Chance effect of lab's fluorescent lights leads to discovery
Artist's rendition of optically-defined quantum circuits in a topological insulator. Credit: Peter Allen
Graduate students develop sustainability solutions to change the world
Penn State graduate students Freddy Magdama and Sarah Eissler teamed up to tackle the problem of diseases killing banana crops. Their project addressed the need to help farmers save their livelihood. Credit: Penn State
Research in Action: NIH Grant Enables Cavener Lab to Discover Mechanisms to Improve Insulin Regulation
Doug Cavener, Verne M. Willaman Dean
Software can automatically critique composition of digital photographs
The software performs a pixel-by-pixel analysis to extract features from a photograph and then uses statistical analysis to classify and compare it to highly aesthetic pictures. Credit: Patrick Manesll
Quantum computing advance locates neutral atoms
Neutral atom qubits don't take up much space and they don't interact with each other unless they are told to. Credit: iStock Photo monsitj
New Milky Way Map Reveals Stars in Our Galaxy Move Far from Home
A single frame from an animation shows how stellar orbits in the Milky Way can change. It shows two pairs of stars (marked as red and blue) in which each pair started in the same orbit, and then one star in the pair changed orbits. The star marked as red has completed its move into a new orbit, while the star marked in blue is still moving. Credit: Dana Berry / SkyWorks Digital, Inc.; SDSS collaboration
From twitching lizards to noisy frogs, adaptation is often survival of the weird
One of the Eastern fence lizard's main tactics for avoiding predators—holding absolutely still—make it an easy target for a new enemy, the invasive fire ant from South America. Image: Provided by Tracy Langkilde
Clump of a star's gas, catapulting into space at 40 million miles per hour, appears to be picking up speed
This artist's drawing and trio of X-ray images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory illustrate that a clump of stellar material has been jettisoned away from a double-star system at incredibly high speeds. Credit:X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/G.Pavlov et al; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
Some Vaccines Support Evolution of More-Virulent Viruses
Credit: Andrew Read, Penn State University
Increasing prevalence of autism is due, in part, to changing diagnoses
Click on the image for a high-resolution version. This graph shows the number of students (per 10,000) diagnosed with autism (blue) and intellectual disability (red) in special-education programs in the United States from 2000 to 2010. The increase in autism diagnoses during this period was offset by decreases in the diagnosis of intellectual disability, suggesting that shifting patterns of diagnosis may be responsible for increases in autism diagnosis. Credit: Penn State University
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