NINE FACULTY AWARDED PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP GRANTS
More undergraduates than ever before are engaged in volunteer community service, but their attitudes toward civic engagement have reached record lows. A growing group of Penn State faculty hopes to change student attitudes and stimulate learning by turning to models of public scholarship. “Public scholarship is not just service where you volunteer in a soup kitchen or spend time at a nursing home; it is really the act of bringing scholarship to bear to support the community,” explains Jeremy Cohen, associate vice provost of Undergraduate Education and director of Penn State’s Public Scholarship Associates. Beginning this summer, the associates will represent a new partnership between Outreach and Cooperative Extension and the Office of Undergraduate Education that provides support to faculty who want to incorporate public scholarship into their undergraduate courses. Out of 50 initial faculty proposals, nine were awarded funding to tackle this University-wide agenda. For news from Outreach and Cooperative Extension, visit http://www.outreach.psu.edu/news/.
RESEARCHERS INVESTIGATE GLASS CORROSION
Scientists know how iron rusts, copper turns green and galvanized metal develops that zinc oxide coating, but now Penn State researchers are investigating how glass corrodes. A silica rich layer forms on the outside of some silicate glasses when it is exposed to aqueous media, but the exact mechanism behind the formation of this layer and its effects are yet unknown. For normal windowpane glass, the layer forms slowly and during the lifetime of most windows goes unnoticed. However, with more reactive glasses, aqueous corrosion can occur more rapidly. Nathan P. Mellott, Ph.D. candidate in materials science, and Carlo Pantano, director of Penn State’s Materials Research Institute, reported at the recent 19th International Congress on Glass on an examination of three different compositions of glass in which sodium, calcium and aluminum ions were all leaving the surface and replaced by either water or hydrogen ions. Evidence points to the glass structure breaking up and repolymerizing. For the full story by A’ndrea Elyse Messer, visit http://www.psu.edu/ur/2001/glasscorrosion.html.
AQUATIC BIRD GENES REVEAL SURPRISING RELATIONSHIPS
A comprehensive analysis of the genes of aquatic birds has revealed a family tree dramatically different from traditional relationship groupings based on the birds’ body structure, according to a research report to be published in tomorrow’s (July 7) issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The study shows that the closest living relative of the elegant flamingo, with its long legs built for wading, is not another long-legged species of wading bird but the squat grebe, with its short legs built for diving. The two species, whose genes surprisingly are more similar to each other’s than to those of any other bird, otherwise show no outward resemblance, according to Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State and leader of one of the two research groups that collaborated on the study. Another implication of the study is that physical features like long legs and webbed feet--traditionally used to group birds of a feather into different flocks on the bird family tree--did not appear just once during the history of bird evolution. For the full story by Barbara K. Kennedy, visit http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Hedges7-2001.htm.
ECONOMIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE TO DEVELOP WEB SITE
The Economic Research Institute of Erie at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, has received a $10,000 grant from the Erie Community Foundation to develop a Web site that will collect local economic data and make it readily available through the Internet early next year. The site will provide information to improve the planning, production and efficiency of local businesses, governments and non-profits. “This grant makes it possible to undertake the Web site we’ve wanted to develop for a long time,” said institute co-director James A. Kurre, associate professor of economics. Barry A Weller, also associate professor of economics and co-director of the institute, said the site will include data on cost of living, wages, employment growth, occupations and exports. The institute’s research results are published and distributed in the ERIE Technical Reports Series and through the regional media. For the full story, and other campus news, visit http://www.pserie.psu.edu/newspubl/newstoryindex.html.
ASTRONAUT VISIT, SPACE EXPLORATION EVENTS ON TAP
Former astronaut Guion Bluford, a Penn State graduate and the first African American in space, will present “The Space Shuttle Program and the International Space Station” at 4 p.m. Thursday, July 12, in Foster Auditorium at Pattee Library on the University Park campus. His free presentation is open to the public and coincides with an ongoing exhibit of images taken by astronauts at the HUB-Robeson Art Alley and the Pattee Library Exhibit Area, “Sightseeing: A Space Panorama.” Another program, “Artistic Space Exploration for the Whole Family,” will be offered twice, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, July 11, at the HUB-Robeson Art Alley and from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, July 13, at Schlow Memorial Library in State College. Bluford, a vice president for Logicon, Inc., in Herndon, Va., was selected in the first class of Space Shuttle astronauts in 1978, and first flew into space in 1993 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. For more information, visit
http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/SpaceGrant7-2001.htm or contact Angela Phelps at mailto:axp41@psu.edu or (814) 863-3608.