A recent publication from the group of Prof. Dan Goldman made it to the Cover of Physical Review Letters vol. 132, issue 8 (https://journals.aps.org/prl/covers/132/8). The research article “Probing Hydrodynamic Fluctuation-Induced Forces with an Oscillating Robot”, by Steven W. Tarr, Joseph S. Brunner, Daniel Soto, and Daniel I. Goldman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 084001 was published on 20 February 2024, and was also selected as an Editor’s Suggestion (https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.084001).

Physical Review Letters

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae isn’t exactly known for being tough, but when researchers propagated only the biggest yeast cells for thousands of generations, these single-celled fungi went from making snowflake-esque clusters “weaker than gelatin” to clumps “as strong as wood” and 20,000 times the size of initial flakes. Partly to thank for this impressive transformation is the chaperone protein Hsp90, which helps fold other proteins into their proper shapes, School of Biological Sciences Associate Professor William Ratcliff and his colleagues report.

Science Magazine

One of the hallmarks of humanity is language, but now, powerful new artificial intelligence tools also compose poetry, write songs, and have extensive conversations with human users. Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are widely available at the tap of a button—but just how smart are these AIs? A new multidisciplinary research effort co-led by Anna (Anya) Ivanova, assistant professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech, is working to uncover just that. The results could lead to innovative AIs that are more similar to the human brain than ever before—and also help neuroscientists and psychologists who are unearthing the secrets of our own minds.

Tech Xplore

In new research published in Nature Communications, School of Biological Sciences researchers Mark Hay and Cody Clements and their colleagues demonstrated that when sea cucumbers were removed from coral reef, tissue death of Acropora pulchra, a species of staghorn coral, more than tripled, and mortality of the whole colony surged 15 times. The reasoning is that sea cucumbers are like "little vacuum cleaners on the reef" digesting and eliminating microbes that can lead to coral disease and demise — threats that are exacerbated by a warming and increasingly polluted ocean.

NPR

Mega Millions breached the $1 billion mark, and it looks like the Powerball jackpot isn't too far behind. Yet, lottery games are mostly only lucrative for the private companies that states hire to run them, said Lew Lefton, emeritus faculty member with the Georgia Tech School of Mathematics, in a USA Today article. In fact, winning big in Mega Millions and Powerball is even harder now because recent rules make the odds even longer so lottery games can sell more tickets, he added.

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