Monday, February 09, 2009
As current technologies become obsolete, future generations may be unable to access electronic information ranging from family photos to official documents. University archivist Jackie Esposito discusses strategies for keeping information safe for posterity, and provides some recommendations to help preserve important documents. (more)
Friday, February 06, 2009
For detecting explosives and drugs in airports and other high-risk areas, humans have long relied on sniffer dogs. But dogs are expensive to train, and some environments are too dangerous for their deployment. Chemical sensing technologies developed to replace them have had limited effectiveness. Now, Penn State engineers are working on an artificial nose that is closer to the canine ideal. (more)
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Electrical engineering professor Bill Higgins and his research group have developed a software program designed to improve the success of bronchoscopic lung biopsies by converting a patient's computed tomography (CT) scans into a 3-D representation of the lung. (more)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Could the Large Hadron Collider create a black hole that would swallow the Earth? "Absolutely not," said Stephane Coutu, Penn State professor of physics. "There is nothing to fear from the so-called 'Doomsday Device.'" Fears about black holes are exacerbated by media hype about the supercollider, with headlines labeling it a "Doomsday Device" and "Big Bang Machine." What really is the LHC, and how can smashing particles together tell us anything new about the universe? (more)
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
The controversy about whether Shakespeare authored all of the plays and poems attributed to him is still debated. Patrick Cheney, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature puts this question to rest. "Not a single reputable scholar I know has the least doubt that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays and poems ascribed to him." (more)
Monday, December 01, 2008
In this last of three dispatches from Northeast Brazil, Todd LaJuenesse and colleagues dive for coral in in Joao Pessoa. Researchers at Penn State, the University of Georgia and Universidade Federal de Campina Grande are embarking on a quest to document the uniqueness of Brazil's coral species by studying the symbiotic algae that they require to survive. In addition, they will investigate the evolutionary biology of the coral-algal symbiosis to see if they can uncover secrets about the organisms' ancient histories and their potential to withstand the ravages of climate change. (more)
Monday, November 24, 2008
Join Todd LaJeunesse, assistant professor of biology at Penn State, and his colleagues from University of Georgia and Universidade Federal de Campina Grande as they collect coral and algae samples at Praia do Forte beach in Salvador, Brazil. Their goal: to uncover secrets about the organisms' ancient histories and their potential to withstand the ravages of climate change. Part 2 of a 3-part series. (more)
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
It doesn't tick, it doesn't have hands, and it doesn't tell you what time of day it is. But a molecular clock does tell time--on an epoch scale. The molecular clock, explained S. Blair Hedges, is a tool used to calculate the timing of evolutionary events.
Instead of measuring seconds, minutes and hours, said Hedges, Penn State professor of biology, the molecular clock measures the number of changes, or mutations, which accumulate in the gene sequences of different species over time. Evolutionary biologists can use this information to deduce how species evolve, and to fix the date when two species diverged on the evolutionary timeline. "Unlike a wristwatch, which measures time from regular changes (ticks), a molecular clock measures time from random changes (mutations) in DNA," Hedges noted. (more)
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Many believe that the pain of childbirth would turn the steeliest man into a quivering pile of jelly, and everyone has heard the stories of peasant women stoically giving birth in the fields only to return to work the same day. Are women built for pain? "This is an interesting question because people have strong beliefs about gender and pain," said Jennifer Graham, professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State. (more)
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
In 1968, long before Toby Thompson authored several books of non-fiction and many articles for magazines (such as Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Esquire) and became an associate professor of creative writing at Penn State, he was a 24-year-old unpublished wannabe. He had come of age to Bob Dylan's music and, blessed with acute cultural antennae, knew that Dylan's searing fusion of poetry and rock 'n roll was something big and real that the world hadn't heard before. (more)
