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Georgia Tech has announced its commitment to addressing climate change by launching a Climate Action Plan. Its development began in 2022 and the plan will be put into place this year. According to a press release from the Institute, the plan “will include developing a greenhouse gas inventory, modeling potential mitigation strategies and engaging with faculty, students and staff from across campus.” Some of those students, including Rachel Chin, a fifth-year student in the School of Biological Sciences, are anxious to know more about carbon neutrality goals and other aspects of the plan.
Tech initiates new carbon neutrality plan by 2050 | 2023-01-27T00:00:00-05:00
In an advisory meeting in late January, the FDA signaled its intention to start doling out COVID vaccines just like flu shots: once a year in autumn, for just about everyone, ad infinitum. Joshua Weitz is a professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, and Blaise Pascal International Chair of Excellence at the Ecole Normale Superieure. Weitz said that recommendations on the proper timing and number of doses have changed so many times that many Americans have simply "checked out." After the bivalent recipe debuted, polls found that an alarming proportion of people didn’t even know the shot was available to them. That is what the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) for the week of January 20 found. Weitz and Stephen Beckett, a research scientist in the School of Biological Sciences, conducted research for the CDC report.
The Flu-ification of COVID Policy Is Almost Complete | 2023-01-26T00:00:00-05:00
The legendary ability of cats to fall back on their paws could one day help humans walk better after a spinal cord injury, according to research done at the Université de Sherbrooke. The knowledge could also help seniors whose sense of balance is more precarious. In collaboration with researchers from Georgia Tech and Drexel, the Sherbrooke researchers wanted to better understand how what science calls a somatosensory return allows a cat to coordinate the movement of its four legs. Boris Prilutsky, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, collaborated on the research.
Cats land on their feet, which could help humans walk better | 2023-01-23T00:00:00-05:00
2022 was an instrumental year for Zoo Atlanta’s research team, spearheading studies that change the way scientists and wildlife experts understand different species — ranging from mammals to reptiles — and inform best ways to care for and protect the animals. Last year, the team and partners published 16 peer-reviewed papers in total, according to Joseph Mendelson, adjunct professor in the School of Biological Sciences who is also Zoo Atlanta's Director of Research. For one paper, David Hu, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering was part of a study that focused on the mechanics of the skin wrinkles and folds in an elephant's trunk. Other School of Biological Sciences researchers assembled the genome of the critically endangered Guatemalan beaded lizard. Those researchers include former graduate student Carl J. Dyson, doctoral student Aaron Pfennig, Joseph Lachance, associate professor; Joseph Mendelson, and Michael Goodisman, professor.
A look at Zoo Atlanta’s breakthrough research findings in 2022 | 2023-01-20T00:00:00-05:00
Peatlands store a significant amount of the Earth’s carbon and have functioned as an important moderator of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for thousands of years. But as peatlands are lost to overextraction and affected by a warmer climate, the impact on these natural carbon scrubbers remains unclear. A team of researchers from Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Lab and the University of Arizona received a $3.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate the status of carbon stored in peatlands, environments that are at risk of carbon release due to climate change. The Georgia Tech researchers include Joel Kostka, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; Kostas Konstantinidis, Richard C. Tucker Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Ocean Science and Engineering interdisciplinary graduate program; and Caitlin Petro, research scientist, and Katherine Duchesneau, doctoral student, both with the School of Biological Sciences. (Here's how the College of Sciences covered this story in October 2022.)
FSU climate scientists receive Department of Energy funding to study greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands | 2023-01-19T00:00:00-05:00
The updated COVID-19 booster shot that targets two omicron subvariants as well as the original coronavirus strain has been available to most Americans for more than four months, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says just 18% of adults have gotten it. Despite COVID deaths in the U.S. once again being on the rise, the months-long booster campaign appears to have an education problem, according to a report published Thursday by the CDC. The most common reason given for not getting the booster shot was a lack of knowledge about eligibility for it, followed by a lack of knowledge about vaccine availability, and a perceived belief that they were already protected against infection. Two School of Biological Sciences,researchers were involved in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Joshua Weitz, professor, Tom and Marie Patton Chair, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, and Blaise Pascal International Chair of Excellence at the Ecole Normale Superieure; and Stephen Beckett, research scientist. (The CDC report is also mentioned in this story by the Los Angeles Times.)
Survey Finds Americans Still Don’t Know They’re Eligible for Updated COVID-19 Booster Shot | 2023-01-19T00:00:00-05:00
A new paper in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that antibiotic resistance may result from poor hygiene practices in hospitals or other medical facilities. Researchers addressed whether hygiene weakens the effect of antibiotic pressure on resistance evolution. The authors first developed a mathematical model of resistance to predict how good or poor hygiene might affect how rapidly resistant bacteria increase in abundance due to antibiotic treatment. Kristofer Wollein Waldetoft, a postdoctoral researcher with the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI) in the School of Biological Sciences, and Sam Brown, professor in the School and former CMDI director, collaborated on the research.
How clean hospitals can reduce antibiotic resistance and save lives | 2023-01-17T00:00:00-05:00
While the term doesn’t officially exist yet, a group of American researchers have discovered two groups of microorganisms that are neither animals, nor plants, nor fungi – but neither are they simple bacteria. While they are not the first virus-eating organisms to have been identified, they are apparently able to survive and thrive exclusively by feeding on viral material. The researchers have been studying viruses from a different perspective: not as pathogenic biological entities, but rather, as basic nutrients in the life cycle. One of those researchers is Joshua Weitz, Professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, and Blaise Pascal International Chair of Excellence at the Ecole Normale Superieure.
Virivores, the organism can eat up to a million viruses a day | 2023-01-12T00:00:00-05:00
Understanding protein interactions is key to innumerable fields — including, notably, drug design. Now, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a machine learning tool to predict interactions between multiple proteins, paving the way for easier identification of drug targets for antibiotics and therapeutics. The open-source, publicly available tool is called AF2Complex — short for AlphaFold 2 Complex, since the tool is built on top of London-based artificial intelligence lab DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 protein structure prediction program. Jeffrey Skolnick, Regents' Professor and Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, and Mu Gao, senior research scientist, are co-authors of the study.
Summit Supercomputer, Deep Learning Power Protein Interaction Prediction | 2023-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
Cats always land on their feet, but what makes them so agile? Their unique sense of balance has more in common with humans than it may appear. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are studying cat locomotion to better understand how the spinal cord works to help humans with partial spinal cord damage walk and maintain balance. Georgia Tech partnered with researchers at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada and Drexel University in Philadelphia to better understand how signals from sensory neurons coordinate movements of a cat's legs. Leading the Georgia Tech research team is Boris Prilutsky, professor in the School of Biological Sciences. (This research was also covered in The Medical Republic.)
Cat locomotion could unlock better human spinal cord injury treatment | 2023-01-09T00:00:00-05:00
