Tags: Earth


Shepherd named Captain Planet Protector

The award sounds funny, but the prestigious Captain Planet Foundation has honored Marshall Shepherd for his very serious efforts on educating the public about climate change:  Marshall Shepherd is a Captain Planet Protector of the Earth, according to the Captain Planet Foundation, which recently added him to a list of outstanding real-life environmental superheroes. Shepherd, the UGA Athletic Association Professor in the Social Sciences,…


Georgia Sea Grant planning for port expansion

UGA faculty members and Georgia Sea Grant are doing important work along the Georgia coast, helping communities plan for a major expansion of the Savannah Harbor: "Most of the regional attention to the Savannah Harbor deepening has focused on the ecological effects to the river and adjacent wetland ecosystems," said Charles Hopkinson, Georgia Sea Grant director. "We want to shift the focus to local communities so that they are prepared to handle…


Shepherd on MSNBC

Athletic Association Professor of Social Sciences and director of our atmospheric sciences program Marshall Shepherd was a guest of Raphael Miranda on MSNBC this week, talking about extreme weather, new satellite technology for forecasting and the polar vortex, among other subjects. Great job, Dr. Shepherd.    


Spotlight on Geography

The department of geography at UGA is a leading center of scholarship--both in the classroom and in the field--about earth’s landscapes and human relationships to the environment.  Each semester, the department creates a newsletter compiling the latest research, awards, alumni news and profiles of students and faculty.   Of note in this edition is an article about Jerry Shannon and his research on food deserts, a term used for…


Shepherd to host Weather Geeks

Reflecting the need to understand the complexity of weather and climate issues today The Weather Channel is launching a new talk show, "Weather Geeks," featuring our own Marshall Shepherd as host: “One of the greatest aspects of my involvement with AMS and our community as a whole is the opportunity to hear the best minds in our field discuss the most pressing issues in weather,” said Shepherd. “Our vision is for Weather Geeks to be a weekly…


Microscopic photos spotlight the art of science

While they are often identified as poles, a spectrum or even a line of demarcation from one kind of investigation into another, science and art can and occasionally do cohabitate, as in the case of UGA research scientist Stefan Eberhard, who utilizes scientific instrumentation for creative purposes: Besides being a longtime research professional at the University of Georgia’s Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, Eberhard is also an accomplished…


New chemistry study challenges fundamental mechanism

As one of the fundamental disciplines that help us understand the physical world and how it works, organic chemistry plays an essential role in both our instruction and research missions. So it is significant that researchers continue to test and challenge this crucial area of study at its most basic levels: A family of millions of known chemical compounds called "aromatics" or "arenes" and their products, including a great number of medicines,…


New grant promotes physics, engineering

Great news from the Franklin College department of physics today.  A National Science Foundation grant will help promote and recruit students with an interest in either physics or engineering.  Through a program known as Developing Excellence in Engineering and Physics (DEEP), the grant will provide 20 scholarships to academically talented students with demonstrated financial need so they may pursue degrees in physics or a variety of…


UGA geneticist honored by journal Cell

A UGA geneticist received quite the honor this week. The journal Cell named Robert Schmitz, as researcher in the Franklin College’s department of genetics, as one of the most accomplished young scientists under the age of 40.  Those honored were selected for their contributions to shaping current and future trends in biology from a pool of international nominees to commemorate Cell’s 40th anniversary. Schmitz’s research focuses on plant…

transporting miscanthus
New genetics research: direct conversion of biomass

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

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

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


Joye: Deepwater Horizon spill effects require long-term study

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


2014 Sustainable UGA Awards

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


Climate Change Road Trip

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


A Culture of Sustainability: Interior Design

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


Chiral metamaterials

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


Deep-sea plumes


Ice sheet melt into the oceans: what to expect

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


2014 CURO Symposium

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


AAAS on Climate Change: What We know

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


Faculty in the Media, March 2014

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


Assessing the Gulf

instrument in ocean
Sulfur into clouds

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


Hopkinson awarded Sloan Foundation Fellowship

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


Marshall Shepherd on CBS' Face the Nation

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