Tags: Earth
Janet Westpheling, professor of genetics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of genetics, has been selected for the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program. Since 1956, the program has been offering undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America’s most distinguished scholars.
Westpheling teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in genetics and trains undergraduates, graduate students and…
From the coordinated blinking of fireflies to the synchronized movement of flocks of birds or schools of fish and even the exploration pattern of roots in the soil, collective behavior characters all domains of biology – animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and viruses.
The University of Georgia Institute of Bioinformatics presents the State of the Art Symposium on Collective Behavior Friday, March 20, 2020 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Masters Hall…
Critical views, insights, commentary, and explanation from Franklin College faculty over the month of February. A sample:
Column: If you drink milk, thank Big Government, Stephen Mihm, associate professor of history writing in his regular column at Bloomberg
February: The cruelest month, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor Marshall Shepherd in the Eau Claire (WI) Leader-Telegram
Clay — incredibly…
Beyond the barrier islands of coastal Georgia, the continental shelf extends gradually eastward for almost 80 miles to the Gulf Stream. This broad, sandy shelf largely does not provide the firm foundation needed for the development of reef communities to support recreational and commercial fish species including grouper, snapper, black sea bass and amberjack.
“Natural and artificial reef habitats are important to Georgia fisheries because…
A significant redesign of two foundational UGA mathematics courses has led to remarkable gains in student success, including an increase from 65% to 85% of students who pass precalculus:
While the DFW (grade of D, grade of F or Withdrawal) rate for students taking precalculus averages 27% nationally, according to the Mathematical Association of America, the DFW rate at UGA has dropped from 35% six years ago to approximately 15% last fall.…
UGA Libraries’ competition encourages (and rewards!) creativity to help communicate ideas in any format students might imagine:
When most people think of climate science, their only visual reference is a disaster movie. But Alison Banks knows that things are more complicated. As she modeled scenarios in her work as a master’s student in geography, Banks was inspired to create her own representation of the possibilities.
With an…
J. Marshall Shepherd, a meteorologist whose diverse communication efforts engage a wide audience on weather, climate, and the relationship between science and society, will receive the 2020 Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science:
As the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor and director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of…
The volume of the world’s oceans defines the gigantic scale on Earth – 300 million cubic miles, and an average depth of 12,000 feet. Of all the activity taking place there at every moment, any one part can be difficult to understand, making predictions difficult if not impossible. But scientists are starting to figure out some of its most complex processes.
The concentration of bacteria around phytoplankton, for example, and how these…
Franklin faculty provided expert commentary and analysis as well as important new research in a strong start to 2020. Here are a few of the top stories so far this year:
Voting rights restoration gives felons a voice in more states – associate professor sociology Sarah Shannon quoted by PEW, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Crime Report, KyForward
Five social media posts about weather that need to go…
Funded by a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the Department and Leadership Teams for Action program, or DeLTA, will engage more than 100 University of Georgia faculty across multiple departments to transform STEM education at institutions of higher education nationwide.
Principal investigator Paula Lemons, an associate professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology, explained that she and her colleagues…
The Center for Simulational Physics presents the inaugural Chhabra-Landau lecture on Thursday Jan. 9, 2020 at 3:30 p.m. in room 202 of the Physics building. The speaker is Sharon Glotzer, the Anthony C. Lembke Department Chair of Chemical Engineering, the John Werner Cahn Distinguished University Professor of Engineering and the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she is also…
The Franklin College of Arts and Sciences wishes you all the best for the holidays and in the new year 2020!
University of Georgia offices will be closed beginning December 25 and re-open January 2, 2020.
The many great Franklin College stories of 2019 create a vibrant image of ongoing excellence at every level. Our faculty, students and staff are leading the University of Georgia in its most dynamic era yet.
From TED Fellows to Guggenheim Fellowships, imaginative research and teaching draw out the best in our students. Our colleagues provided elegant expression to the fire at Notre Dame de Paris and the death of Toni Morrison,…
The University of Georgia will welcome its newest alumni Dec. 13 as 1,799 undergraduates and 1,263 graduate students—a total of 3,062—have met requirements to walk in the university’s fall Commencement ceremonies.
The undergraduate Commencement ceremony is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. in Stegeman Coliseum, and tickets are required. The graduate ceremony does not require tickets and will follow at 2:30 p.m.
Regent Kessel D. Stelling Jr…
Valentine Nzengung, professor of environmental geochemistry in the Franklin College Department of Geology who has conducted groundbreaking research on phytoremediation techniques, has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, becoming the eighth UGA faculty member to receive the honor, all since 2013:
Nzengung is the founder and CEO of MuniRem Environmental, which provides remediation products and services for…
Students and alumni lead the kudos as we count down to the end of 2019. Congratulations all:
Herb Girls Athens, a two-woman team, won the 2018-19 FABricate competition with its signature product, a healthy coffee additive called Rally Coffee. The FABricate competition is designed to empower students to turn their great ideas into working businesses. Eileen Schaffer, an agribusiness master’s degree student, and …
Gray's reef, the global carbon cycle and statistical significance were a few of the recent headlines supported with Franklin College faculty expertise. A sampling of the stories that appeared over the past month:
Scientists race to track oil from capsized ship – Regents Professor Samantha Joye quoted by GPB
After a giant ship goes belly up, many fear a shoreline is next – Samantha Joye quoted at…
First-Year Odyssey Seminars are some of the most important early academic experiences students can have at UGA. Broadly-themed courses taught by senior faculty feed a sense of discovery in students about knowledge, about the world, and importantly, about themselves as students begin to learn and cultivate their own interests.
Four UGA faculty members, two from the Franklin College have received a 2019 First-Year Odyssey Teaching Award in…
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), known as the GOES-R Series, is the nation’s most advanced fleet of geostationary weather satellites. Geostationary satellites orbit the Earth’s equatorial plane at a speed matching the Earth’s rotation. This allows them to stay in a fixed position in the sky, remaining stationary with respect to a point on the…
Students and faculty from anthropology, genetics, marine sciences and cellular biology offered up-close interaction with UGA research to young fans attending the UGA-Missouri game this past Saturday:
STEMzone, now in its third year, hosted more than a dozen hands-on opportunities to engage people of all ages on research being done at UGA in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.
“We are glad to report that STEMzone fall…
Great new work by marine scientists Patricia Medeiros, Caitlin Amos and Renato Castelao published in Nature:
The 200-mile zone that hugs the curvature of the coast bursts with life, from phytoplankton to whales. Out in the open ocean, this activity is comparatively diminished. Understanding how coastal water is moved offshore fertilizing the open ocean is a long-standing goal of ocean scientists.
Now, a new study from…
UGA and the Franklin College celebrated the renovation of a 71-year old cattle barn as a modern classroom and laboratory building in a dedication ceremony on Oct. 22 at the University of Georgia’s Skidaway Institute of Oceanography:
UGA President Jere W. Morehead presided over the ceremony, which capped the yearlong renovation of the reinforced concrete and steel beam structure that is now known as the Ocean Sciences Instructional…
Franklin faculty contributed popular press articles about issues of the day and had their research reported around the world. A sample from over the past month:
The grimy history of the Attorney General’s Office, associate professor of history Stephen Mihm in his regular column at Bloomberg
Here’s your answer when someone asks “How can it be so cold if there’s global warming?” Georgia Athletic Association…
Waves crash in the ocean and inject tiny particles into the air, which contain molecules of organic carbon more than 5,000 years old. New research published in Science Advances by Steven Beaupré of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) and a national team of scientists, helps to solve a long-standing mystery about what finally happens to these ancient marine…
Gene sequences for more than 1,100 plant species have been released by an international consortium of nearly 200 plant scientists, the culmination of a nine-year research project.
The One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative (1KP) is a global collaboration to examine the diversification of plant species, genes and genomes across the more than 1 billion-year history of green plants dating back to the ancestors of flowering…