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Summer Academy student navigating a crosswalk

Penn State's Summer Academy is changing lives -- and attitudes

7/12/18

The Summer Academy for the Blind and Visually Impaired is a three-week program that functions with the help of a not-so-small village. The network of people and organizations that make up the moving parts of the Summer Academy stretches as far as the national level and hits as close as home.

hear no evil, see no evil

Suppressing negative emotions during health scare may whip up spiral of fear

7/10/18

People use a lot of different strategies to handle fear — including avoiding bad news, reappraising the information, contesting the news, or suppressing the fear. Of those strategies, a team of researchers found that suppressing the fear is actually counter-productive. Trying to suppress worries during a health scare, like the recent Zika outbreak, may lead to an ever-intensifying cycle of emotional suppression and fear, according to the researchers.

Oxfam photo

Working together for global good: Penn State, Oxfam join forces

7/10/18

Developing lasting solutions to the problems of poverty, hunger and social injustice is the cornerstone of a new partnership between Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences and Oxfam America, the U.S. affiliate of Oxfam, the global organization working to end the injustice of poverty in 90 countries around the world.

PA Jobs Report - cover image

Analysis of post-recession job trends suggests existence of 'two Pennsylvanias'

6/11/18

An analysis of employment change in the state since 2001 suggests the existence of "two Pennsylvanias" during the period from 2001 to 2017, according to economists in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. The newly released report shows a sharp divide between southeastern Pennsylvania, with mainly job growth, and the rest of the state, with primarily job decline.

Restored statue platform with standing moai on the south coast of Rapa Nui. Note that one of the moai is adorned with a red scoria pukao.

Hats on for Easter Island statues

6/4/18

How do you put a 13-ton hat on a giant statue? That's what a team of researchers is trying to figure out with their study of Easter Island statues and the red hats that sit atop some of them.

Melnick.McElroy

Researchers to study conditions at senior centers across the Commonwealth

6/1/18

Janet Melnick, associate teaching professor in Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State Scranton, and Heather Shanks-McElroy of Keystone College are collaborating on a research project focusing on conditions at senior community centers throughout Pennsylvania to determine how they are meeting the needs of older Pennsylvanians.

Refugees in Uganda use computers

IST researcher's new book explores the world of 'digital refugees'

5/29/18

With nearly 100 million refugees and displaced persons around the world, a new book by Carleen Maitland, associate professor of information sciences and technology, explores how information and communication technologies are being used to provide humanitarian aid and connect refugees with family and friends.

Jiro Yoshida

Alternative inflation rate may offer more accurate economic guidance

5/24/18

Estimates of inflation rates guide decisions on a range of policy moves, from cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security to whether interest rates should be raised or lowered. A team of economists are suggesting that the way housing rents are assessed in official inflation indexes may mean the actual inflation rate is inaccurate. They are working to create an alternative inflation rate index that addresses this inaccuracy.

Group of kindergarten-aged children

Ties between oral vocabulary and STEM difficulties to be investigated

5/21/18

Young children with early vocabulary difficulties in turn often have difficulty with reading during the primary grades. Penn State researchers will investigate if these oral vocabulary difficulties also lead to math and sciences difficulties throughout elementary school in a three-year, $1.5 million National Science Foundation-funded research project.

Friends in a cafe

New research to identify what makes conversations supportive

5/18/18

Researchers from Penn State, the University of Mississippi and the University of Minnesota aim to clarify how conversations about everyday stressors convey support and how they lead to different emotional outcomes in a new three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Azeta Hatef

Doctoral candidate studies how media shocks culture

5/16/18

Penn State doctoral candidate Azeta Hatef spent a month in Afghanistan's capital of Kabul to examine how its people transitioned both culturally and socially from the dramatic change from a five-year media blackout to the ban lifting in 2001. Specifically, she studied the relationship between media and the changing beauty industry through interviews with consumers of cosmetic surgery.

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