Recent Press Coverage

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Cloning for Medicine: The Miracle that Wasn't

July 4, 2016

Aaron D. Levine, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in the or Agence France Presse article “Cloning for Medicine: The Miracle that Wasn't.” The article was republished online in several sources including Yahoo! News, Japantoday, and The Economic Times.
Excerpt from Yahoo! News:
Aaron Levine, a bioethicist at Georgia Tech, said cloning's biggest impact on human health is likely to come from animals raised to produce organs, tissue or biological drugs that will not be rejected by the human immune system.
“I think human cloning will disappear,” he said.
“I think there's just not ultimately enough demand, not enough that you can do through cloning that you can't do through other things.”

Published in: Agence France Presse
Are You Eating Cloned Meat? It Might Be More Common Than You Think, Say Scientists

July 4, 2016

Aaron D. Levine, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in the Daily Mail article “Are You Eating Cloned Meat? It Might Be More Common Than You Think, Say Scientists.”
Excerpt:
With the possible exception of the ram sacrificed by Abraham in the Bible, Dolly must be the world's most famous sheep.
The ewe's birth in an Edinburgh laboratory on July 5, 1996 was front-page news, provoking hype and hand-wringing in equal parts.
For the most part, cloning turned out to be a dead end.
But there is one sector in which Dolly's legacy is alive and well: the duplication of prize breeding animals.
How aggressively the private sector has developed this niche market has depended in large part on national or regional regulations, with key differences between the United States, China and the European Union.
“The most dramatic impact of the cloning of Dolly has been on animal cloning in the United States,” said Professor Aaron Levine, an expert in bioethics and cloning at Georgia Tech.
Read the full article here.

Published in: Daily Mail
Computer Films of the 1960s

July 1, 2016

Computer Films of the 1960s, an exhibition curated by Gregory Zinman, assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was featured in the SOUND & VISION section of the July/August Issue of filmcomment.
The magazine article is accessible only by subscription. Following is the exhibition description from the Museum of the Moving Image's website:
The 1960s was a seminal period for the artistic use of the computer in the creation of moving images. From the manipulation of geometric line drawings, to the use of realistic 3-D vector graphics to highly processed psychedelic abstraction, these films were the result of pioneering collaborations between artists, computer programmers, and technicians that anticipate the full integration of cinema with computer imaging. This compilation features a selection of pioneering films by Edward E. Zajac, A. Michael Noll, Charles A. Csuri, James P. Shaffer, Stan VanDerBeek, Kenneth Knowlton, and John and James Whitney. As seen in the adjacent exhibition, To the Moon and Beyond: Graphic Films and the Inception of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the films of John and James Whitney had a strong influence on Stanley Kubrick.
The issue of filmcomment can be found here.

Published in: filmcomment
Clinics Offering Unproven Stem Cell Therapies Are Proliferating Across the U.S.

June 30, 2016

Aaron D. Levine, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in “Clinics Offering Unproven Stem Cell Therapies Are Proliferating Across the U.S.” for the MIT Technology Review.
Excerpt:
At least 351 U.S. businesses are offering unproven stem cell interventions in clinics across the country, claiming to treat everything from arthritis to Alzheimer’s, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell. The finding casts light on an emerging area of medical treatment that has received little attention from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“It is hard to do a project like this and think the FDA is doing a good job regulating the marketplace,” says Leigh Turner, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who performed the study along with Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell researcher at UC Davis.
Concern over unregulated stem cell therapies is not new, but the issue was previously thought to be mostly confined to patients who traveled abroad for treatments unavailable or forbidden domestically. These renegade treatments can be ineffective and dangerous. Just last week the New England Journal of Medicine described an incident in which surgeons discovered a sticky mass of foreign cells in someone’s spine after he got injections of fetal stem cells in several different countries.
The article can be read in full here.

Published in: MIT Technology Review
Report: Clean Energy Plan Will Cut Electric Bills

June 27, 2016

A write up on Public News Service reviewed a report by Marilyn Brown, Ph.D., the Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy.
Excerpt:
Without changes in the way electricity is produced and how it is used, Floridians will likely see a nearly 17 percent increase in their electric bills over the next 15 years, according to a new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
But the study also says that doesn't have to happen. The report finds that implementing the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan could halt that increase, saving the average Florida household more than $2,600 over the same period.
Marilyn Brown, a Georgia Tech professor and the study’s author, says the report clarifies a lot of misinformation.
“A lot of analysts say that the Clean Power Plan is going to bankrupt the nation,” she relates. “But what we're showing is in fact, if done wisely, we can save consumers money and also prevent fossil fuels from heating up the planet.”
The full article can be read here.

Published in: Public News Service
UNU-CS Hosts Georgia Tech Study Abroad Program

June 25, 2016

The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs Study Abroad Program was featured in a June 25 write-up on the website of the United Nations University on Computing and Society (UNU-CS). The UNU-CS is led by Nunn School Associate Professor Michael Best who is on leave during his tenure as director of the university.

Excerpt:

The UNU-CS successfully hosted the 2016 Georgia Tech Study Abroad Program in Macau from May 20 to July 1. The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology sent a group of students, three graduates and six undergraduates, to spend six weeks at UNU-CS to study science, technology, and international affairs. The program was led by Prof Fei-Ling Wang with assistance from the UNU-CS research staff. The students, majoring in international affairs or engineering, took classes and engaged in research activities on information and computing technologies (ICTs) and society. Under the supervision of the UNU-CS research staff, the Georgia Tech students studied and presented on the following research topics: “ICTs and Myanmar political and technological transformations,” “Social and formal media tracking for crisis response and election monitoring,” and “ICTs and peacekeeping operations and innovation.” The graduate students also wrote and presented their research papers on “ICT policy and the Economic Development in Japan and Taiwan,” “ICTs and state security and national defense,” and “Internet in China.”

The article can be read in full here.

Published in: United Nations University
Charlie Rose: Fighting Extremism

June 23, 2016

Former vice-chair of the Joints Chiefs of Staff and Sam Nunn School of International Affairs professor of the practice, Admiral James A. Winnefeld (retired) was featured on Charlie Rose alongside former director of Central Intelligence Michael Morell. Topics of discussion were the struggle against extremism, homegrown terrorism, and gun control. The discussion can be watched here.

Published in: Charlie Rose
Tobin Harshaw: The Danger of Killing Islamic State's Caliph

June 17, 2016

A study by Jenna Jordan, assistant professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was quoted in “Tobin Harshaw: The Danger of Killing Islamic State's Caliph” for The Commercial Appeal (Bloomberg).
Excerpt:
Consider a 2014 study by Jenna Jordan of the Georgia Institute of Technology on so-called decapitation strikes against major terrorist groups. On the death of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden, she writes, “decapitation is unlikely to diminish the ability of al-Qaida, rather, it may have counterproductive consequences, emboldening or strengthening the organization.”
She bases her claim on the theory of “organizational resilience,” which may be more familiar to business school graduates than to counterterrorism operatives. Jordan doesn't buy the argument that a cohesive group sharing an intense belief in a goal depends on the “charismatic leadership” (to use Max Weber's phrase) of a single person like bin Laden or Baghdadi. Instead, she sees many clandestine groups as being bureaucracies often impervious to changes at the top. Such organizations “are diversified, have a clear division of administrative responsibilities and functions, follow rules and procedures, and are thus more likely to withstand the sudden removal of a leader or leaders.” All of those characteristics apply far more accurately to Islamic State than to the relatively decentralized al-Qaida.
You can read the full article here.

Published in: The Commercial Appeal Memphis (Bloomberg)
‘Ulysses’ and the Lie of Technological Progress

June 16, 2016

School of Literature, Media, and Communication professor Ian Bogost, Ph.D. wrote “Ulysses and the Lie of Technological Progress” for The Atlantic.
Excerpt:
Joyce’s formal innovations exerted pressure on language rather than on medium. Words work more or less the same as they did in 1904 or 1922 or 1942. Books work identically. Today, by contrast, formal media innovation rules the day. New devices and infrastructures push out old ones, and they do so at an ever more rapid pace. And yet, Ulysses too was a media product of its time, one largely unreadable absent its historical context. The bric-a-brac of Dublin shop windows; the guffaws of then-current headlines; the references to long-outmoded Celtic twilight; the intrinsic linguistic conflict of the English language in Ireland; then-new technologies now long gone.
If Bloomsday must be celebrated, it is high time that the holiday fully devour Joyce’s novel in order to expel and move beyond it. The ultimate lesson of Ulysses is that everything that seems permanent decays and returns to earth. But in so doing, it doesn’t vanish. It facilitates new growth, both native and invasive. The old bonds with the new, and in so doing it both ruins and extols it.
Click here for the full article from The Atlantic.

Published in: The Atlantic
Athlete as Moral Crusader: Is the Muhammad Ali Model Lost?

June 9, 2016

“Athlete as Moral Crusader: Is the Muhammed Ali Model Lost?” quotes School of History and Sociology assistant professor, John M. Smith, Ph.D.
From The Christian Science Monitor article:
In some ways, times have simply changed from his era of upheaval, when black Americans in the South faced not just Jim Crow discrimination but also lynchings. Moreover, athletes also are never cut from a common personality mold. And as Ali himself showed, none are paragons of unalloyed moral perfection.
But, even as some sports stars do take public political stands today, many observers say they could do more.
Athletes now prefer to be active in less confrontational ways – like giving to charities, funding scholarships, and investing in poor communities, says Johnny Smith, a historian at Georgia Tech.
Read the full article on The Christian Science Monitor here.

Published in: The Christian Science Monitor
I'm Retweeting Her

June 9, 2016

“I'm Retweeting Her” was written by School of Literature, Media, and Communication professor, Ian Bogost, Ph.D.
Excerpt:
If this were another era, when newspaper inches or broadcast minutes came at a premium, a particularly sly dig might enjoy a brief mention. The wile of politicians, after all, is part of their appeal. But the fact that so much is being said about these tweets reveals some important things about the intersection of American politics and media.
For Bogost’s full article, read The Atlantic here.

Published in: The Atlantic
How Muhammad Ali Became a Champion for Muslims in America

June 8, 2016

Many know Muhammad Ali for his prowess in the boxing ring, but according to Assistant Professor Johnny Smith the famed champion also left his mark in another way: racial and religious activism. As one of the first famous Muslims in mainstream America, Ali spent the majority of his career as an outspoken believer in Islam. At a time when the average American knew little about and mistrusted the religion, Ali’s faith became a beacon for American Muslims. He saw himself as Islam’s champion.
School of History and Sociology Assistant Professor John M. Smith, Ph.D., co-authored “How Muhammad Ali Became a Champion for Muslims in America” for The Washington Post. The article follows the beginnings of Ali’s relationship with Islam, to his public proclamation of his faith, and finally to the religious battle he fought both inside and outside of the ring. Read the full article here.

Published in: The Washington Post
How Gaming Helped Launch the Attack of the Internet Trolls

June 8, 2016

“How Gaming helped Launch the Attack of the Internet Trolls” quotes School of Literature, Media, and Communication professor, Ian Bogost, Ph.D.
From The New York Times article:
Trolling can refer to a range of online troublemaking, including posting provocative comments and purposely marring others’ online experience, and it can include attacks on people as much as on software. The practice of ruining things for others, originally known as griefing in the online gaming world, has become a sadly abundant element of internet life.
“Folks who are griefing or trolling feel like they are in a secondary universe that isn’t the same as the real world,” [Bogost] said. “It was a ‘safe space’ for them, in which they did horrible things.”
Read the full article at The New York Times here.

Published in: The New York Times
Video Games Keep Getting Tougher and That's OK

June 8, 2016

“Video Games Keep Getting Tougher and That’s Ok” quotes School of Literature, Media, and Communication professor, Ian Bogost, Ph.D.
From the Motherboard article:
Dark Souls has become one of this decade’s most popular titles. The latest game, Dark Souls III, is the fastest selling game in developer Bandai Namco’s history. What’s most interesting about this is that the Dark Souls franchise is known for some of the toughest games out on modern consoles, throwing you into a world of unrelenting boss fights and unflinching difficulty. In other words, the game not only doesn’t hold your hand, it takes that hand and pushes you into a world you don’t know and expects you to succeed, quick.
“If you go back centuries (or even millennia), you get folk games like Go and Chess, which are both difficult to learn and very hard to play well, requiring substantial investments of time” [Bogost] told Motherboard.
Read the full article on Motherboard here.

Published in: Motherboard
After UCLA Shooting, Should Colleges Fear Guns on Campuses?

June 7, 2016

“After UCLA Shooting, Should Colleges Fear Guns on Campuses?” quoted Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. The Christian Science Monitor, June 2.

Published in: The Christian Science Monitor
Forbes 100 'Most Powerful Women': A credible window on gender equity?

June 7, 2016

“Forbes 100 ‘Most Powerful Women:’ A Credible Window on Gender Equality?” quotes School of Literature, Media, and Communication professor and associate dean for Graduate Studies, Carol Colatrella, Ph.D.
Excerpt:
Forbes released its annual list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women this week and seven of the top 10 spots are held by American women. The U.S. also holds 29 of the top 50 spots and half of all 100 spots.
“They are the smartest and toughest female business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, philanthropists, and chief executive officers making their mark in the world today,” says Forbes regarding the women on their list. “They’re women who are building billion-dollar brands, calling the shots in the financial markets, and crisscrossing the globe to broker international agreements and provide aid.”
“[The list] helps inspire women and girls to see women in positions of authority and to be recognized for their successes,” Carol Colatrella, co-director of the Georgia Tech Center for the Study of Women, Science and Technology, says in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor.
Read the full article in The Christian Science Monitor here.

Published in: The Christian Science Monitor
U.S. Government Close to Approving Private Moon Mission, Reports Say

June 6, 2016

"U.S. Government Close to Approving Private Moon Mission, Reports Say" quoted Mariel Borowitz, Ph.D, assistant professor in The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. Read the full article on The Los Angeles Times.

Published in: Los Angeles Times
Here's What Mirror's Edge: Catalyst Has to Get Right

June 6, 2016

“Here’s What Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst Has to Get Right” quotes School of Literature, Media, and Communication professor, Ian Bogost.
Excerpt:
Mirror’s Edge is a story about the power of your body. The game, influenced by the parkour phenomenon so popular back in 2008, places you in the role of Faith, an illicit messenger at the fringes of a dystopian world. Digital communication is monitored, so “runners” deliver sensitive messages, running, jumping, and climbing through the city…On Tuesday, Mirror’s Edge gets the sequel fans have long demanded.
“Most adventure or narrative games, you have to traverse 3-D space,” said Ian Bogost, game designer and author at Georgia Tech. “In Mirror’s Edge, though, the environment becomes the gameplay. It made the traversal of physical space intrinsic to the gameplay in a way that most games hadn’t attempted.”
Read the full article here.

Published in: WIRED
How the Olympics Shaped Muhammad Ali

June 5, 2016

It has only been a few days since Muhammad Ali’s passing but the sporting world has demonstrated its admiration for the late boxer in full-force. Dubbed “The Greatest,” Ali is often recognized as the single best boxer of all time.
School of History and Sociology Assistant Professor John M. Smith, Ph.D., co-authored “How the Olympics Shaped Muhammad Ali” for The Wall Street Journal. The article follows Ali’s bold beginnings as Cassius Clay, through his transition period and outspoken years of activism, all the way to his run as the final torch bearer in the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics. Read more about Ali’s past, as well as the intimate moments leading up to the lighting of the 1996 Olympic cauldron, in the full article.

Published in: The Wall Street Journal
Jackie Robinson vs. Malcolm X: How two civil rights icons waged a public, ideological feud through op-eds and public speeches

May 25, 2016

John M. Smith's book was the inspiration for a segment of ESPN's new series “The Undefeated.” The program interviewed Smith, who is an assistant professor in the Ivan Allen College School of History and Sociology at Georgia Tech.
“To understand Malcolm as a political figure is to understand that he embodied African-American oral culture,” said Johnny Smith, co-author of Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. “He believed in the power of words. He was very deliberate in his choice of words.”
Read full article

Published in: ESPN - The Undefeated

Recent Press Coverage

Cloning for Medicine: The Miracle that Wasn't

Are You Eating Cloned Meat? It Might Be More Common Than You Think, Say Scientists

Computer Films of the 1960s

Clinics Offering Unproven Stem Cell Therapies Are Proliferating Across the U.S.

Report: Clean Energy Plan Will Cut Electric Bills

UNU-CS Hosts Georgia Tech Study Abroad Program

Charlie Rose: Fighting Extremism

Tobin Harshaw: The Danger of Killing Islamic State's Caliph

‘Ulysses’ and the Lie of Technological Progress

Athlete as Moral Crusader: Is the Muhammad Ali Model Lost?

I'm Retweeting Her

How Muhammad Ali Became a Champion for Muslims in America

How Gaming Helped Launch the Attack of the Internet Trolls

Video Games Keep Getting Tougher and That's OK

After UCLA Shooting, Should Colleges Fear Guns on Campuses?

Forbes 100 'Most Powerful Women': A credible window on gender equity?

U.S. Government Close to Approving Private Moon Mission, Reports Say

Here's What Mirror's Edge: Catalyst Has to Get Right

How the Olympics Shaped Muhammad Ali

Jackie Robinson vs. Malcolm X: How two civil rights icons waged a public, ideological feud through op-eds and public speeches

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

Georgia Institute of Technology

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