.” Moore is also leading a project called EXO Methane, which is investigating if different Archaea could survive in Martian and Enceladus-like environments. She’s also collaborating on a project that will send a probe to Venus next year.

Moore started her postdoctoral research at Georgia Tech, and is now continuing her work as a Research Scientist in the same laboratory. “The first project I started in this lab focused around how microbes can survive a really, really dry environment,” she adds. To study this, Moore traveled to the Atacama desert in Chile — the driest place on Earth, and also one of the best analogs to the surface of Mars. “What we were interested in there is how organisms survive intense radiation and intense desiccation. And how does that change as you look at different sites in the Atacama?”

Then, this past summer, Moore traveled to another extreme environment — Greenland. “Instead of being hot and dry, Greenland is extremely cold and dry,” Moore explains. “So it was similar in some aspects, but completely different in terms of logistics and sampling methods. Because we were there in the summer, the sun never set. We were also at high elevation — 10,530 feet above sea level.”

Beneath the ice

The project was started by Nathan Chellman and Joe McConnell from the Desert Research Institute (DRI), and Moore’s role this year was to investigate the microbiology component of the research. “They had been seeing some anomalies in methane and carbon monoxide in ice samples,” Moore says. “We were curious if microbes might be producing some of this, either in the ice core after it’s been sampled, or while it’s still in the glacier.”

“The microbes would not be swimming around or anything” in the ice cores, Moore explains, “but it’s possible that their metabolism is still active, and they’re potentially able to make some of the gases, like methane, in this frozen environment. Our goal was to measure these things in the environment.”

Gathering samples wasn’t easy. “We set up a lab on the glacier, and we set it up in a trench to try to keep any of the ice cores that we pulled out roughly at the same temperature as the glacier itself,” Moore says. Because of that, “weather was a huge, huge thing. Anytime it would get stormy, the wind would blow all of the snow around, and it would fill the entrance to our trench. We had to dig ourselves out several times. People would put out flags so that you could see your way back to the main house or back to your dorms.”

The team hopes that this research will give a more defined record of the past from the Greenland Ice Sheet, improving climate change predictions. Moore also notes applications in astrobiology, adding that “there are a lot of icy worlds like Mars, Enceladus, and Europa, with either an icy crust over the ocean or glaciers on the northern and southern poles.”

Moore was also able to test new technology in the field, using a tool built by Georgia Tech undergraduates alongside her advisor Christopher Carr, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. An ice melter that can be used to take and clean ice samples, the tool is a miniaturized prototype that may be able to help take measurements on Mars, or in similar remote environments in the future.

“Being able to take a tool that Georgia Tech undergraduates made to Greenland and test it on 600-year-old ice in the field was a really cool experience,” Moore adds. “We brought Starlink with us, and so I was able to video call the undergraduate team while I was testing their tool, which was really special.”

The team is now lab-analyzing ice cores that they brought back from Greenland, unraveling which microbes might be present and potentially active. “It's really interesting to see: Is this all chemistry? Is it biology based? Or is there some intersection of the two?” Moore says. “Maybe there's some chemistry or photochemistry happening, plus some biology happening. Whatever it is, we'll have to wait and see.”

Dunlap was hired earlier this year as the Urban Honey Bee Project's (UHBP) first-ever beekeeper in residence. Throughout her residency, she'll conduct research into the pollinator's place in our ecosystem and how beekeeping may offer relief to veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while connecting with the bees through art.  

Dunlap had been gardening for over a decade, but in 2016, when she got the urge to find new ways to engage with nature, she recalled a powerful piece of imagery that shaped her childhood — Wu-Tang Clan's music video for “Triumph” and its depiction of the group's members as a powerful swarm of Africanized killer bees.  

"The political messaging and tying Africanized killer bees in with the stereotypes and the tropes of African Americans in the media, and the way that that was so poetically tied in, visually stuck with me,” she said. “It was the first time I recognized a political message being articulated through art. For that reason, it stuck with me that bees were a form of strong symbolism tied to resilience." 

Living in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dunlap became a certified beekeeper under the Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association in 2017. She continued practicing as she moved around the country, with stops in Chicago and Denver, eventually landing in Atlanta in 2021. Looking for a way to connect to the local beekeeping community, she attended an April presentation by UHBP Director Jennifer Leavey, who offered Dunlap a chance to get involved at Georgia Tech.  

She now handles the inspection of the hives on The Kendeda Building roof, where she monitors for pests and ensures the bees have proper nutrition to sustain their population through the seasons. The UHBP began in 2012 with the goal of educating the Tech community on the importance of these pollinators within the Atlanta ecosystem and beyond — a charge that Dunlap carries on.  

Over the next year, she will continue working on her sound art project that examines the frequency at which bees “buzz” and how it, along with the responsibilities of beekeeping, is being used by VA hospitals and programs to ease the effects of PTSD. While the science behind the connection is still being explored, beekeeping was recommended more than a century ago — to soldiers returning home from World War I — according to a CNBC profile of Bees4Vets, a nonprofit based in Nevada.  

From the Hive to the Canvas 

Whether it was baking sourdough bread or learning a new language, many people, including Dunlap, took the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic to pick up a new hobby. She began a master's program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the goal of using beeswax in encaustic painting, which uses hot wax mixed with pigments. The use of natural materials collected through her beekeeping practice connects Dunlap to her work.  

“It's a way of tapping into another level of consciousness. It's a way of articulating the noncommunicable relationship between me and the bees. When there's a language gap between people, we try to fill it in with translation, but without a direct way to translate the language or the sensation that I feel from the bees, this allows me to document my practice in an abstract form,” she said.  

By layering the wax and applying heat throughout the process, Dunlap watches the pieces take shape, often with the unpredictability of an active hive, as she says the art “can create itself.” She collects the wax in small amounts, knowing that she can only produce her art if the bees are healthy.  

"It's an eco-conscious practice, making sure I don't use more than I need," she explained. “I love the landscape it creates, and it's all about me creating a direct relationship with my medium and knowing that I earned it by developing a relationship with the bees." 

As Dunlap continues her year-long residency with the UHBP, she intends to help educate the community, both on campus and around the Atlanta area, in the hopes that more prospective beekeepers will explore their curiosity to unlock the full potential of the practice. 

"It's been a practice that keeps unveiling itself to me," she said. "As you get more engaged, you learn there is so much more to it than just the day-to-day hive inspections. There is a lot of beauty to it as well." 

Students at Tech have several ways to get involved with research and beekeeping, including the Living Building Science VIP team, the Beekeeping Club, and various classes and workshops hosted by the UHBP. 

Although mudskippers are distantly related to tetrapods, the group that includes humans and other four-limbed vertebrates, researchers believed studying the fish could unlock how blinking evolved as these animals began to move on land. 

The research team, which included several undergraduates, published their findings in the paper, “The Origin of Blinking in Both Mudskippers and Tetrapods Is Linked to Life on Land,” in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

“By comparing the anatomy and behavior of mudskippers to the fossil record of early tetrapods, we argue that blinking emerged in both groups as an adaptation to life on land,” said Tom Stewart, an assistant professor at Penn State and an author of the paper. “These results help us understand our own biology and raise a whole set of new questions about the variety of blinking behaviors we see in living species.”

Breaking Down Blinking

Mudskippers blink by sucking their eye downward into their eye socket. The evolution of this behavior did not require the evolution of a lot of new parts such as new muscles or special glands, though. Instead, mudskippers use their existing set of eye muscles in a new way.

“This is a very exciting result because it demonstrates that the evolution of a new, complex behavior can be achieved using a relatively rudimentary set of structures,” said Brett Aiello, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Agile Systems Lab and now assistant professor at Seton Hill.

Next, the research team set out to determine why mudskippers blink. In a series of experiments, they found that mudskippers blink for three main functions: to wet, clean, and protect the eye. These functions are also why humans and other land-dwelling vertebrates blink.

“We find that a single behavior can be deployed to accomplish three complex, distinct functions,” said Aiello. “These results not only help humans understand our own history, but also help us reevaluate the adaptations necessary for major transitions in the evolutionary history of vertebrates, like moving from water to land.”

Blinking isn’t just a unique research question, but also an important mechanism to understand, according to Saad Bhamla, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and author on the paper.

“We all blink without thinking, and understanding why we blink is just such a beautiful puzzle right in front of our eyes,” Bhamla said. “Through our research on mudskippers and by conducting biophysical and morphological analyses, we expose how blinking serves a multitude of functions for adapting to life out of water.”

Engaging Undergraduates

To explore such open-ended questions, the researchers engaged the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program, which allows undergraduates to conduct long-term, large-scale research projects as part of their coursework at Georgia Tech.

“The structure of the VIP course empowers students to really lean on their own creativity and drive the project in the directions that are most exciting to them,” said Aiello. “It helps our students gain the ability to solve unknown problems on the ground as they arise — a lot of people become scientists to push research somewhere where nobody else has tried to go before.”

The VIP structure is inherently multidisciplinary. While Aiello is a biologist, most students were engineers and brought their respective expertise. Manognya Sripathi was a biomedical engineering major with a minor in computer science and offered her unique experience to the mudskipper problem.

“I used my computer science skills to gather raw data and analyze and plot them using programs like MATLAB or Python,” Sripathi said. “I also used engineering skills to help build the experimental equipment, allowing us to apply engineering methods to study a biological problem in a unique way.”

Moving Beyond Mudskippers

Te research didn’t just expand knowledge of mudskippers — it also contributed to each student’s future aspirations. For example, Kendra Washington’s trajectory was influenced by the two semesters she spent in the lab.

“VIP drew me closer to the programming and device areas of my biomedical engineering major and solidified why I picked up a computer science minor,” she said. “I continued to pursue that fusion through later internships and research, and now work with hemodynamic monitoring. But in a sense, I still help characterize physiology through programming.”

VIP also expanded the students’ knowledge and scientific experience that have propelled them far beyond the lab. Hajime Minoguchi, a biomedical engineering graduate, now works as a systems integration research and development engineer thanks to his experience in the class.

“Working in an interdisciplinary team like this has allowed me to learn how to understand and communicate ideas between disciplines, which allowed me to be a more well-rounded engineer,” Minoguchi said. “My work requires a thorough understanding of biology, electrical circuitry, software, firmware, mechanical interactions, and physics. This VIP experience was instrumental for me in being successful at my current job.”

The research is far greater than the sum of its parts and brings a greater understanding of evolution, noted Simon Sponberg, an associate professor in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences.

“Blinking is a reflection of a bigger question,” Sponberg said. “How did major evolutionary transitions occur that enabled organisms to inhabit basically every environment on this planet? What we learned is you don't need the evolution of a lot of specialized musculature or glands; evolution can tinker with the structures that are already there, allowing them to be used in a new way and for a new behavior.”

CITATION: Aiello BR, MS Bhamla, J Gau, JGL Morris, K Bomar, S da Cunha, H Fu, J Laws, H Minoguchi, M Sripathi, K Washington,G Wong, NH Shubin†, S Sponberg†, TA Stewart. The origin of blinking in mudskippers and tetrapods is linked to life on land.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220404120

Scientists and engineers study animal movements for clues on ways to improve lives for humans, such as designing better prosthetics or terrain-conquering robots. But that doesn’t mean fun can’t be a part of the research as well — as in asking kids to see how long they can stand on one leg a la flamingos.

That was the energy on display Saturday, March 11, for Animals in Motion: Biomechanics Day at Zoo Atlanta, part of the 2023 Atlanta Science Festival. With help from biomechanics researchers from Georgia Tech, Clemson University, and the University of Akron, visitors gathered at several demonstration booths around the Zoo to learn more about wildlife and work exploring animal biomechanics.

Joe Mendelson, adjunct professor in the School of Biological Sciences, is also director of Research for Zoo Atlanta. Mendelson says a Biomechanics Day was first scheduled for 2020 but ran headlong into the beginnings of the pandemic. 

“Finally, we get to assemble our colleagues and highlight their fun and innovative projects,” he said, adding that the Atlanta Science Festival is the perfect place to attract researchers studying biomechanics of creatures as different as snakes, elephants, centipedes, and humans, as well. 

There are many benefits to knowing more about animal locomotion. “Allowing people to see and understand familiar animals through a different light and comparing, for example, their locomotion to your own can be an effective way to generate interest and caring about animals by people,” Mendelson said.

Zoo Atlanta frequently collaborates with biomechanics researchers across Georgia's Tech's College of Sciences and College of Engineering. Animals in Motion: Biomechanics Day highlighted those labs and their various projects, as well as other labs from around the country that are doing similar research.

One of those researchers, Greg Sawicki, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biological Sciences, used ultrasound imaging to give Zoo Atlanta visitors an “under the skin” look at how animal and human muscles work together with tendons to move the body. 

“We will look at, and compare, calf muscles and the Achilles tendon in the leg with the biceps and biceps tendon in the arm,” Sawicki said. “Zoo visitors will be able to see for themselves the wide variety of structural features of muscle-tendon systems, ranging from short muscles and long compliant tendons for the calf to long muscles and short stiff tendons.”

Sawicki hoped his audience learned that different structural features of muscle-tendon systems “may have unique functional benefits in the wild — and an animal’s limb design may be specifically adapted for their environmental niche.”

Simon Sponberg, Dunn Family Associate Professor in the Schools of Physics and Biological Sciences, wasn't able to bring the live animals he works with — hawk moths — to the Animal Biomechanics Day. “It’s for a variety of reasons, but mostly that they don’t fly much during the day,” Sponberg said. But visitors to Sponberg’s booth explored different insect wing shapes to see how they help moths and other insects move. 

“What we want students to get out of it is that there are many different forms and functions a ‘wing’ can take,” he added. “So we want people to learn how we can use experiments to understand the link between structure, function, and performance, especially in flight.”

At another section of Zoo Atlanta, adults and kids spent their time trying to balance on just one leg. It’s unclear if any of the nearby flamingos were impressed with the results, but Young-Hui Chang, professor and associate chair for Faculty Development in the School of Biological Sciences, says the balancing act is much easier for flamingos.

“They have to deal with the same physical challenges to stand in a stable way,” Chang said. “Biology tells us that, as vertebrates, flamingos are starting with many of the same muscles and bones of the leg that humans have. But, flamingos have evolved a way to use their limbs such that they can sleep standing on one leg with minimal involvement of the muscles, which would be impossible for us humans to do.”

Chang studies flamingo biomechanics for the sheer sake of gaining knowledge about how nature works. But he adds that there are practical applications to the research. “One that has already been used by roboticists is the development of a ‘flamingo bot’ that uses the principles we’ve discovered in the flamingo leg to help the robot conserve energy,” Chang said.

The goal of the SCGSR program is to prepare graduate students for science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) careers critically important to the DOE Office of Science mission. The agency provides graduate thesis research opportunities through extended residency at DOE national laboratories.

“I am so excited and feel extremely lucky to have this opportunity to continue my research with DOE help,” Manis said. “I am thankful for everyone’s help to get me where I am, especially my principal investigator Thomas Orlando, our lab senior research scientist Brant Jones, my collaborating DOE scientist Thorsten Weber, and also everyone else in my research group. I am so thrilled to be working with world class scientists on cutting edge equipment.”

Manis is one of 87 awardees from 58 different universities who will conduct research at 16 DOE national laboratories. The research projects proposed by the new awardees are aligned with the priority mission areas of the DOE Office of Science that have a high need for workforce development. 

“The SCGSR program provides a way for graduate students to enrich their scientific research by engaging with researchers at DOE National Labs, learning from world class scientists, and using state-of-the-art equipment and facilities,” notes Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Director of the DOE Office of Science. “In addition, they get valuable opportunities to network and observe firsthand what it’s like to have a scientific career. I can’t wait to see what these young researchers do in the future. I know they will meet upcoming scientific challenges in new and innovative ways.”  

Manis, who also earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2018, will join the DOE’s Gas Phase Chemical Physics program at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) at Stanford University. The Center supports research on fundamental gas-phase chemical processes important in energy applications.

SCGSR awardees work on research projects of significant importance to the Office of Science mission that address critical energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges at national and international scales. Projects in this new cohort span eight different  DOE Office of Science research programs. 

Manis’ project falls into the Basic Energy Sciences category. “I am interested in understanding the low energy electron interaction with biomolecules, which is a potential way of causing DNA damage,” he said. “The research I will conduct at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is to first help in commissioning the DREAM (Dynamic REAction Microscope) end station in the TMO (time-resolved atomic, molecular and optical science) instrument hub.

“I have never visited SLAC before, but I am extremely excited to work there,” Manis added. “It’s going to be a change of pace collaborating with another group of scientists, and I can’t wait to start.”

Atlanta is seeing some of the worst air quality in the nation, and the culprit is actually thousands of miles away. 

More than 900 wildfires blazing in Canada are creating smoke and dust particles that are being carried by the jet stream all the way down to the Deep South. Georgia Tech scientists and researchers are watching closely. 

Wildfires themselves aren’t uncommon. But what is different and, at times, dangerous is the number of particles in the air. 

“It is unusual to experience high concentrations of smoke aerosols within the contiguous U.S. such as what we have been observing recently,” said Zachary Handlos, meteorologist and senior academic professional in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech.

Fine particulate matter (also known as PM2.5) levels exceeded 55 micrograms per cubic meter of air south of Atlanta. This is the reason for the recent air quality alerts, which indicated that the air quality in metro Atlanta sat in the orange zone Monday and Tuesday, meaning the air has been potentially hazardous for the most at-risk people. 

Older persons, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with preexisting health conditions are among the most vulnerable populations. However, anyone can be affected by poor air quality.

PM2.5 is fine enough to penetrate deep into the lungs,” said Talat Odman, principal research engineer and air quality expert from the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. 

Both Odman and Handlos say an N95 mask can be a big help in filtering out this particulate matter. Read more.

A total of 21 projects from all six Georgia Tech colleges will reach an estimated 22,500 students. The collaborative effort is focused on a key goal of the Institute’s Sustainability Next Task Force: to produce graduates who are committed to making a positive difference in their communities, their organizations, and the world.

“The overall goal is that all of our students understand the societal context for their work, as well as the scientific, environmental, economic, and social aspects of sustainability,” says Jennifer Leavey, assistant dean for Faculty Mentoring for the College of Sciences and co-chair of Sustainability Next.

Leavey and Rebecca Watts-Hull, assistant director of Faculty Development for Sustainability Education in the Center for Teaching and Learning, served as liaisons for the Undergraduate Sustainability Education Committee, which judged the proposals.

Leavey also coordinates College of Sciences educational programs related to science and sustainability, including the Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project and the Living Building Science Vertically Integrated Project Team. 

Leavey said the UN SDGs — which ask world citizens and their governments to consider ambitious solutions to longstanding problems such as hunger, poverty, climate damage, inequality, and lack of quality healthcare — are clear and compelling. “These are things we want for a better world,” she shared. “Every field has some connection to them. And it's just a very easy framework to get behind and understand. I would love it if all Georgia Tech graduates could leave feeling well versed in that understanding, and how their work connects to it.”

The Sustainable Education Committee chose projects that impacted the greatest number of students, including classes that are required for all Georgia Tech undergraduates. 

Learn more about the College of Sciences’ six selected proposals:

Laboratory-Based Project on the Chemistry of Alternative Energy Sources

• CHEM 1211L, Chemical Principles I, Laboratory
• Deborah Santos, academic professional, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
• 1000+ students impacted (majority first-year)
• “I hope that the students would have a better understanding of why they hear about these technologies as possible alternatives, and what obstacles there are to actual widespread implementation,” Santos said. “Maybe students will consider how they might play a role in overcoming those obstacles.”

Sustainability Next: Taking a Sustainable Open-Educational Resource And SDG-ing It

• Bios 1107/1207, Biological Principles
• Emily Weigel, senior academic professional, and Marc Weissburg, professor, School of Biological Sciences
• Approximately 650 early career students per year
• “I will take the textbook and each day link it to an SDG, so that when they come into class, we'll talk about the topics in the context of SDGs,” Weigel said. “By being a little bit more explicit about it, it's our goal that when they go from this intro course to later courses in their curriculum, they're primed to think about SDGs, and then they recognize the connections that are there.”

Georgia Climate Project 

• EAS 4813 — This is a new course within the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences’ new interdisciplinary Environmental Science (ENVS) undergraduate degree program with the School of Biological Sciences, and part of a partnership with the Georgia Climate Project, a state-wide consortium of universities, colleges and partners working to improve understanding of climate impacts and solutions in Georgia.
• Zachary Handlos, senior academic professional, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• 10-20 students impacted per year 
• “This course would provide students an opportunity to participate in hands-on learning within the context of ‘real-world’ sustainability-related projects in partnership with the Georgia Climate Project, complementing topics and coursework covered in Samantha Wilson’s EAS 4803: EAS & Policy course,” Handlos said. “Work includes participation in climate change, sustainability, and climate equity and justice research, as well as the creation and dissemination of tools and resources.”

Urban Atlanta’s Water and Atmospheric Signatures

• EAS 1600: Introduction to Environmental Science (EAS Majors) Laboratory: Urban Atlanta Atmospheric Measurements, combined with another Lab course, Urban Water Quality Measurements and Microbial Ecology Exploration using Proctor Creek Watershed
• Jennifer Glass, associate professor, and Shelby Ellis, lecturer, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 
• 20-40 students per year, EAS majors only 
• “Through field trips, students will investigate current climate change-induced conditions in urban Atlanta, with students collecting real time weather and watershed data-measurements to learn more about SDGs surrounding urban sustainable cities and clean water,” Ellis said. “In this reconfigured learning environment, we hope to foster student momentum on becoming educational leaders in their local community on climate justice, while gaining an understanding that there are attainable climate actions that can be taken now to combat climate change.” ”

Developing and Enhancing Experiential Learning in a New EAS Course

• EAS 4803: EAS & Policy, offered in new Environmental Science (ENVS), Solid Earth & Planetary Science (SEP), and Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (AOS) undergraduate degree programs in College of Sciences 
• Samantha Wilson, academic professional, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• 25 students during spring semesters in even-numbered years
• “The course is designed to introduce students to the scientific background of topics such as water, hydrocarbons, air, and earthquakes before discussing related policies and persistent issues,” Wilson said. “Through discussions on each topic that involve science and policy, students can work towards understanding why current policies exist the way they do and how they can be improved.” The course will also involve guest speakers, and is meant to be taken before Handlos’ EAS 4813 course. 

Course Redesign to Implement Project-Based Learning for Social Change

• APPH 1040, Foundations of Health
• Teresa Snow, senior academic professional, School of Biological Sciences
• Approximately 200 students per year
• “It is my hope that working towards solutions to complex societal health issues will create a sense of empowerment for our students that counteracts feelings of helplessness,” Snow said. “A cross-disciplinary approach, which is the focus of this project, will provide a better understanding of the process of large-scale social change, a critical requirement for achieving the third SDG, which is to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages. Breaking down the social barriers to good health will benefit everyone.”

On April 27, the Undergraduate Sustainability Education Committee hosted a Jamboree, which featured faculty from each Georgia Tech college that won grants — making brief presentations, and engaging in networking discussions. 

“For the College of Sciences, it's really exciting to see the connection between different disciplines,” Leavey said. “We’ve been doing work on climate and the environment for a long time, but to see the connection with sustainability work at other colleges at Georgia Tech is very gratifying.”

Tang is an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. She is joined by Crawford Elliott, associate professor  at Georgia State University, on their proposal, “The occurrences of the rare earth elements in highly weathered sedimentary rocks, Georgia kaolins,” funded by the NSF Division of Earth Sciences. 

All about REEs

REEs such as cerium, terbium, neodymium, and yttrium, are critical minerals used in many industrial technology components such as semiconductors, permanent magnets, and rechargeable batteries (smart phones, computers), phosphors (flat screen TVs, light-emitting diodes), and catalysts (fuel combustion, auto emissions controls, water purification). They impact a wide range of industries such as health care, transportation, power generation (including wind turbines), petroleum refining, and consumer electronics. 

“With the increasing global demand for green and sustainable technologies, REE demand is projected to increase rapidly in the U.S. and globally,” Tang says. “Yet currently the domestic REE production is very low, and the U.S. relies heavily on imports. The combination of growing demand and high dependence on international supplies has prompted the U.S. to explore new resources and develop environmentally friendly extraction and processing technologies.”  

Georgia geology

Kaolin is a white, aluminosilicate clay mineral used in making paper, plastics, rubber, paints, and many other products. More than $1 billion worth of kaolin is mined from Georgia’s kaolin deposits every year, more than any other state.

Tang and Elliott say considerable amounts of the REEs have been found in the waste residues generated from Georgia kaolin mining. 

“These occurrences have high REE contents and might add significantly to domestic resources,” Tang says. “By understanding the geological and geochemical processes controlling the occurrence and distribution of REEs in these weathered environments, we might be able to provide fundamental information for the identification of REE resources, and the design of efficient and green extraction technologies.”

“The new work with Dr. Tang has the potential to advance our fundamental understanding of the occurrences, mineralogical speciation, and distribution of the REEs in bauxite and kaolin ore,” Elliott says. “I am thrilled to be working with Dr. Tang on this project.”

Laterite thinking

The Department of Energy notes the 17 rare earth elements are found in highly weathered environments, such as the laterites, a type of soil and rock located in eastern and southeastern China, which currently comprises around 80 percent of the world’s REE reserves. To promote domestic production of REEs, the NSF sought proposals to explore natural unconventional element resources located in highly weathered sedimentary/regolith (loose rocky material covering bedrock) settings in the U.S. Georgia’s kaolin deposits and mines extend in the state from southwest to northeast, paralleling the state’s ‘fall line’ that separates the Piedmont Plateau from the coastal plains.

With the NSF grant, Tang and Elliott will find out more about the geochemical factors and processes controlling REE mobility, distribution, and fractionation (enrichment of light REE versus heavy REE) in these environments, which can provide the foundation to identify domestic resources, and for the rational design of extraction technologies. 

Community connections

The proposed work will also integrate research with education, combining student training with undergraduate education and research, as well as K-12 and community outreach emphasizing the participation of underrepresented groups in geological sciences. 

The grant relates to Tang’s work at two Georgia Tech interdisciplinary research institutes dedicated to sustainability, energy, and climate: the Strategic Energy Institute and the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS), where she is a co-lead with Hailong Chen, an associate professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Tang and Chen’s BBISS project is “Sustainable Resources for Clean Energy.” Tang also serves as an SEI/BBISS initiative lead on sustainable resources.

“The state of Georgia has already been experiencing rapid and exciting developments in the clean energy industry,” Tang says. “We hope to bridge an important link in this space. We hope to help identify and explore regional critical resources for clean energy development by both understanding the geological/geochemical fundamentals, and developing sustainable extraction technologies.” 

Georgia Tech is also investing in the community outreach and social aspects of energy research, not just in science and engineering, Tang adds. “Collaboration with Georgia State University also gives exciting opportunities for the engagement with underrepresented student groups, especially in geological sciences, which will serve in the long term for workforce development.” 

The biology, neuroscience, and biochemistry undergraduates were enrolled in a special offering of the Cell and Molecular Biology Laboratory (BIOS 3451) as part of the Georgia Tech Biomolecular Engineering, Science, and Technology study abroad program in Lyon (BEST-Lyon). As it was the first time the lab was offered as part of the program, the instructors took the budding course as an opportunity to try something new, aiming to mesh the lab with the local culture surrounding them while abroad. And for Lyon, that meant incorporating silk. 

Read more about the unique experience on the College of Sciences website.

On the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix, the ruins of a Danish sugar plantation built from harvested coral bricks could be the key to understanding how and why the area was decimated by the 18th-century transatlantic slave trade.

With funding from the National Geographic Society, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) will travel to St. Croix to analyze this coral. They hope to determine how coral mining, dredging, and reef erosion affected near-shore biodiversity, contemporary coral populations, and bathymetry or underwater depth. The project uniquely combines archeology and oceanography.

“We can survey these corals to try and reconstruct the climate around St. Croix before, during, and after the slave trade — particularly with regard to sea surface temperature and trade wind strength,” said Isaiah Bolden, a co-principal investigator and assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. “This could give us an interesting, climatically informed perspective on the timing of the transatlantic slave trade and why and how St. Croix became a part of this history.”

The Coral Codex

The first phases of the project involve collecting coral. Justin Dunnavant, co-PI, National Geographic Explorer, and assistant professor of archeology at UCLA, will use 3D photogrammetry, the process of combining photographs at different angles to create a 3D rendering, to determine which coral species were used in plantation construction. Then the researchers will collect live and historic coral samples with minimally invasive techniques so Bolden can analyze their composition.

Coral skeletons are a rich source of historical data. Like trees, living coral grows in annual rings and can be dated by counting these rings. For the dating of ancient samples, the team is also applying uranium-thorium dating, a type of radiometric dating that relies on a natural “clock” that forms as radioactive uranium locked inside of coral skeletons naturally decays into thorium.

Determining the ages of the plantation structures will help reveal whether the coral was harvested from the sea floor alive or if these buildings were constructed from preexisting coral rubble. Additional analyses can uncover clues of how the ecosystem has responded to direct human impacts from the 18th century to present. To this end, the project will also sequence proteins trapped in the skeletons of fossilized and contemporary corals on St. Croix to investigate genetic differences.

The coral skeletons can reveal more than age and genetic differences, though. Mineral “impurities” that get substituted into the growth bands of the limestone-like calcium carbonate skeleton of corals can be measured and used to infer sea surface temperature, salinity, pH, runoff, and many other environmental conditions during a coral’s lifetime.

"Corals try to build a pristine skeleton made of calcium and carbonate ions,” Bolden said. “The problem is seawater isn’t just a pure mixture of those two components, so some of this other stuff gets in the way. For example, the element strontium, which has a similar chemical behavior to calcium, is incorporated into the skeleton at a faster rate during cooler temperatures than warmer temperatures. This means we can use the ratio of strontium-to-calcium across growth bands in the coral skeleton as a clue toward past temperatures.”

Making these measurements involves drilling and dissolving powders from the coral growth bands and then using a mass spectrometer to analyze the chemical composition of the powders. The data, in turn, can be combined with instrumental records from the modern era to develop equations that translate the chemical changes into environmental changes.

“This is a really cool opportunity to study how local reefs have recorded and responded to climatic and anthropogenic changes during a definingly dark period of colonization and human civilization,” Bolden said. “How can we interface these new ecological and climate records with the written historical record to further detail the story of colonization and the slave trade in St. Croix?”

The St. Croix Ecosystem — Then and Now

The researchers will also collect contemporary data to build a better understanding of St. Croix’s existing modern coral reef ecosystems. They will collect and analyze seawater samples and conduct coral species and coverage surveys to capture current seasonal conditions and trends in reef health.

Throughout the project, the researchers will collaborate with local St. Croix universities and high schools to ensure the research isn’t just about the community, but also benefits it by giving students research opportunities.

“I'm really interested in this opportunity to bring a climate context to the history often taught in schools to discover things we haven’t learned,” Bolden said. “We’re talking about decolonizing geoscience and unearthing the stories that haven't been told.

A new study from Georgia Tech shows that fluids from the mantle in Alaska’s Shumagin Gap — an intersection of tectonic plates that has attracted researchers because of the lack of large seismic events — may provide new information about how those fluids could actually help generate earthquakes. 

“One common thought is that fluids tend to decrease the chance of large earthquakes by decreasing friction along faults,” says Darcy Cordell, who worked on the research as a postdoctoral scientist in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. “However, our paper suggests that it might not be such a simple story. It may still be the case that fluids help to inhibit the very largest earthquakes, those around magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale. However, the presence of fluids does not rule out relatively large earthquakes from occurring and, in fact, earthquakes may be more likely to rupture through fluid-rich, conditionally stable areas rather than dry, stable areas.”

Cordell, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta, is the lead author of a paper published in Nature Geosciences, “Forearc seismogenesis in a weakly coupled subduction zone influenced by slab mantle fluids.” (A subduction zone is the area where a collision between two of Earth's tectonic plates has happened, with one plate sinking underneath the other into the mantle. A forearc, meanwhile, is the area between an oceanic trench, or a depression in the seafloor, and a volcanic arc, such as a mountain range with volcanoes.)

Cordell’s co-author, Georgia Tech Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Assistant Professor Samer Naif, is joined by research team members from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, BlueGreen Geophysics, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Northern Arizona University. The National Science Foundation provided funding for the research.

The key to the ‘unlocked’ Shumagin Gap 

The Shumagin Gap, a segment of tectonic plate boundary located near the Shumagin Islands that lie south of the Alaskan mainland, was considered to be at lower risk of earthquakes because the tectonic plates were thought to be “unlocked” — free of jagged edges that can strike each other and eventually “lock” up and build up stress that can cause earthquakes. But in July 2020, a megathrust quake — where plates violently collide, sending one sliding on top of the other — struck just east of the Gap. That was followed in October of that year with a strike-slip quake (with plates moving horizontally) right in the middle of the Gap. 

“There are only a few such well documented seismic gaps along subduction zones globally,” says Naif. “We chose the Shumagin Gap and its neighboring segments for our study area for this reason. Our goal was to map the distribution of fluids in order to investigate how fluids might be impacting where earthquakes do and do not occur. When we collected the field data back in 2019, we had hypothesized abundant fluids in the Shumagin Gap to explain the lack of earthquakes. The fact that a pair of earthquakes occurred in this very region just one year later was certainly fortuitous.”

Prior to the research, most discussions about fluids being released from the mantle assumed that the waters were released after the tectonic slab had subducted to depths of more than 100 kilometers. “So instead of having slab mantle fluids released beneath the region where large earthquakes happen, it was thought the fluids would be released much further from the ocean trench,” Cordell says.

In the case of the Shumagin Gap quakes, that would be after the plate was subducted beneath the Alaska Peninsula. This is why slab mantle fluids were not considered to have much of a role in shallow, large earthquakes in the forearc, Cordell adds.

Mapping mantle fluids

Yet that theory was challenged when the team began to locate and map mantle fluid flows. Saline water conducts electricity easily, which allowed Cordell and Naif to use magnetotelluric geophysical methods, which rely on the Earth’s own magnetic and electric fields to produce images of the electrical conductivity underground at 100-kilometer depths. “This helps us locate where saline water is because it lights up bright red in our images,” Cordell says. 

The scientists found that water from the plate mantle can indeed be released into the forearc region of the subduction zone, the area where most large earthquakes occur. “This has many implications for how we think about and model subduction zones on geological time scales, and not solely earthquake ruptures,” Cordell says.

Naif maintains that water does tend to lubricate faults, but the study suggests that the presence of water may have also allowed the July 2020 Shumagin earthquake to rupture through low friction portions of the fault. “One way in which this can occur is by dynamic weakening,” he explains — as the fault slips during an earthquake, it could lead to rapid shear heating caused by the slippage, and thermal expansion of the pore fluids (fluids inside spaces in rocks). “Both those actions could further reduce the friction and allow the earthquake to continue to propagate.”

Cordell says the fluids at the interface of the tectonic plates may not uniformly decrease earthquake risk in a simple relationship, “but instead a more complex interplay between fluids, and rupture may actually increase risk in some circumstances.”

Future subduction zone studies

Naif would like to see more mapping of the distribution of fluids for the Shumagin and nearby Semidi segments involved in the July 2020 earthquake. “Our study is along a single profile, and it is not clear whether fluids are present along the entire fault slip surface,” he says. 

Naif also wants to see the research expanded “to explore other subduction zones around the world for similar deeply-sourced fluids, and where such fluids are discovered, how they influence seismicity.”

About Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its more than 45,000 undergraduate and graduate students, representing 50 states and more than 148 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers OCE-1654652 and OCE-1654619.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01260-w

But a study led by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology has advanced understanding of both the chemical composition of PM2.5 and the reaction of alveolar cells of the lungs exposed to this pollution, highlighting the growing threat posed to human health.

Published in Environmental Science and Technology, the study shows that oxidized organic aerosols (OOA) are the most toxic type of organic aerosols in PM2.5.

“Oxidized organic aerosols are the most abundant type of organic aerosols worldwide,” said Nga Lee (Sally) Ng, Love Family Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “For example, when wildfire smoke reacts in the atmosphere, it generates OOA.”

Measurement Techniques

As the researchers used advanced techniques such as mass spectrometry to analyze the chemical composition of PM2.5 in Atlanta, Georgia, they simultaneously measured the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in alveolar cells resulting from pollution exposure.

ROS are molecules that can cause oxidative stress and damage to our cells, potentially leading to various health problems, including cardiopulmonary diseases.

To understand the mechanisms behind PM2.5-induced oxidative stress, the researchers employed cellular assays, which allowed them to measure both chemically and biologically generated ROS.

The study revealed that highly unsaturated species containing carbon-oxygen double bonds and aromatic rings within OOA are major drivers of cellular ROS production, advancing understanding of the chemical features of ambient organic aerosols that make them toxic.

Wildfires Are Growing Source

As the contribution from fossil-fuel sources to organic aerosols formation has declined in the United States in recent decades due to reduction strategies, the relative importance of other sources has increased, said Fobang Liu, lead author of the study.

“For example, biomass burning is expected to become a more important source of OOA with the increasing trend of wildfires,” added Liu, a former postdoctoral researcher in Ng’s lab at Georgia Tech who is now an associate professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China.

A major chemical characteristic of OOA formed from biomass burning is the high fraction of oxygenated aromatic compounds. “Hence, this work highlights that organic aerosols can become more toxic in the future,” he said.

Continued Collaboration

According to the researchers, their findings underscore the need for continued collaboration among the fields of atmospheric chemistry, toxicology, epidemiology, and biotechnology to tackle the global air pollution crisis.

“OOA are a surrogate of secondary organic aerosols. Secondary organic aerosols  are ubiquitous and abundant in the atmosphere, we need to understand their sources and chemical processing when formulating effective strategies to mitigate PM2.5 health impacts,” said Professor Ng.

“Future work should continue to investigate the health impacts of different PM2.5 components, particularly secondary organic aerosols formed from precursors emitted during incomplete combustion processes of fossil and biomass fuels,” she said.

Different regions may have varying types of organic aerosols due to diverse emission sources and atmospheric conditions. Therefore, long-term measurement of organic aerosol types over a wide range of geographical areas will be important to advance understanding of health impacts, the researchers emphasized.

Such work is being conducted by the Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurement NeTwork (ASCENT), a $12 million advanced aerosol measurement network of 12 sites around the United States that is led by Professor Ng.

CITATION: Fobang Liu, Taekyu Joo, Jenna C. Ditto, Maria G. Saavedra, Masayuki Takeuchi, Alexandra J. Boris, Yuhan Yang, Rodney J. Weber, Ann M. Dillner, Drew R. Gentner, Nga L. Ng., “Oxidized and unsaturated: key organic aerosol traits associated with cellular reactive oxygen species production in the southeastern United States,” Environmental Science and Technology, 10.1021/acs.est.3c03641, 2023

This asynchronous beating comes from how the flight muscles interact with the physics of the insect’s springy exoskeleton. This decoupling of neural commands and muscle contractions is common in only four distinct insect groups.

For years, scientists assumed these four groups evolved these ultrafast wingbeats separately, but research from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) shows that they evolved from a single common ancestor. This discovery demonstrates evolution has repeatedly turned on and off this particular mode of flight. The researchers developed physics models and robotics to test how these transitions could occur.

Read the full feature in the GT Research newsroom.

One particular CDR process — enhanced rock weathering — holds a lot of promise for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while increasing farm crop yields. School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Associate Professor Chris Reinhard has been researching this type of weathering for several years, and he’ll get more opportunities to follow up on those studies, thanks to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant program.

He will conduct that research as the new Georgia Power Chair for Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, a role that he says will help guide his climate science studies.

“I am extremely honored and humbled,” Reinhard says. “I hope to use the position as a platform to collaborate on and advocate for climate-smart agricultural practices in the state of Georgia and beyond, and to amplify efforts that reimagine technically rigorous and socially responsible carbon removal across land and sea. Our USDA partnership will of course be central to these goals, as will our ongoing research on ocean-based carbon removal pathways.”

The USDA’s eye on agricultural technologies 

Reinhard and Noah Planavsky, an associate professor at Yale University, are co-principal investigators on their project for the USDA’s new grants program, Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities.