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  • Female faculty member and female student examining honey bees in the lab.

    Rescuing Honey Bee Hives

    VIDEO: Honey bee colonies are collapsing in record numbers, and Penn State entomologists are leading the pack of researchers scrambling to figure out why.

  • Two women shake hands

    Partners Against Disease

    Penn State researchers unite with the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology to study the dynamics of malaria and sleeping sickness in Tanzania.

  • Michael Paul smiles at the camera in front of an image of the moon.

    Lunar Lion Superstars

    Space systems engineer Michael Paul leads a team of faculty and students in a Google-sponsored race to land the first spacecraft on the moon in thirty-five years.

  • Sandhurst Trophy Presentation

    Leadership in Action

    Penn State Army ROTC cadets prove their mettle and make a historic showing at the prestigious Sandhurst Military Stakes Competition.

  • Catherine Janisko, Penn State Broadcast Journalism student, sits smiling in front of television monitors in a broadcast control room.

    Making a Difference

    VIDEO: See highlights of Penn Staters who are leading, succeeding, and changing the world, like College of Communications student Catherine Janisko, one of our many extraordinary students.

Leah Orr environmental photograph

The strange and surprising adventures of fiction

6/19/13

With the incredibly popular works of fiction pervading our culture today -- Harry Potter, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," "Twilight," "The Hunger Games," the list goes on -- it's difficult to imagine a time when the novel didn't exist. Unlike other genres of writing, however, the novel has its origins in fairly recent history.

Standing Wave

Sound waves precisely position nanowires

6/19/13

The smaller components become, the more difficult it is to create patterns in an economical and reproducible way, according to an interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers who, using sound waves, can place nanowires in repeatable patterns for potential use in a variety of sensors, optoelectronics and nanoscale circuits.