Three years after the Kashlan triplets graduated from Georgia Tech together at 18 years old with B.S. in Neuroscience degrees, they are now entering medical school.

Zane, Rommi and Adam Kashlan spoke with 11Alive on Friday, giving an update on what's next after sharing the graduation stage in high school as valedictorians and earning neuroscience degrees with minors in health and medical sciences in college. 

11 Alive

As part of The Conversation’s Curious Kids series, Dobromir Rahnev, associate professor in the School of Psychology, answered a question regarding the the possibility of uploading the consciousness of the mind into a computer: "As a brain scientist who studies perception, I fully expect mind uploading to one day be a reality. But as of today, we’re nowhere close". Read Rahnev's full response.

The Conversation

A neuroimaging study examining episodic memory found that individuals exposed to music during memory recollection were more likely to incorporate emotions associated with the music into their memories. One day later, these memories exhibited a stronger emotional tone than the original recollections. The study was published in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience by a research team that included Ph.D. student Yiren Ren and Associate Professor Thackery Brown of the School of Psychology.

Psy Post

Christopher E. Carr, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Aerospace Engineering, reacted to the identification of niallia tiangongensis, a new variant of a terrestrial bacteria that was discovered in the Tiangong space station.

"This finding shows that there is a lot of microbial diversity yet to be discovered, and that space stations are excellent laboratories for studying how our human-built environments select for survival or persistence of different organisms. If we understand that better, we can reduce the risks on Earth in the built environment, such as reducing infections acquired in hospitals, schools or nursing homes. Even though this microbe is not likely to be a threat, we should continue studying microbes in space to ensure we understand and address any risks, because when we are far from home, our options will be much more limited. This will help us be successful in exploring the Moon and Mars."

Newsweek

In a study published in Chem, scientists from Scripps Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology question the validity of the “formose reaction” hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that simple formaldehyde molecules reacted under early Earth conditions to form ribose. But the new findings reveal a key limitation: under controlled experimental conditions, the formose reaction does not yield linear sugars like ribose. Instead, it predominantly produces branched sugar structures, which are incompatible with the formation of RNA.

“Our results cast doubt on the formose reaction as the basis for the formation of linear sugars,” says co-senior author Charles Liotta, Regents’ Professor Emeritus in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

SciTechDaily