Nov. 19 is this year's Great American Smokeout. Since the Surgeon General identified the dangers of smoking, Americans have gradually quit, yet about 1 in 5 Americans still smoke. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that about 4,000 young adolescents start smoking every day and 6 percent of middle school students are smokers. If ever there were a time to think about quitting smoking, it's now. (more)
Earlier this month, Roselyn Costantino, associate professor of Spanish and women's studies at Penn State Altoona, and a group of Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) delegates met with Lynn Rosenthal, White House adviser on Violence Against Women. Rosenthal advises the Obama administration on domestic violence and sexual assault issues and offers recommendations for policy and funding priorities. (more)
Sigma Tau Delta, Penn State Altoona's English Honorary Society, is seeking donations for a book drive to benefit Books for Africa and the Invisible Children's Fund. Green and white collection boxes are set up at the campus bookstore and in the Hawthorn, Science/Holtzinger, and Smith buildings. The boxes will remain through finals week. The group is seeking any books from the last several years that could be used in a college classroom. Books with highlighting and writing are accepted. Many of the donated books will be sold online to raise funding for Books for Africa. Some books will be directly sent to the organization and distributed to African countries in need.
Books or Africa is the largest shipper of donated textbooks to the African continent. Founded in 1988, the organization has delivered more than 14.3 million books to 27 African countries. (more)
Laura Palmer, assistant professor of biology at Penn State Altoona, is the second speaker for the Teaching and Learning Consortium's Free University Series. Palmer will deliver her lecture at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 4, in the Devorris Downtown Center, Penn State Altoona, to discuss the discovery of general anesthetics. Although the medical field has been using these drugs for more than 150 years, scientists still do not know exactly how they work. Palmer will talk about her lab research which focuses on trying to understand how anesthetics operate at the cellular level. (more)
Eco-model, environmental activist and Planet Green television host Summer Rayne Oakes will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 3, in the Adler Athletic Complex on the Penn State Altoona campus. (more)
The Rock Ethics Institute in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts is seeking nominations for University students who have exhibited ethical leadership. Any faculty, staff, student or community member may nominate a student for the 2010 Stand Up Award. (more)
About 23.6 million Americans have diabetes and another 54 million are at risk to develop the disease. As these numbers continue to increase, Diabetes Awareness Month, observed throughout November, is more important than ever. Diabetes, a disease in which the body can't regulate the amount of sugar in the blood, currently affects about 8 percent of the population, a number that is increasing rapidly, according to this week's edition of The Medical Minute, a service of the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. (more)
Penn State Altoona celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9. Professor Jutta Lorenson organized an event in which students, faculty and staff could commemorate the historic day by writing original or borrowed reflections, poems, essays and comments to be collected in a book. The celebration concluded that evening with a lecture by Boris Erg titled "From Division to Cooperation: Converting the Former 'Iron Curtain' into a trans-European Ecological Network for the Future." (more)
Mandy Reinig, education abroad adviser at Penn State Altoona, recently had an article published in International Educator Magazine, the flagship bimonthly magazine of NAFSA: Association of International Educators. (more)