Eight members of the faculty and staff at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus have been recognized for excellence in 2011. The Advisory Board of Penn State Fayette funds these awards annually to recognize individuals for their outstanding accomplishments and to acknowledge the contributions of those who have served the University well. (more)
David D. Anderson is the recipient of the 2011 Penn State Beaver Outstanding Alumnus Award. The award recognizes Beaver alumni who have distinguished themselves through career achievements as well as campus and community involvement. Beaver Chancellor Gary Keefer presented the award to Anderson at the Jan. 25 dinner meeting of the Penn State Beaver Advisory Board. (more)
Satellite images of nighttime lights, which normally are used to detect population centers, also can help keep tabs on diseases in developing nations, according to new research. An international research team that includes Matthew Ferrari, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State, found that the new technique accurately indicates fluctuations in population density -- and thus the corresponding risk of epidemic -- that can elude current methods of monitoring outbreaks. The research, reported in the current issue of the journal Science, is expected to help medical professionals to synchronize vaccination strategies with increases in population density. (more)
The Penn State Beaver Alumni Society netted a profit of $21,500 from its 11th annual golf outing held in September at Seven Oaks Country Club in Brighton Township. The total was announced recently at the group's annual fall meeting.
The proceeds will provide additional funding for the principle of the Penn State Beaver Alumni Society Endowed Scholarship. In addition to providing funds for numerous campus scholarships, the Alumni Society has donated proceeds from previous golf outings to establish and enhance directional and building signage on campus.
For information about the Beaver Alumni Society, contact Diana Patterson, Beaver campus director of development and campus liaison with the society, at dlp25@psu.edu or 724-773-3558. (more)
The nature of a peculiar cosmic explosion detected on Dec. 25, 2010, remains an intriguing question without a clear answer. The cause of the explosion, a gamma-ray burst that first was detected by NASA's Swift observatory, either was a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years from Earth or an unusual collision much closer to home inside our own galaxy, report astronomers in papers published in the Dec. 1 issue of Nature. "It is nice to find that the universe can still surprise us, after seven years and 600 bursts since Swift was launched," said Michael Siegel, a research associate in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and the lead scientist for Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT). Siegel analyzed the UVOT data as it came down to Penn State's Mission Operations Center from the spacecraft, and he also coordinated Swift's follow-up observations. (more)
The Nittany Lions will take on the University of Houston at the TicketCity Bowl in Dallas on Jan. 2, it was announced today (Dec. 4). Tickets to the general public go on sale Monday. Student ticket sales will be via a walk-up sale at the Bryce Jordan Center at a time and date to be announced. (more)
The Eberly College of Science at Penn State University, in conjunction with its Forensic Science Program, has established a partnership program with the University of Split in Croatia to expand educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and to encourage relationships between the faculties of the two universities. The new partnership will facilitate student exchange programs; faculty exchanges; joint research projects; educational programs in forensic science and other scientific disciplines; faculty development; and the exchange of scientific materials, publications and information. (more)
As an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier streaked past Earth during the early-morning hours last week, a team of astronomers at Penn State University and other institutions using NASA's Swift satellite monitored the fast-moving space rock, as did other professional and amateur astronomers using other instruments around the globe. The Swift satellite was the only observatory that captured the asteroid's ultraviolet emissions. Scientists now can use these ultraviolet data to understand the asteroid's surface composition and to more precisely predict the path of its future fly-bys near Earth. (more)
Galaxy -- an open-source, Web-based platform for data-intensive biomedical and genetic research -- is now available as a cloud computing resource. A team of researchers has developed the new technology, which will help scientists and biomedical researchers to harness such tools as DNA-sequencing and analysis software, as well as storage capacity for large quantities of scientific data. (more)
Both climate change and humans were responsible for the extinction of some large, cold-adapted, plant-eating mammals, according to research that is the first of its kind to use genetic, archeological, and climatic data together to infer the population history of large-bodied Ice-Age mammals. The research will be published in the journal Nature.
The study's findings are expected to shed light on the possible fates of living species of mammals as our planet continues its current warming cycle. Beth Shapiro, the Shaffer Associate Professor of Biology at Penn State University, is a member of the research team. High-resolution images are online at
http://www.science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2011-news/Shapiro10-2011 (more)
