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Small Manufacturers Key to Building a Nation of Makers

August 29, 2015

Jennifer Clark, an associate professor in the School of Public Policy, participated on a panel with her fellow Miller Center scholars outlining recommendations for making America's small and midsized manufacturers stronger in the global marketplace. Clark discussed the need to better distribute information and training about new technologies for small manufacturers in Chattanooga Times Free Press.
"Diffusion of the latest trends back to the nation's small manufacturing base is critical," she said.
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Published in: Chattanooga Times Free Press
Don't Be Snobs, Medievalists

August 24, 2015

Richard Utz, chair and professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, wrote an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education where he discusses future of medievalism as an academic field.
He argues:
"The future of the field may depend on reconnecting it to the powerful fascination among our students and the general public."
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Richard Utz has taught a wide range of topics, from Geoffrey Chaucer's medieval poetry through Bruce Chatwin's postmodern prose, and his scholarship centers on medieval studies, medievalism, the interconnections between humanistic inquiry and science/technology, reception study, and the formation of cultural memories and identities.

Published in: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Who Gets Credit?

August 24, 2015

According to Inside Higher Ed, a recent study done by John P. Walsh, professor in the School of Public Policy, and Public Policy M.S. graduate Sahra Jabbehdari found that 33 percent of scholarly papers in the biological, physical, or social sciences had at least one "guest" author, or someone whose contribution did not meet some definitions for co-authorship. And 55 percent of papers had at least one "ghost" author, someone who made significant contributions but was not named.

"We are in an era of high-stakes evaluation," John Walsh said, in which professors are evaluated all the time on number of papers written, citations of those papers and so forth. Likewise departments are rated as productive (or not) based on such data. "We know authorship is important," he said. "But how do we assign credit?"
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Published in: Inside Higher Ed
Growing the Economy While Tackling Climate Change

August 16, 2015

Marilyn A. Brown, professor in the School of Public Policy, wrote a guest column for the SaportaReport about striking the balance between developing the economy and addressing climate change.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the atmosphere has been the world’s principal repository for carbon pollution, providing a free-for-all approach to waste management that has resulted in global climate change with serious consequences for human and environmental health.
Responding to the need for action, two major climate milestones occurred this summer.
At the federal scale, the Environmental Protection Agency released its final Clean Power Plan, regulating carbon pollution from existing power plants for the first time.
And at the local scale, the City of Atlanta released it Climate Action Plan, setting targets for Atlanta’s carbon emissions.
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Published in: SaportaReport
Experts Call for Greater Scrutiny of Egg Donation Practices

August 14, 2015

Aaron Levine, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in an article by Ob.Gyn. News about egg donation practices.
From the article:
One low-cost step to better inform a woman’s choice to donate would be to make complication rates publicly available along with the federally regulated annual success rates reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Aaron Levine, Ph.D., one of the report authors and an associate professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
“Sure, the clinics can complain it will require a little more paperwork and so on, but they should be tracking this already and if they’re not, a little nudge to track it better would be beneficial, in my view,” Dr. Levine said.
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Published in: Ob.Gyn. News
Don't Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone

August 12, 2015

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, discussed the decline in popularity of making phone calls in The Atlantic.
He says:
‟One of the ironies of modern life is that everyone is glued to their phones, but nobody uses them as phones anymore. Not by choice, anyway. Phone calls—you know, where you put the thing up to your ear and speak to someone in real time—are becoming relics of a bygone era, the “phone” part of a smartphone turning vestigial as communication evolves, willingly or not, into data-oriented formats like text messaging and chat apps.
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Ian Bogost is the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and professor of Interactive Computing. He also holds an appointment in the Scheller College of Business. Bogost is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He received a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. Following a career in software and videogame development, he joined the School of Literature, Media, and Communication in 2004.

Published in: The Atlantic
Rosenberger on Driving While Distracted

August 6, 2015

Robert Rosenberger, assistant professor in the School of Public Policy, discussed the phenomenon of driving while distracted with Yahoo! Parenting. Drivers are increasingly aware of the dangers of texting and driving; however, not everyone realizes how dangerous it can be to drive while performing a secondary task such as eating a sandwich, talking on the phone, or checking the GPS.
“The reality is that drivers are not really good at knowing how distracted they are,” he tells Yahoo Parenting. “It’s very normal for drivers to be overconfident about how they are able to handle driving distractions. One government survey found that most people think other people are bad at driving while talking on the phone or texting, but also everybody thinks that they are the exception to the rule. So it’s not that people don’t know it can be distracting to do these things behind the wheel, but that people think those statistics don’t apply to them.”
This debate has been triggered by a recent accident where a forty-year-old driver crashed into a brother and sister on a Michigan freeway, killing the thirteen-year-old boy and injuring the sixteen-year-old, who was driving. The driver told the police that he had been checking his GPS and eating a sandwich and didn’t notice that the traffic had stopped in front of him.
What can be done? Some argue that the goal should be changing people’s mindsets rather than stricter driving laws. Rosenberger argues that both are important.
“The law is always going to be so far behind the advancing technology, so we need a cultural shift,” he says. “Drunk driving, through the efforts of activist groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is generally accepted as a bad thing to do. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but people know that it’s not OK. That’s what we need with distracted driving. Right now it’s seen as something normal — it needs to be one of those things where, if someone receives a call from someone they know is driving, they don’t pick up. Or, if we’re the passenger, we won’t let the person driving have their phone.”
Unfortunately, Rosenberger says, much of society is moving in the opposite direction. “These days, companies market their cars as infotainment systems,” he says. “We think of driving as not just a task we’re trying to get done responsibly, but we believe the car is a mobile workplace where we have to get other stuff done while we’re sitting and wasting time.”
Rosenberger says all drivers need to remember one thing: Any of us could be that person checking the GPS and eating lunch. “We all should feel like that could happen to us,” he says. “We all should feel like we could be that driver.”
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Robert Rosenberger’s research at Georgia Tech focuses on the analysis of the ways technologies are wrapped up in contexts of conceptualization, use, and bodily habit.

Published in: Yahoo! Parenting
As Research Teams Grow, Academic Career Prospects May Shrink

August 6, 2015

John P. Walsh and graduate student You-Na Lee of the School of Public Policy were featured by Science analyze the implications of increasing the size of academic investigations.
“Increasingly … there may be less demand for integrated scientists and more demand for highly-specialized subscientists who can participate in group research as … efficient member[s] of the team.” —John P. Walsh and You-Na Lee
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Published in: Science
Sam Nunn Says Nuclear Deal Prevents Iran from Getting Weapons

July 24, 2015

Senator Sam Nunn, Distinguished Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, appeared on the talk show "A Closer Look" on WABE to discuss the Iranian Nuclear Deal. For a long time, Nunn has maintained a keen interest in weapons and security, even going so far as to co-found the Nuclear Threat Initiative along with Ted Turner.
From what Nunn shared, the intelligence community estimated that creating a nuclear weapon will take at least a month or two.
“One of the goals of this set of discussions and agreement is to stretch that time so that they could not achieve a real weapon within that period of time, but to go to a year, at least,” Nunn said.
“Sometimes we get so involved in the details, we lose sight of what we’re really trying to achieve, and what we’re really trying to achieve is basically preventing the Iranians from getting a bomb,” he said.
Specifically, Nunn believes that this agreement will make it much harder for the Iranians to get a nuclear bomb over the course of ten or fifteen years.
The problem is that the knowledge and technology used in peaceful nuclear purposes is also used in making nuclear bombs, Nunn said.
Nunn said ultimately there are two objectives when it comes to Iran. To prevent the nation from getting a nuclear bomb and to do it without a war.
As Nunn said, "You have to ask yourself the question, 'If we turn this agreement down, what happens?'"
He says that there are two sets of risks. "One is the risk associated with the agreement. The other set of risks is what happens if this is turned down by Congress."
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Sam Nunn is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to reduce the risk of use and prevent the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He served as a United States Senator from Georgia for 24 years (1972-1996) and is retired from the law firm of King & Spalding.

Published in: WABE Public Broadcasting Station
John Batchelor Show Features HSOC Professor Jonathan Schneer

July 20, 2015

Jonathan Schneer, professor in the School of History and Sociology in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech, discusses his book Ministers at War: Winston Churchill and His War Cabinet on the John Batchelor Show.

Published in: John Batchelor Show
Where Have All the Axes Gone?

July 15, 2015

Hugh Crawford, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, published an article in The Atlantic about the transformation of lumberjacks and axes in America.
He says:
Last year was, by some accounts, the year of the lumbersexual—big beard, big plaid, big boots. Although not measured by time spent in the woods, the look’s ultimate accessory would have to be an axe.
The story of the modern axe is the story of the American felling axe. Colonists arrived with European patterns—trade axes with narrow polls and bits that curved gracefully from eye to heel. They were effective on much of the timber cut across Europe but were ultimately inadequate for the vast forests and enormous trees the settlers encountered.
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Published in: The Atlantic
Why the Islamic State Won't Became a Normal State

July 9, 2015

Lawrence Rubin, Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, wrote an article for the Washington Post as part of the "International Relations and a New Middle East" symposium. Rubin discusses different opinions on the future of the Islamic state before stating his own claim. He argues that the ideological power of the Islamic State has more staying power and serves as more of a threat than the military power.
"An internationally recognized Islamic State would create an ideational security dilemma with its neighbors in which ideological power, not military power, would be the primary trigger of threat perception and policy."
Contrastingly, Rubin believes that a "call for a war of ideas" against the idealogies of the Islamic Nation would likely cause more instability and conflict than less.
"The Islamic State’s effort to project this ideological power will almost certainly trigger defensive reactions from threatened regimes that play out in the religious public space. Neighboring states would likely respond the way they already have but with increased intensity in the ideological sphere through ideational balancing."
In regards to United States foreign policy, Rubin asserts that it is vital for citizens to have a subtle understanding of "threat perception, both who and what drives it, that takes into account the regional players."
All in all, Rubin implies that Middle East relations will always be extremely complicated and it is vital to understand all the nuanced aspects of the dilemma.
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Lawrence Rubin’s research interests include comparative Middle East politics and international security with a specific focus on Islam and politics, Arab foreign policies, and nuclear proliferation.

Published in: The Washington Post
Phantom Phone Vibration Syndrome: Is it actually negative?

July 7, 2015

Robert Rosenberger, assistant professor of Philosophy in the School of Public Policy, recently published a paper on the "phantom vibration syndrome" in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. The phantom phone vibration syndrome occurs when a person thinks his or her phone is ringing or vibrating from a text message when it actually is not. As a society increasingly dependent on mobile devices, the phantom vibrate easily becomes a phenomenon of worry for users.
Those among the worriers fear that the dependency on technology involves rewiring the brain and altering human behavior. Rosenberger says otherwise.
“There are ways to talk about technology without reducing everything to brain rewiring talk,” he tells me over the phone. “Yes, you’re brain’s involved, but your brain’s involved in everything. There's a weird scientific legitimacy that comes from saying it's changing your brain, as opposed to just claiming it’s changing your behaviour or society. If I'm teaching you to drive, we wouldn't talk about brains. I would just say, OK, take hold of the steering wheel. ”
He concludes that the tendency to check phones arises from basic human nature to obsess. For instance, constantly checking the driveway to see if a guest has a arrived or a commuter straining to hear the arrival of a subway.
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Robert Rosenberger received his PhD in philosophy from Stony Brook University. His research in the philosophy of technology explores the habitual relationships people develop with everyday devices such as cell phones and television, with applications in design and policy

Published in: NewStatesman
Kosal on Federal Bioterrorism Policy

June 24, 2015

Margaret E. Kosal, assistant professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was quoted in the Washington Examiner on proposed U.S. preparedness and federal policy to respond to the use of biological weapons by terrorists. Because the science to weaponize pathogens is more sophisticated than ever, a panel of bioterrism experts says that the U.S. government is not prepared to handle a large-scale chemical attack.
Putting the responsibilities for handling a bioterror attack into one agency, however, could be a bad idea, said Kosal. She said the Department of Defense, which historically has taken on bioterrorism preparation, has a drastically different mission than, say, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
She said that a central agency would prepare for a general attack and would inevitably ignore critical details because of a lack of expertise.
"If one tried to collapse all of the resources and all of the budgets for bioterrorism response into one agency, we would end up less prepared than we are now," Kosal said.
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Margaret E. Kosal’s research explores the relationships among technology, strategy, and governance. Her research focuses on two, often intersecting, areas: reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and understanding the role of emerging technologies for security.

Published in: Washington Examiner
Moreno-Cruz Studies How Atlanta Residents Value MARTA

June 23, 2015

Assistant Professor of Economics Juan Moreno-Cruz, along with Gregory Macfarlane and Laurie Garrow from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, recently published a paper in Transportation Research. The paper, titled “Do Atlanta residents value MARTA? Selecting an autoregressive model to recover willingness to pay,” is featured in Volume 78 of Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice.
According to the abstract, "understanding homeowners’ marginal willingness-to-pay (MWTP) for proximity to public transportation infrastructure is important for planning and policy."
The authors discuss a class of models that control spatial effects and apply them to sample data collected for the Atlanta housing market. Their conclusions may have implications for risk estimations in land value capture forecasts and transportation policy decisions.

Published in: Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
International Nuclear Fuel Bank Enables Peaceful Energy Use

June 11, 2015

Former United States Senator Sam Nunn, Distinguished Professor of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, aided in the creation of a low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel bank to provide resources to countries for peaceful purposes. This bank, which will be housed in Kazakhstan, is a result of the work between the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“This is a significant milestone in global nuclear cooperation that will enable peaceful uses of nuclear energy while reducing the risks of proliferation and catastrophic terrorism,” said Nunn. “If the dozens of countries interested in nuclear energy also choose to pursue uranium enrichment, the risk of proliferation of dangerous nuclear materials and weapons would grow beyond the tipping point. This has been our experience with Iran. The IAEA LEU Bank now gives countries an alternative to that choice and direction.”
Sam Nunn founded NTI along with Ted Turner and now serves as the co-chairman. As a non-profit and non-partisan organization, NTI became a catalyst for government action and the United States along with the European Union, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Norway, and the United Arab Emirates helped fund the bank's establishment.
“We are very grateful to our funding partners and to Warren Buffett for their generosity and resolve,” said Nunn. “We are also appreciative of the leadership shown by the IAEA and its Board of Governors and the government of Kazakhstan and President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kazakhstan has made tremendous efforts to reduce nuclear dangers over many decades.”
All in all, the LEU bank enables a stable way to supply nuclear fuel to countries without affecting the commercial market negatively.
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Sam Nunn is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and serves as chairman of the board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is also a board member of The Coca-Cola Company, General Electric Company, and Hess Corporation.

Published in: Nuclear Threat Initiative Newsroom
The Reciprocity Phenomena in Congress Co-sponsored Bills

June 10, 2015

Professor and chair of Economics David N. Laband studies the phenomena of co-sponsorships on congressional bills. In general, members of Congress believe that the number of names signed on a bill increases its chance of advancement. This practice of co-sponsorship eliminates the problem of bill duplication and also has fostered a sense of teamwork. On the negative side, it also creates this mentality of obligation through signing each other's bills: "I'll sign your bill if you sign mine."
Laband argues that who signs the bill matters more than the quantity.
In fact, most heavily co-sponsored legislation doesn’t advance. “This raises the interesting question of why individuals co-sponsor bills they know with virtual certainty will go nowhere,” Laband said.
Overall, Laband claims that it is more likely to see only a few co-sponsors on a bill. It is extremely rare for a bill to appear with more than a hundred signatures.
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David N. Laband received his Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech in 1981. He is the author of 9 books and over 130 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His research and teaching interests cover a wide range of topics related to economics and policy.

Published in: Bloomberg Politics
Science Fiction: Equipping Students to Face Infinite Possibilities

June 3, 2015

Award winning science fiction writer and Professor of the Practice in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Kathleen Ann Goonan recently wrote a guest editorial on teaching science fiction at Tech for Asimov's Science Fiction, one of the leading venues for contemporary science fiction.
Her piece, entitled Teaching Science Fiction, or Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, explores her particular pedagogy in regards to science fiction as well as the subject matter itself. Goonan believes that science fiction is a very relevant genre and indicates much about the human consciousness.
"Everyone has a hunger for science fiction—astronauts, elementary school children and university students, girls and boys, women and men—people of every age, background, and occupation throughout the world."
She subscribes to Isaac Asimov's science fiction theory that science fiction is a human reaction to change in science and technology. Specifically, she believes that teaching science fiction at Georgia Tech is especially relevant due to the community of innovation.
"Perhaps it is because they are, in no small measure, learning, creating, and living SF in the Aerospace Systems Design Lab, a renowned robotics lab, through weekly nanotech research talks, and by investigating the history of science and technology—not in isolation, but seen as arising from and concurrently driving culture. It is no wonder that they seek to learn how to read and analyze science fiction, to write science fiction, and to see the history of science and technology through a science fictional lens. "
Goonan loves to see the fascinating theories and ideas that her students produce through class discussions and creative writing. Together, they explore the underlying depths of science fiction.
In addition to writing science fiction, Goonan also writes on the impact of nanotechnology, medicine, and education on the future. Read more of what Goonan has written here.
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Kathleen Ann Goonan has been at the vanguard of literary science fiction since the publication of her New York Times Notable Book QUEEN CITY JAZZ in 1994. A Visiting Professor, she teaches Creative Writing, Literature, and Science as well as Technology and Ideology. She is passionate about topics such as gender, inequality, and social justice.

Published in: Asimov's Science Fiction
Who Are the Victims in FIFA Corruption Scandal?

May 27, 2015

Kirk Bowman, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, gave his opinion regarding the groups who fall victim to the illegal money laundering within the FIFA organization. This Wednesday, U.S. proesecutors released a forty-seven count indictment of the illegal and unethical embezzlement practices within FIFA.
Bowman researches the intersection of soccer and global politics commented that this indictment exposes the way in which soccer's leaders cross ethical and legal boundaries for their share of the revenue in the FIFA World Cup cycle.
"The losers are the people at the bottom of the food chain," Bowman said. "There's a tradeoff: for every $100 million paid in kickbacks is $100 million that couldn't go to further support the development of youth soccer."
Many developing countries depend on grants from FIFA to develop their soccer programs.
But it isn't just those underprivileged leagues that suffer, Bowman said. Graft may make it more expensive for people to watch games on television. An argument could even be made that the corruption damaged the United States' ability to transform its lackluster soccer system, he said
Only time will tell how the future of soccer develops after this major scandal.
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Bowman is a specialist in Latin American politics and politcal development and directs study abroad programs in Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, and Uruguay. His research interests include comparative politics, economic development, inequality, international affairs, Latin American politics, political economy, and soccer and politics.

Published in: NBC News
Why Empathy is the Next Big Thing in Video Games

May 25, 2015

In an interview conducted by CBC Radio host Nora Young, professor Ian Bogost spoke on the emergence of empathy games—a newly defined genre of games that seek to foster a sense of empathy with a character.
Empathy-driven games simulate an experience constrained by rules in which the player is not empowered, and they may offer commentary on experiences ranging from childhood bullying to the morality choices inherent in expanding a fast food empire. Games like RIOT, which simulates riots that have occured in places like Egypt and Italy, are eliciting empathy in a manner that differs in significant way from experiencing narratives through film or novels.
"You’re not just watching something; you’re making choices, you’re enacting actions inside of the experience. Something is different about that kind of empathy. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one," said Ian Bogost. "Instead of the empathy being a matter of affective feeling that’s emanating from your head and your heart towards the screen or pages of a book, it’s about the decisions you can make and what if feels like to be inside the logic of that other individual’s life. What kinds of choices are available? Which ones aren’t? What does it feel like to operate the machinery of their world?"
Bogost, whose research interest lies in "serious games," or those that have a primary purpose other than entertainment, notes that bridging the cerebral and emotional aspects of an experience is a tension that has been shifting over time. Empathy games, in which the player is embodied in or presented with an inidividual character, weight the emotional aspects more heavily than their systems-oriented counterparts.
"The delightful and beneficial feature of games, which can also be seen as their flaw, is that they’re very logical apparatuses; they’re computer software. You have resources you manage, you make choices, and you build thing," said Bogost. "[...] games like Civilization and Sim City... you’re at a remove, building stuff, and things are happening below you but you’re in charge and making calculated decisions."
As a video game designer and researcher in the Digital Media program in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, Bogost spoke on the use of different philosophies used both by different creators and in different game genres. He notes Paolo Pedercini and Vander Caballero as designers with contrasting approaches to empathy games, comparing the systems-oriented approach to The McDonald's Game with the personal narrative of Papa y Yo, as well as speaking on where he falls on the spectrum.
"For me, as a designer who’s interested in systems-oriented gameplay and the empathy of felling what it’s like to be subjected to a circumstance or scenario that’s different from the one you occupy rather than a specific individual…you look at the world and find these systems," said Bogost. "How does it behave? What is the part of it that you find interesting and appealing? I’m really fascinated with mundane, repetitive, and laborious work, especially work in particular: the kind of menial labor of working in restaurants or copy shops."
While empathy games may be on the rise, Bogost notes that the genre's segmentation out from other games may provide a rehtorical function in and of itself.
"You don’t turn on the television and go to the empathy channel so you can watch the empathy shows. It’s just assumed that empathy is baked in to these media. Good works would provide empathy, and bad works would fail to. We’re trying so hard to respond to this trivialization of games that perhaps we’re overcorrecting in a way."
Bogost concludes the interview by speaking on the importance of providing alternative gameplay alongside larger commercial games, noting that the inclusion of empathy games like Papa y Yo in online marketplaces adjacent to games like Bejewled is an affordance in the game industry that not only increase the diversity of experiences represented, but also validates all of these forms of gameplay.
Listen to the full interview...

Published in: CBC Radio