Students in CHE 497: Chemical Engineering and the Environment produced engaging and creative videos that highlight various environmental issues and how chemical engineering can solve them.
Simucase is an online program that allows students to practice with virtual patients presented through avatars or videos. The cases are based on ones suggested by practicing speech-language pathologists and incorporate various types of data including assessment reports and interviews with family members and other professionals.
Three Penn State engineering teams are among the entries for the National Academy of Engineering's Engineering for You video contest commemorating the NAE's 50th anniversary.
On November 15, the Research Unplugged speaker series closed its fall season with a talk by Professor of Music and Music Education Anthony Leach titled "A Joyful Noise: Choral Music from the African-American Tradition," along with a live performance by members of the Essence of Joy choir.
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.
Laurie Mulvey wanted to give her sociology students a firm understanding of what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was about, but wanted the story to be told free of input from news media and government public relations efforts. She got several Israeli and Palestinian citizens to agree to have open and honest discussions -- separately -- with her class. They would be "no holds barred" conversations. Skype, the interactive media platform, has allowed her small class to have face-to-face meetings with people from around the world, shrinking the distance between them while increasing the amount of understanding.
As Penn State celebrates 150 years of graduate education, Research Unplugged featured a graduate student researcher at the third talk in its six-event series. Food science doctoral candidate Nadia Byrnes and her faculty mentor, John Hayes, presented "Some Like it Hot: The Science Behind Our Food Preferences." Hayes is assistant professor of food science and director of the University's Sensory Evaluation Center. A video excerpt from Byrnes and Hayes' talk examines the components that combine to result in a food's flavor.
Jenni Evans, professor of meteorology, discussed predicting the track of a hurricane at the Oct. 25, 2012, Research Unplugged event.
The 2012 presidential election is less than two weeks away. A new video, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVCWrhOWZ38, encourages Penn Staters from all walks of life to exercise their rights as U.S. citizens and vote on Tuesday, Nov. 6.
In Pennsylvania, polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.; students on the University Park campus, as well as residents of Centre County, can find more information about their polling place at https://www.co.centre.pa.us/elections/locator.asp. As part of a new state law, voters will be asked, but not required, to show appropriate ID at their polling place. For more information about Pennsylvania's Voter ID law, visit http://www.votespa.com/.
Video of the Penn State Board of Trustees' regular bi-monthly meeting of Friday, Sept. 14, is available for viewing online. The meeting, held at the Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus, was streamed live by Penn State Public Broadcasting and is now archived at the following location: http://goo.gl/Yz6hh online. For more information on the content of the meeting, visit the agenda online at http://www.psu.edu/trustees/agenda/scheduleseptember2012.html or visit http://live.psu.edu/tag/Board_of_Trustees for full stories on actions taken by the board. In addition, an archive of streams from past meetings can be found at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB93E4B166DCD8489 online.
In 2011 director Steven Soderbergh offered viewers the film "Contagion," a release that considers what could occur if a pandemic virus infected the United States and the rest of the world. Could this happen in real life? Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Marcel Salathe talks about this question and others in this episode of "Did They Get It Right?"
Do "zero tolerance" policies go too far?
Alison Carr-Chellman is professor of Instructional Systems and Head of Learning and Performance Systems at Penn State. A former third-grade teacher, Carr-Chellman is widely published on topics related to school change and innovation. Her research looks deeply into the alarming statistics surrounding boys' disinterest in traditional classroom education and suggests methods for making schools more innovative as well as more "boy friendly" in their instructional design practices. In this video clip -- excerpted from Carr-Chellman's hour-long "town and gown" discussion in State College, as part of the University's Research Unplugged series, she discusses the implications of "zero tolerance policy" for boys.
In the first edition of "Did They Get It Right?" (DTGIR), postdoctoral research fellow Crystal Sanders of the Penn State Africana Research Center examines the historical accuracy of the film "Red Tails," a 2012 Lucasfilm offering. "Red Tails" is drama, based on true events, that details the struggles and triumphs of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black aviators to fly in the U.S. Air Corps.
For generations, nearly every image made of Penn State's iconic Old Main building -- paintings, sketches, photographs -- has included the two majestic elm trees that grace its front corners. Now elm yellows, a disease that has already claimed many American elms on the University Park campus, has so infected one of the trees that it must be removed. Weather permitting, the University's Office of Physical Plant has scheduled the removal for the week of spring break, which will minimize security risks to pedestrians. The following video acknowledges these environmental landmarks' significance across several generations of Penn Staters.
Penn State scientists in the College of Agricultural Sciences have developed an inspiring collaboration that may cure leukemia. Sandeep Prabhu, associate professor of immunology and molecular toxicology in the Department of Veterinary and Medical Sciences, specializes in the health benefits of fish oil. Robert Paulson, associate professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences, is studying the stem cells that cause leukemia. They connected their seemingly separate study areas during a weekly faculty lunch. The result? A possible cure for leukemia. To watch the video about their inspiring collaboration, visit http://live.psu.edu/youtube/r-1VmeJAtWI online. To read more about their collaborative work, visit http://live.psu.edu/story/56944 online.
