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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.

Don Voigt in Alaska

Juneau in July: Penn State researchers part of summer program in Alaska

7/23/14

This summer Don Voigt, a senior research assistant in the Department of Geosciences, along with doctoral student Kiya Riverman, are conducting research on the Juneau ice fields using seismic methods as part of their work with Penn State’s Ice and Climate Exploration Team. While on the glacier, they're helping teach classes for the Juneau Icefield Research Program.

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.

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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