Tags: research

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UGA receives $15.75M to combat human trafficking

Human trafficking involves recruitment, harboring or transporting people into a situation of exploitation through the use of violence, deception or coercion and forcing victims to work against their will. A process of enslavement,  trafficking affects millions of men, women, and children – including in the United States. It can happen in any community and victims can be any age, race, gender, or nationality, and now…

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Tackling youth vaping with neuroscience

Jiaying Liu and Lawrence Sweet are working to produce scientific data to inform the public about vaping products and to guide efforts toward enacting bans on flavored products: Liu, assistant professor of communication studies, and Sweet, professor of psychology and director of the Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory, have teamed up to investigate vaping among young adults. Liu secured internal grant funding through the Office…

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STEMzone brings research to Saturday tailgate

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…

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22-member faculty team to study the history of slavery at UGA

The University of Georgia has awarded a grant to a 22-member UGA academic team to study the history of slavery at UGA from the institution’s founding in 1785 until the end of the Civil War in 1865. The research team—which spans multiple schools, colleges and other units across the university—will conduct a multidisciplinary study of enslaved African Americans who labored on the UGA campus. In September, the team submitted a proposal, which was…

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Libraries, theatre collaboration brings incarceration history to the stage

Beginning this Friday, November 8, the first-of-its-kind endeavor, By Our Hands – a cross-institutional theatrical experience between Spelman College, the University of Georgia, librarians, archivists, students, professionals, incarcerated individuals, and community partners – takes the Fine Arts theatre stage. The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project incorporates scenes directly from Georgia history to negotiate our relationship…

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Scientists identify mechanism of coastal water flow

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…

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Ocean Sciences Instructional Center

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…

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Kudos, October 2019

Fantastic news about faculty, staff and students inside and beyond the classroom over the last month: Distinguished Research Professor of Geography Andy Herod was recently re-appointed by Governor Kemp to the State's Complete Count Committee for the 2020 Census, by Executive Order in September. Herod had previously been appointed to the Committee by Governor Deal Barbara McCaskill, Professor of English and Associate Academic…

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Ancient marine molecules, bursting from the sea

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…

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Study provides framework for 1 billion years of green plant evolution

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…

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Viral Maps: when content catches on

When you think about content going viral, maps don’t typically come to mind, but “The Eclipse: Smothered and Covered,” a map with the 2017 eclipse path of totality overlaid with the best Waffle House locations for viewing, did just that. The map was created by University of Georgia assistant professor of geography Jerry Shannon. After being retweeted by Waffle House, Shannon’s map quickly went viral. Almost 200,000 people viewed the tweet, and…

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Plant physiology and river flooding

Earth system scientists have identified another culprit (other than rain) that causes a river to overflow its banks: leafy plants. In a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the UCI researchers describe the emerging role of ecophysiology in riparian flooding. As an adaptation to an overabundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees, plants and grasses constrict their stomatal pores to regulate the amount of…

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UGA libraries partner with Google Books

The extraordinary treasure that is the University of Georgia libraries has a new digital access partnership with Google Books to digitize about 120,000 of the Libraries’ 4.5 million volumes: Through a new partnership with Google, about 120,000 of the Libraries’ 4.5 million volumes will be digitized, allowing further access to literary, historic, scientific and reference books and journals through UGA’s library catalog as well as one of…

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Sharing the Knowledge: NIH Award Supports Expanded Genomics Data Resource

A team led by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Georgia provides thousands of researchers around the world with access to the Eukaryotic Pathogen Genomics Database (EuPathDB.org), a collection of resources for analyzing large-scale datasets associated with microbial pathogens. These include the parasites responsible for malaria, sleeping sickness, and toxoplasmosis; the fungi responsible for thrush, aspergillosis and…

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New research traces the spread of Neolithic practices into Europe

The spread of agriculture from the Near East and Fertile Crescent through Turkey and into Europe around 10,000 years ago was a complex and multifaceted process, one that archaeologists are trying to understand using one of the latest scientific techniques: stable isotope analysis.  A new paper published in the journal PLOS One by Suzanne Pilaar Birch, assistant professor of geography and anthropology at the University of Georgia, and…

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1970's graduate student revolutionized biochemical research

Biochemist and Franklin College alumnus Marion Bradford spent most of his career developing new ways to use a common item found in kitchens and nurseries around the world—cornstarch. He is also the author of one of the most cited research papers in history: He was part of a team recognized in 2003 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Chemical Society for creating an organic compound from corn sugar used in…

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Kudos, September 2019

Fulbright grants, SEC Leadership Development and excellence in research, visual art and career experiences for graduate students highlight Franklin College awards and achievements in September. Congratulations all: Get Installed: Installation at Valdosta State University by Jon Swindler, associate professor of art and associate director of Lamar Dodd School of Art, and Mike McFalls, professor of art at Columbus State University…

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Studying the impact of climate change on Georgia archaeology sites

In the world of climate change studies, there are extensive global and regional models but fewer site-specific models. Lindsey Cochran, a postdoctoral research associate with the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology, is working with digital data from the Georgia coast to recreate models that simulate site-specific changes from now until 2100. “Archaeologists care a lot more about the context in which an artifact was found than the…

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Solving the microbiome puzzle

Microbial ecosystems – the relationships between microorganisms and their environments including within the human body – play an important role in human health. Through diagnostic testing and genetic analysis, researchers can track how disruptions of this ecosystem can cause problems ranging from asthma and allergies to obesity and diabetes. The processes currently used to analyze this data are labor intensive and often inefficient. The…

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Research finds that insulin drug may be used to treat brain tumors

Fascinating new work from colleagues in the UGA Regenerative Bioscience Center. A research team, including faculty from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the College of Engineering and associate professor of physics Qun Zhao: has found that a compound molecule used for drug delivery of insulin could be used to treat glioblastoma, an aggressive, usually fatal form of brain cancer. Glioblastoma, also known as…

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GlyGen will integrate glycoscience data to combat pathogens

Glycans, or complex sugars, cover the surfaces of our cells and play a key role in biological processes ranging from interacting with other cells to recognizing and fighting pathogens. A new informatics portal is helping to illuminate the world of glycoscience: UGA partnered with George Washington University to create GlyGen (glygen.org), a glycoscience informatics portal funded by a $10 million grant from the National…

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Amazing student: Kaitlin Luedecke

Goldwater Scholar, chemistry major and Chicago native Kaitlin Luedecke is on track to become a chemistry professor and hopes to inspire a new generation of scientists both in the classroom and in the laboratory: University highlights, achievements, awards and scholarships: Spring break 2019 I traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Colonia, Uruguay, with some other UGA Foundation Fellows, and I had the time of my life! I attended some…

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Research enlivens the role of so-called ‘dead’ enzymes

Bioinformatics doctoral candidate Annie Kwon, working with UGA professor Natarajan Kannan and a team of researchers, is first author on a recent paper revealing that a class of enzymes previously thought to be useless is prevalent across all domains of life in fact serves an important purpose in cell communications: The study, published in Science Signaling, evolved from Kwon’s research trip to the University of…

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Summer History Fellows engage with creative research

The history department hosted eight undergraduate students during July for the History Fellows Summer Institute. The program is an opportunity to share the University of Georgia with college students from underrepresented groups attending schools around the region and to build better relationships with their institutions. The focus of the History Fellows Summer Institute is to create broad new inroads for underrepresented students from…

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Interdisciplinary Seed Grants will support UGA research

After a successful first round of grants, seven new faculty teams - and six that include faculty from the Franklin College - have been awarded funds through a second round of Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants: When the Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grants were first awarded in 2017, 12 faculty teams received funds totaling some $1.37 million. The work enabled by those seed grants supported subsequent applications…
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