Tags: archaeology

Distinguished Research Professor Mary Ann Moran has earned a number of honors over the course of her career. The latest is being named UGA’s recipient of the 2018 Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award: The SEC award, which is administered by provosts at the 14 universities in the conference, recognizes professors with outstanding records in teaching and scholarship who serve as role models for students and other faculty members…

An international research team that includes assistant professor of anthropology and geography Suzanne Pilaar Birch has been awarded Arts and Humanities Research Council UK funding for their four-year project on Radical Death and Early State Formation in the Ancient Near East.  Using new evidence from the Early Bronze Age graves of Başur Höyük, on the Upper Tigris, the project will examine how ritual killing was implicated in…

A new collaboration on microbial ecosystems, the summer program in public history, and Write@UGA were just some of the news worth crowing about this summer. A few more awards and news items worthy of congratulations: UGA researchers report report milestone in global fight against a major cause of diarrheal disease – research by Distinguished Research Professor of Cellular Biology Boris Striepen, Sumiti Vinayak Researchers return to the Gulf of…

The Simons Foundation has established a new collaboration investigating the mysteries of the microscopic communities that produce more than half of Earth’s oxygen, form the base of the marine food web and cycle nutrients through the ecosystem. The Simons Collaboration on Theory of Microbial Ecosystems, or THE-ME, will investigate how microbial ecosystems in the oceans form and function. The new collaboration will seek answers to three main…

The complex unpacking of how micro-organisms work - and work together - in the world's oceans continues apace, as this new perspective article by marine sciences faculty members attests: In the past, studying the connections between ocean-borne compounds and microbes has been impractical because of the sheer complexity of each. Three University of Georgia faculty members-along with an international team of scientists-bring to the forefront…

The community of microorganisms in the world's oceans turn out to be the most important control mechanisms of how the Earth functions. Understanding their function and behavior will leverage our grasp on how the Earth will adjust to broad environmental changes, says Mary Ann Moran in a review article in the journal Science: The ocean microbiome covers the majority of the Earth's surface, extending an average of more than 2 miles deep to the sea…

Leading scientists are urging for the creation of a major initiative to better understand the microbial communities critical to both human health and every ecosystem: In two papers published simultaneously in the journals Science and Nature, the scientists called for a government-led effort akin to the Brain Initiative, a monumental multiyear project intended to develop new technologies to understand the human brain. “This is the beginning of…

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