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Graduate student in Materials Laboratory

National campaign to ‘Close the Innovation Deficit’ sees small progress

7/31/14

One year after launching a campaign to urge Congress and the president to close the nation’s innovation deficit, a group of prominent university, scientific and business organizations on July 31 renewed their call for increased federal investments in research to build a strong long-term economy, improve medical treatments and strengthen national security.

Research_Ethics-Generic-102

Penn State moves forward as leader in ethics education

7/30/14

Penn State has long supported ethics education, literacy and compliance. As the University furthers its commitment, 12 new faculty will have teaching and research interests in ethics as it applies to their home discipline.

Study: Why aren't consumers buying remanufactured products?

7/28/14

Firms looking to increase market share of remanufactured consumer products will have to overcome a big barrier to do so, according to a recent study from the Penn State Smeal College of Business. Findings from faculty members Meg Meloy and V. Daniel R. Guide Jr., indicate that consumers perceive many categories of remanufactured products as dirty and disgusting.

Coral

Impact of Deepwater Horizon oil spill found on two additional coral communities

7/28/14

A new discovery of two additional coral communities showing signs of damage from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill expands the impact footprint of the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The discovery was made by a team led by Charles Fisher, professor of biology at Penn State University. A paper describing this work and additional impacts of human activity on corals in the Gulf of Mexico will be published during the last week of July 2014 in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Esther Prins

Study shows that many Pa. college students are nontraditional

7/25/14

A study by Esther Prins, co-director of the Goodling Institute and the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy, and her colleagues Cathy Kassab and Kimeka Campbell, challenges educators, researchers and policy makers to recalibrate their understanding of who college students are.

Yellow fever epidemic presents 200-year-old lesson in crisis management

7/24/14

Among natural and man-made disasters, there is perhaps nothing more baffling and terrifying than an infectious disease outbreak. In 1793, a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia killed about 5,000 people and altered the course of history. According to Ed Glantz, a senior lecturer at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), an outbreak could wreak similar havoc in modern times, and emergency response systems may not be much better prepared than they were over 200 years ago.

Fossil of moth on sycamore

Leaf-mining insects destroyed with the dinosaurs, others quickly appeared

7/24/14

After the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period that triggered the dinosaurs' extinction and ushered in the Paleocene, leaf-mining insects in the western United States completely disappeared. Only a million years later, at Mexican Hat, in southeastern Montana, fossil leaves show diverse leaf-mining traces from new insects that were not present during the Cretaceous, according to paleontologists.

Nitin Samarth with the molecular beam epitaxy equipment in his lab

Team's work with new material combination may boost computer memory

7/23/14

The discovery of a new material combination that could lead to a more efficient approach to computer memory and logic will be described today (July 24) in the journal Nature. The research, led by Penn State and Cornell University physicists, studies "spintorque" in devices that combine a standard magnetic material with a novel material known as a "topological insulator." The team's results show that such a scheme can be 10 times more efficient for controlling magnetic memory or logic than any other combination of materials measured to date.

close up women's facial profile, nose to ear.

Probing Question: What is whisper therapy?

7/23/14

One of the most popular recent self-help trends for insomnia and anxiety is also among the more unusual ones. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or "sounds that feel good." The sound of whispering is considered the most common trigger for the ASMR feelings.

schematic of bowel

Immune cell role in intestinal movement may lead to better understanding of IBS

7/18/14

Learning the role of immune-system cells in healthy digestive tracts and how they interact with neighboring nerve cells may lead to new treatments for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Researchers from Penn State College of Medicine, in collaboration with other scientists, have reported the role of macrophages in regulating the contractions of the colon to push digested material through the digestive tract.

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