To request a media interview, please reach out to experts using the faculty directories for each of our six schools, or contact Jess Hunt-Ralston, College of Sciences communications director. A list of faculty experts is also available to journalists upon request.
The Buzz Around Atlanta: Inside the Rise of Urban Beekeeping
Urban beekeeping as a hobby has grown across America. There has been a push everywhere to understand the role our pollinators play in agriculture and gardening. If you look closely around metro Atlanta, there are hives in neighborhoods, hotel rooftops, near parking decks. We begin our spotlight with the buzz of a Georgia Tech science building, home of the Georgia Tech Urban Honeybee Project's hives.
GPB
Lab-aged moon rock offers new clues about how water forms on the lunar surface
Georgia Tech researchers have recreated the effects of solar wind on lunar minerals in a laboratory experiment, providing new evidence that the constant stream of charged particles from the sun plays a major role in shaping the moon’s surface.
The team exposed ilmenite, a mineral commonly found on both Earth and the moon, to a synthetic version of solar wind. The experiment produced nanophase iron, tiny metallic particles that are widely observed in lunar soil and are considered a key signature of space weathering.
Interesting Engineering
Tropical Storm Arthur, first named storm of the season, weakens but flood threat remains
The first named storm of the hurricane season weakened Wednesday night, but forecasters warned that it still posed a threat of massive amounts of rain and continued flash flooding.
Zachary Handlos, an atmospheric scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the potential for flash flooding will be determined by how quickly Tropical Storm Arthur moves through the region.
“What it comes down to is, is the rainfall going to park itself or become stationary over any of these locations?” Handlos said. “That is a little harder to predict.”
NBC News
Explorations of Oxygen-Free Seas on the Oceanus, Part III: Nitrogen
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Assistant Professor Jennifer Glass blogs from the sea, off the coast of Western Mexico, aboard R/V Oceanus, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by Oregon State University. In this third installment, Glass talks about N2 in the seas.
Oregon State University
Scientists Found That Bacteria Can Remember Stress Even Though They Have No Brains
Bacteria have no neurons or memories in the human sense. Yet in a new study, researchers at Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon University — including School of Physics Associate Professor Shiladitya Banerjee and Postdoctoral Fellow Josiah Kratz — found that individual E. coli cells carried traces of past hardship into the future. When nutrients repeatedly rose and fell, the cells changed how quickly they grew, suggesting that even simple microbes can use experience to prepare for what may come next.
ZME Science