Tags: research

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Kannan receives $2M NIH MIRA award

University of Georgia faculty member Natarajan Kannan is a recipient of a highly prestigious Maximizing Investigator Research Award, or MIRA, from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The MIRA award is intended to provide investigators with greater stability and flexibility in funding to enhance scientific productivity and make important scientific breakthroughs. The program funds research by the nation’s most highly…

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Trailblazing women in statistics

Women have been leaders in the field of statistics for decades, with contributions ranging from theoretical developments to applications in biology, climatology and medicine. A recent paper by University of Georgia statistics professor Lynne Billard, “Women Trailblazers in the Statistical Profession,” provides a historical introduction to these remarkable scholars from around the globe. Billard met or knew several of these extraordinary…

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Better guidelines needed to protect student-athletes

Every year, sports coaches have to navigate how to safely get their teams in shape to compete while temperatures during outdoor practices soar. New research from the University of Georgia aims to help them do just that Different states have different heat policies guiding outdoor practices. In areas less prone to extreme temperatures—Alaska, for example—strong heat guidelines aren’t as urgently needed as in hotter regions But for states…

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Shepherd elected to the National Academy of Engineering

Marshall Shepherd, the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Georgia, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer or scientist: NAE membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant…

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New materials provide link to innovative products

When we think about the links to the future – the global transition to solar and wind energy, tactile virtual reality or synthetic neurons – there’s no shortage of big ideas. It’s the materials to execute the big ideas – the ability to manufacture the lithium-ion batteries, opto-electronics and hydrogen fuel cells – that stand between concept and reality. Enter two-dimensional materials, the latest step in innovation. Consisting of a single…

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The link between CO2 and big volcano eruptions

Volcanologists from the University of Georgia and two Swiss universities found a link between carbon dioxide and the volume of gas trapped in magma, which could help predict the intensity and magnitude of a volcanic eruption. Higher levels of CO2, they found, lead to an increase in the total volume of gas in magma, which may result in violent, explosive eruptions. The new findings could one day lead to better early-warning systems for…

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Devos part of team to unlock switchgrass genome

As reported Jan. 27 in Nature, a nationwide team that includes UGA faculty member Katrien Devos has produced a high-quality reference sequence of the complex switchgrass genome, marking a critical step for a plant species that has long been studied for its potential application in the production of biofuels. The team was led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the U.S.…

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Noted and Quoted, January 2021

“Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory,” by UGA history professor Claudio Saunt, was a 2020 National Book Award finalist and has found a place on several best books of 2020 lists, including the Washington Post and The Atlantic magazine. In it, Saunt argues that removal of the Southeastern native tribes was not a historical sidebar, but a critical event leading to the Civil War two decades later…

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Mountains as socio-ecological landscapes

The highest point in the state of Georgia, Brasstown Bald, is known to native Cherokee as Etonah and to many Georgians as among the best locations to view the changing fall colors. The term “bald” is used to describe deforested mountaintops in the southern Appalachians that have 360-degree unobstructed views. And the views can indeed be spectacular. But the high, grassland mountaintops, rather than naturally occurring, are part of a…

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Spring 2021 Innovation Fellows

UGA Faculty members Melanie Reber and Eric Harvill have been named Innovation Fellows for spring 2021, a semester-long fellowship designed to help faculty align their research activities with industry needs and bring their discoveries to the marketplace: Reber, an assistant professor of chemistry in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, is developing a cavity-enhanced, two-dimensional spectroscopy that uniquely combines…

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Roth awarded NEH fellowship

Cassia Roth, assistant professor of History & Latin American and Caribbean studies, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. Roth’s award is among the grants announced by the NEH Dec. 16 to support 213 humanities projects in 44 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The fellowship will support Roth’s writing a book based on her scholarship, “Birthing Abolition: Enslaved Women, Reproduction, and…

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How people solve global problems

What do the 3,000-year-old actions of an Egyptian pharaoh say about how we should tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century? Quite a bit, according to anthropologists at the University of Georgia who analyzed archeological evidence over thousands of years to examine how societies have approached adversity. Their work suggests that rigid, top-down approaches to complex problems have been a doomed strategy throughout human history.…

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[Not] sharing child care during the shutdown

Traditional gendered patterns of child care persisted during the COVID-19 shutdown, with more than a third of couples relying on women to provide most or all of it, according to a study from University of Georgia researcher Kristen Shockley. Some previous research has found that typical familial patterns may get upended during crises, but that’s not what Shockley and her colleagues found in the early months of the COVID-19 shutdown. “Most people…

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Helping minorities navigate racial trauma

Psychology faculty member Isha Metzger is engaged in vital work towards improving the health of our community, developing an expertise that grew out of her own experience as well as a heart for public health and wellness. The Office of Research shares a terrific deep-dive into her program and projects: For Isha Metzger, it’s a chicken and egg question. Which came first—her interest in psychology, or her interest in helping…

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Noted and Quoted, Nov/Dec 2020

COVID-19, election news and analysis, personality traits, weather and climate round out the recent trending topics for Franklin College faculty expertise in the media. A sample of the many stories: Study links cognitive disorders with severe COVID-19 risk – research led by Kaixiong Ye, assistant professor of genetics, reported by Devdiscourse, News Break, and Postdoctoral Fellow Jingqi Zhou, Drugs.com Hot or cold, weather…

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Four UGA faculty members named AAAS Fellows

Four University of Georgia faculty members, three from the Franklin College, have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed by their peers for “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.” These four faculty members are among 489 new AAAS Fellows who will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue—representing…

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Digging into the plant and microbe relationship

A new project by UGA researchers will explore the largely unknown relationship between plants and soil microbes, generating new information that’s expected to be a game changer for plant science. The five-year project, funded by an $11.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, will deliver findings ranging from basic information about plants and microbes to applied knowledge that can be used by plant breeders to improve…

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Graduate students adapt to new lab protocols

With new protocols in place to safeguard against COVID-19, most University of Georgia graduate students have safely returned to their work in labs and field settings. Continuing their important research has been a positive development, but the changes have required adjustments. Those adaptations have varied immensely, depending on the students’ areas of study: “We conduct lab meetings predominantly over Zoom,” she said. “We sign up to use…

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Cognitive disorders linked to severe COVID-19 risk

Dementia and other cognitive disorders now appear to be risk factorsfor developing severe COVID-19, according to research from the University of Georgia. The findings highlight the need for special care for populations with these preexisting conditions during the pandemic. In a blind study, the researchers analyzed data from nearly 1,000 diseases and two specific genes to compare the health profiles of COVID-19 patients with those testing…

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Building better teams through psychology

Dorothy Carter spends her days developing strategies that can help astronauts prepare for missions to Mars, assist military leaders in maximizing their troops’ performance, and coach corporate leaders to optimize organizational plans. It’s not what she thought she would be doing in the early 2000s when she was a professional dancer for a ballet company in Ohio. But, her long-range future was limited, she realized then. “There was no real…

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Drawdown Georgia

Inspired by Project Drawdown, Georgia is building a movement to accelerate progress towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions. It’s called Drawdown Georgia, and it launched October 17 statewide. Over 18 months, a team of the state’s best researchers and scientists from UGA, Georgia Tech and Emory University took a deep dive into the data to determine what it’s possible to achieve within the Drawdown framework, leveraging our state’s…

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Focus on the Faculty: Sally Walker

Sally E. Walker, the inaugural Shellebarger Professor in Geology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, gives students field research experiences through which they propose hypotheses, collect and analyze data, and communicate their findings: What are your favorite courses and why? My favorite courses concern connections: how evolution of life on Earth affected geological and atmospheric processes and vice versa. The naturalist John Muir…

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UGA-led project focused on understanding the complexity of droughts

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program, in collaboration with the National Integrated Drought Information system (NIDIS) program has announcing 11 new 3-year projects that aim to advance our capability to more integrally characterize and anticipate U.S. droughts in the context of hydroclimatic…

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Psychology research links conflict resolution, long-term health

Money, jobs, children—all common topics of arguments in relationships. Previous research has shown that how couples work through disagreements on serious topics can often predict the success of their relationships. But a recent study from the University of Georgia found that the way couples approach conflict is associated with a key biomarker of physical health. “The links between relationships and health are quite strong,” said Richard…

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Saunt named finalist for National Book Award

***Update***  Saunt named a finalist on Oct. 6. Final announcement 11/18 Claudio Saunt’s book, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory, has been named to the 2020 longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. “It’s a great honor to be one of the 10 authors selected for the National Book Award longlist. The category is nonfiction, not just history, and it is really…
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