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harvester ant nest

Recruiting ants to fight weeds on the farm

12/18/18

Harvester ants that eat weed seeds on the soil's surface can help farmers manage weeds on their farms, according to an international team of researchers, who found that tilling less to preserve the ants could save farmers fuel and labor costs, as well as preserve water and improve soil quality.

stressed teen male

How teens deal with stress may affect their blood pressure, immune system

12/18/18

Most teens get stressed out by their families from time to time, but whether they bottle those emotions up or put a positive spin on things may affect certain processes in the body, including blood pressure and how immune cells respond to bacterial invaders, according to Penn State researchers.

gay pride wedding rings

People with gay and lesbian acquaintances tend to support same-sex marriage

12/12/18

People who became acquainted with a gay person later became more accepting of gay marriage and gay people, in general, according to a study. The findings also lend support to the contact theory, which suggests that developing friendships with people outside one's usual group can spark social transformations.

Flooded corn field

Increasing riparian buffers to improve state's water quality

12/11/18

To identify sound scientific methods to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, Penn State researchers led a Pennsylvania watershed workshop that explored ways to increase the number of riparian buffers in Pennsylvania. Riparian buffers have been used to improve water quality in both local streams and in larger watersheds.

Patient factors may only marginally improve readmission prevention programs

12/11/18

Researchers at Penn State, the University of Michigan, and UCLA studied Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) disproportionately penalizes safety net hospitals, leading to concerns that the program’s omission of patient social complexity may aggravate healthcare disparities by penalizing financially-challenged hospitals and reducing their resources to improve care. The researchers found that although adding patient functional and social factors improves the program’s ability to distinguish patients who are or are not readmitted, it does so only slightly.

James Wilkerson and Marwan Wafa

James Wilkerson to present two research papers at national conference

12/10/18

James Wilkerson, program coordinator for Penn State Scranton’s business and project and supply chain management programs, will present two research papers at a national conference next month, one of which he co-authored with Penn State Scranton Chancellor Marwan Wafa.

Christianna Otto in the Netherlands

Students participate in international language research

12/7/18

Seven students in the College of the Liberal Arts participated in the National Science Foundation PIRE program this year, which gave the students financial support to travel internationally to conduct language research.

red and blue roads with matching red and blue cars indicate paths of electrons

New traffic rules in 'Graphene City'

12/6/18

In the drive to find new ways to extend electronics beyond the use of silicon, physicists are experimenting with other properties of electrons, beyond charge. In work published today (Dec 7) in the journal Science, a team led by Penn State professor of physics Jun Zhu describes a way to manipulate electrons based on their energy in relation to momentum — called “valley degree of freedom.”

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