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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Ocean acidification, caused by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, is having a negative impact on marine ecosystems. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, Jeannette Yen, David Murphy, Deepak Adhikari, and Don Webster propose a novel method for monitoring ocean acidification. Their approach involves a miniscule marine snail and investigating how changes in ocean acidity affect its unique locomotive behavior. Yen, Murphy, Adhikari, and Webster aim to document the biomechanics of a range of planktonic species, including the sea butterfly, and input the data acquired into computational fluid dynamics models. These models, in turn, will be used to predict how their behavior will change in relation to variations in shell weight. If the link between ocean acidification and shell weight reduction is established and validated, planktonic locomotion could be used as an indicator of ocean acidification. Yen is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences.