Six Penn State faculty members have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Fellows are Peter Hudson, director, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and Willaman Professor of Biology; Soundar Kumara, Allen E. & M. Pearce Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering; Andrew Read, professor of biology and entomology and Eberly College of Science Distinguished Senior Scholar; Nitin Samarth, George A. and Margaret M. Downsbrough Department Head and professor of physics; Matthew Thomas, professor of entomology and Huck Scholar in Ecological Entomology, and Karl Zimmerer, head and professor of geography.

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.

Technology can serve as a tool to bridge the digital divide, but it is unlikely to be a complete solution in helping people find jobs and escape poverty, according to a Penn State researcher. "People really want to believe that the latest technology will help us do all these great things and liberate us," said Michelle Rodino-Colocino, assistant professor of communications and women's studies. "But it's also a way of putting off the big problems and saying, 'Let's not touch these big problems because Internet access will turn it all around for us.' "

Game-playing may help intelligence analysts with the serious business of identifying biases that can cloud decision-making and problem-solving during life-or-death situations, according to researchers, who reported their findings Nov. 13 at the IEEE Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security. The fictional decision-making games, based on real-life situations that U.S. intelligence analysts faced in Iraq, used a chain of messages, intercepted phone calls and intelligence reports that offered insights into the activities of insurgent groups.

Penn State will receive $4.2 million over the next three years from the National Science Foundation to continue the work of the National Nanotechnology Applications and Career Knowledge Network (NACK Network), founded at the University with a four-year grant from the NSF in 2008. The NACK Network provides national coordination of workforce development programs and activities on behalf of NSF in an effort to meet industry needs for skilled micro- and nanofabrication workers. The market value of U.S. products incorporating nanotechnology will total $1 trillion by the year 2020, according to an NSF report, and nanotechnology's share of the gross domestic product (GDP) will be 5.0 percent. The nation in 2020 will require 2 million people in the primary workforce engaged in nanotechnology production.

Mark Kester, a pharmacologist at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, was working with a new drug that showed real promise as a cancer therapy but that could be dangerous if injected directly into the bloodstream. Jim Adair, a materials scientist in University Park, was creating nontoxic nanoparticles that could enclose drugs that might normally be toxic or hydrophobic and were small enough to be taken up by cells. The two combined their efforts and, licensing the resulting technology from Penn State, they joined with entrepreneur Jeff Davidson to form Keystone Nano.

A technique that uses acoustic waves to sort cells on a chip may create miniature medical analytic devices that could make Star Trek's tricorder seem a bit bulky in comparison, according to a team of researchers. The device uses two beams of acoustic -- or sound -- waves to act as acoustic tweezers and sort a continuous flow of cells on a dime-sized chip, said Tony Jun Huang, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State. By changing the frequency of the acoustic waves, researchers can easily alter the paths of the cells. Huang said that since the device can sort cells into five or more channels, it will allow more cell types to be analyzed simultaneously, which paves the way for smaller, more efficient and less expensive analytic devices.

Three Penn State scientists have received national honors for their pioneering research, begun more than 40 years ago, that led to the development of implant materials widely used today in human bone and joint repairs. Della Roy, Eugene W. White and the late Jon N. Weber are among eight researchers nationwide who have been recognized with the newly created Golden Goose award, sponsored by American Association of Universities and other educational and scientific organizations.

"Penn State conducts more than $800 million in annual research, providing thousands of jobs across the Commonwealth," said Henry C. "Hank" Foley, vice president for research and dean of the graduate school. "Seeing this recognition for the positive impact on countless lives that a handful of those faculty have had over decades is exciting. This kind of impact is occurring every day through the work of our world-class faculty and researchers."