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Study: How professional service firms can increase revenue, partner diversity

4/22/14

Female and minority junior partners in professional service firms may benefit from using different clientele-building strategies than their white male counterparts according to recent research co-authored by Forrest Briscoe of the Penn State Smeal College of Business. By encouraging and supporting these varying strategies, firms could increase both revenue and diversity among senior partners.

chart comparing sizes of planets

Researchers solve mysteries of a nearby planetary system's dynamics

4/21/14

Mysteries of one of the most fascinating nearby planetary systems now have been solved, report authors of a scientific paper to be published by the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in its early online edition April 22. The study, which presents the first viable model for the planetary system orbiting one the first stars discovered to have planets -- the star named 55 Cancri -- was led by Penn State graduate student Benjamin Nelson in collaboration with faculty at the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State and five astronomers at other institutions in the United States and Germany.

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Cybersecurity science aims to disarm digital threats

4/17/14

Someday, a military commander will look over a battlefield map to check the position of troops, tanks, artillery emplacements and the enemy, considering every contingency in the complex mission. Then the commander will glance at a monitor that shows the status of the electronic environment -- communications frequencies, computer program security, hacker attacks and the responses to those attacks -- and determine which digital threats require human intervention.

African honeybee on a red flower

East African honeybees are safe from invasive pests … for now

4/16/14

Several parasites and pathogens that devastate honeybees in Europe, Asia and the United States are spreading across East Africa, but do not appear to be impacting native honeybee populations at this time, according to an international team of researchers.

childs hand

Inhibited children become anxious adults

4/16/14

Koraly Pérez-Edgar's work over the years has demonstrated that extreme shyness observed in children is often a predictor of anxiety later in life. She says that the way shy children behave will evolve as they grow up, "but they can remain uncomfortable in their own skin in new social situations." Pérez-Edgar runs the University's Cognition, Affect, and Temperament Lab.

Probing Question: How were the Egyptian pyramids built?

4/15/14

The Aztecs, Mayans, and ancient Egyptians were three very different civilizations with one very large similarity: pyramids. However, of these three ancient cultures, the Egyptians set the standard for what most people recognize as classic pyramid design: massive monuments with a square base and four smooth-sided triangular sides, rising to a point. (The Aztecs and Mayans built their pyramids with tiered steps and a flat top.)

Ellysa Cahoy

Penn State awarded Mellon grant to study personal scholarly archiving

4/15/14

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant of $440,000 to Penn State. The two-year project in collaboration with George Mason University will build upon the 2012-13 research led by Ellysa Stern Cahoy, education librarian, studying how faculty managed and archived their scholarly information collections. Over the next two years, Stern Cahoy, in collaboration with Sean Takats, associate professor of history at George Mason University and director of research projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, will direct software development to enhance how faculty organize and archive information, including their own scholarly publications.

buck for CWD research

Researchers identify terrain likely to attract wasting disease-infected deer

4/10/14

A study of the spread of chronic wasting disease among white-tailed deer in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania found that infected deer tend to cluster in low-lying open and developed areas. These results suggest that state wildlife management agencies should concentrate surveillance efforts in such topography and landscapes, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

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Sunlight generates hydrogen in new porous silicon

4/10/14

Porous silicon manufactured in a bottom-up procedure can be used to generate hydrogen from water using solar energy, according to a team of Penn State mechanical engineers, who also see applications for batteries, biosensors and optical electronics as outlets for this new material.

Disadvantaged environments affect genetic material, study finds

4/8/14

Children experiencing chronic stress from a disadvantaged life have shorter telomeres than their advantaged peers, according to a study led by Dr. Daniel Notterman, vice dean for research and graduate studies, and professor of pediatrics, and biochemistry and molecular biology, Penn State College of Medicine.

orange and green blobs

Breast cancer cell subpopulation cooperation can spur tumor growth

4/8/14

Subpopulations of breast cancer cells sometimes cooperate to aid tumor growth, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers, who believe that understanding the relationship between cancer subpopulations could lead to new targets for cancer treatment.

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