Studying lizards since age 5
Live Science, Oct 15  Georgia Tech physicist Daniel Goldman recently helped figure out how sandfish (small lizards with smooth scales) move rapidly underground through desert sand. In this first thorough examination of subsurface sandfish locomotion, he and his colleagues used high-speed X-ray imaging to visualize sandfish burrowing into and through their environment. In this article, Goldman answers ScienceLive's 10 questions... full story  | Dan Goldman

Older adults and interaction with  robots - two recent studies
Digital Lounge, Oct '09  Home-based assistive robots have the potential to help older adults age in place... by keeping them independent longer, reducing healthcare needs and providing everyday assistance. Two recent studies from the  GT Human Factors & Aging Lab looked into  how people might interact with robots. Dr Neta Ezer and colleagues  found that, contrary to previous assumptions, older adults would actually be amenable to having such a robot in their homes, but that both older and younger individuals are more interested in the benefits that a robot can provide than in their interactive abilities (sorry, Cmdr. Data!) full story
Grad student Jenay Beer and professors Wendy Rogers and Arthur Fisk  tested the ability of younger and older adults to interpret a robot's "emotion" by reading it's expressions. They found that if robots are going to be accepted by older adults in any social situations, they need to be designed with emotion displays that are easy to recognize, with some of them being exaggerated to overcome any trouble older adults may have in reading that emotion.   full story | Human Factors & Aging Lab

Just call me professor Schuster
Technique, Oct 22  Georgia Tech provost and former college of sciences dean Gary Schuster is stepping down as provost after three years to return to  research & teaching. "All I ever wanted to be was a scientist.... The clock ticks and I am getting older, and I have always wanted to spend the end of my career teaching research as a faculty member here," Schuster said. It is the hope of the administration that a new provost will be in place by July 1, 2010. Schuster will stay on until his successor is in place. full story | Gary Schuster

In Memorium - John Brown
AJC, Sep 26  John Lee Brown, BS Physics '50, was a research scientist and electron microscope pioneer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)  for 45 years,  retiring in 1995  as  head of the materials characterization laboratory. He died on Wed, Sept 23 at his home in Marietta at the age of 83 ...  full story  | 2008 video interview