Anywhere there's a surface and water in the liquid state, Tom Wood confirms, you're going to have biofilms. In riverbeds and showerheads. On the hulls of ships and inside pipelines. On contact lenses and joint prostheses and the gleaming white surfaces of your teeth. Biofilms, says Wood, professor of chemical engineering and biochemistry at Penn State, are communities of bacteria that have the ability to cement themselves to a solid surface, and then—if you picture them in a river, say—rather than going with the flow they anchor down to a rock, and as the river goes by they get the nutrients they need and they're able to thrive.

Nina Jablonski, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Penn State and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow, is internationally known for her research on the evolution of human skin and skin color. In a video produced by the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, National Institutes of Health, she discusses how human lifestyle decisions impact the health of our skin and its ability to mediate our overall health. The skin is the major interface between our internal and external environments, Jablonski notes, especially in connection with our need for vitamin D, which is critical to our body's ability to absorb calcium and maintain a healthy skeleton.

Obesity appears to impair normal muscle function in rats, an observation that could have significant implications for humans, according to Penn State researchers.

A team of scientists led by Melissa Rolls, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University, has peered inside neurons to discover an unexpected process that is required for regeneration after severe neuron injury. The process was discovered during Rolls's studies aimed at deciphering the inner workings of dendrites -- the part of the neuron that receives information from other cells and from the outside world. The research will be published in the print edition of the scientific journal Current Biology on Dec. 21.

Barbara Houtz, director of outreach at Penn State's Eberly College of Science and an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, recently joined more than 80 current and former fellows for a 20th anniversary summit, sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Houtz is one of only two Einstein Fellows from Pennsylvania.

Pistachio nuts, eaten as part of a healthy diet, can increase the levels of antioxidants in the blood of adults with high cholesterol, according to an international team of nutritional scientists. "Our previous study showed the benefits of pistachios in lowering lipids and lipoproteins, which are a risk factor for heart disease," said Penny Kris-Etherton, distinguished professor of nutrition, Penn State. "This new study shows an additional effect of pistachios so now there are multiple health benefits of eating pistachios."

Taking on a rare cancer with the aid of network modeling

Depression raises stress hormone levels in adolescent boys and girls but may lead to obesity only in girls, according to researchers. Early treatment of depression could help reduce stress and control obesity -- a major health issue. "This is the first time cortisol reactivity has been identified as a mediator between depressed mood and obesity in girls," said Elizabeth J. Susman, the Jean Phillips Shibley professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State.