U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited Penn State's University Park campus on May 16, accompanied by Cathie Woteki, the U.S. Department of Agriculture under secretary of research education. The visit included tours of research laboratories, a meeting with Penn State faculty and representatives from 4-H and FFA. The one-day visit commemorates the 150th anniversary of both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Land Grant University System. (more)
In a single new scientific publication, 24 new species of lizards known as skinks, all from islands in the Caribbean, have been discovered and scientifically named. According to Blair Hedges, a professor of biology at Penn State University and the leader of the research team, half of the newly added skink species already may be extinct or close to extinction, and all of the others on the Caribbean islands are threatened with extinction. The researchers found that the loss of many skink species can be attributed primarily to predation by the mongoose -- an invasive predatory mammal that was introduced by farmers to control rats in sugarcane fields during the late 19th century. The research team reports on the newly discovered skinks in a 245-page article published April 30 in the journal Zootaxa. (more)
Mark Neely, McCabe-Greer Professor in the American Civil War, spoke on "Lincoln and Liberty: A Closer Look at Abraham Lincoln and the Constitution in Wartime" at last week's Research Unplugged event. (more)
Compelling evidence of the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on deep-sea corals will be published online in the Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week beginning March 26. The diverse team of researchers, led by Penn State Professor of Biology Charles Fisher, used a wide range of underwater vehicles, including the research submarine Alvin, to investigate the corals. They also used comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography to determine precisely the source of the petroleum hydrocarbons they found. (more)
Penn State's Board of Trustees Friday (March 16) approved the appointment of Stantec, of Butler, Pa., as architects for renovations of the Mueller and Whitmore Laboratories on the University Park campus. (more)
Students in the biology lab at Penn State Lehigh Valley have long used various examples of animal cells, such as those from chicken and mice, to conduct experiments. After making a request to their professor, four current biology students are working on a line of human leukemia cancer cells for the first time. The students, who have dubbed themselves "Team K562," a reference to the name of the cells they are researching, are studying the ability of different drugs to halt the proliferation of the disease in white blood cells.
However, in order to perform proper blood analysis for their project, the students need to become proficient in hematology. To that end, biology faculty and staff reached out to Health Network Laboratories (HNL), a multi-regional medical laboratory headquartered locally in Allentown, for assistance. (more)
Andrew F. Read, a professor of biology and entomology at Penn State, has been named the Alumni Professor in the Biological Sciences. Read perhaps is best known for his research on how natural selection shapes the virulence of malaria and how the "unnatural" selection imposed by medicine shapes the evolution of disease-causing organisms. This evolution causes drugs to fail and can create "super-bugs" that are resistant to pharmaceuticals. Since evolutionary responses to drugs, insecticides, and vaccines are the main causes of problems in preventing and treating infectious diseases, Read sees potential to use an improved understanding of pathogen evolution to inform public-health decisions. (more)
A free public lecture titled "Novel Solutions to Complex Diseases for Subsistence Agriculture" will take place at 11 a.m. on Feb. 11 in Room 100 of the Thomas Building on Penn State's University Park campus. The speaker will be David Hughes, who is an assistant professor of entomology and biology at Penn State. (more)
A generally accepted, 44-year-old assumption about how certain kinds of bacteria make energy and synthesize cell materials has been shown to be incorrect by a team of scientists led by Donald Bryant, the Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology at Penn State and a research professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Montana State University. The research, published in the journal Science on Dec. 16, is expected to help scientists discover new ways of genetically engineering bacteria to manufacture biofuels -- energy-rich compounds derived from biological sources. Many textbooks, which cite the 44-year-old interpretation as fact, likely will be revised as a result of the new discovery. (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)
