Still Life
Commencement across Penn State: Spring 2012
Spring commencement 2012 under way
Penn State, Moroccan students problem-solve together
Finals Week Spring Semester 2012
Children explore career options at University Park
Painting the Lines at Beaver Stadium
Did They Get It Right? - RedTails
Iconic Penn State elm taken down over spring break 2012
We ... are Penn State (December 19, 2011)
Disease stricken matching elm tree slated for removal
Penn State's creamery, from the cow to the cone
Keith Cheng, professor of pathology at Penn State College of Medicine, was the speaker at the second Research Unplugged talk this semester. His talk was titled "More than Skin Deep: Solving the Genetic Mysteries of Skin Color." This Thursday (March 29) Mark Neely will present "Lincoln and Liberty: A Closer Look at Abraham Lincoln and the Constitution in Wartime." Neely is the McCabe-Greer Professor in the American Civil War Era and author of the recently published "Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation," won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1992. (more)
Penn State Professor of Education Alison Carr-Chellman kicked off this semester's Research Unplugged speaker series with a talk titled "B is for Boys: How American Classroom Culture is Failing Male Students." (more)
Shoppers will continue to see the Fresh Local Produce sign in supermarkets, but stores will increasingly require growers to show proof of good agricultural practices, according to Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences researchers. Good agricultural practices -- GAPs -- are food-safety standards that reduce the risk of on-farm produce contamination, according to Daniel Tobin, a doctoral candidate in Agricultural and Extension Education and the principal investigator in the study. (more)
Mothers who financially struggle to provide food for their families tend to put themselves at risk for obesity while trying to feed their children, according to Penn State sociologists. Mothers who do not have enough money to provide adequate food for their families are more likely to be obese or overweight than fathers who face food shortages, as well as food-insecure, childless women and men, said Molly Martin, assistant professor of sociology and demography. Over time, these food-insecure mothers also gain more weight compared to all food-insecure men and food-insecure women not caring for children.
"We often forget that food insecurity is happening in a country as rich as ours," said Martin. "Trying to protect children from food insecurity is not as rare as it once was, and it's been on the rise for the last two years, if not the last five years." (more)
Beliefs about nature and nurture can affect how patients and their families respond to news about their diagnosis, according to Penn State health communication researchers. Understanding how people might respond to a health problem, especially when the recommendations for adapting to the condition may seem contradictory to their beliefs, is crucial to planning communication strategies, said Roxanne Parrott. (more)
Professor of Education Alison Carr-Chellman will lead off the spring season of Research Unplugged on March 15 with a presentation on "B is for Boys: How American Classroom Culture is Failing Male Students. (more)
The annual shift to daylight saving time and its accompanying loss of sleep cause employees to spend more time than normal surfing the Web for content unrelated to their work, resulting in potentially massive productivity losses, according to researchers. Web searches related to entertainment rise sharply the Monday after the shift to daylight saving time when compared to the preceding and subsequent Mondays, according to D. Lance Ferris, assistant professor of management and organization in Penn State's Smeal College of Business, and his colleagues David T. Wagner, Singapore Management University; Christopher M. Barnes, Virginia Tech University; and Vivien K. G. Lim, National University of Singapore. They based their findings on an examination of six years worth of data from Google. (more)
Couples who are married or living together will probably have more trouble parenting as a team if they have been violent toward one another during pregnancy, according to a team of psychologists. "This finding is helpful because working as a parenting team, in what we call the co-parenting relationship, is a key influence on everything from mothers' postpartum depression to sensitive parenting to the children's emotional and social adjustment," said Mark E. Feinberg, research professor, Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development at Penn State.
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Not all wines are created equal; neither are all wine tasters. A wine expert's acute sense of taste may mean that expert ratings and recommendations are irrelevant to wine consumers who were not born with the ability to discern small differences in a broad range of tastes, according to a team of international researchers. "What we found is that the fundamental taste ability of an expert is different," said John Hayes, assistant professor, food science, and director of Penn State's sensory evaluation center. (more)
With about 95 million single adults in the United States, the online matchmaking industry is booming. Communication technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype have created new ways to find and date potential partners. Despite all the digital bells and whistles, it still all comes down to a face-to-face encounter. Is dating fundamentally any different for young adults today than in our parents' and grandparents' days? (more)
