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To help students travel safely and in timely fashion over this year's Thanksgiving holiday -- without skipping classes -- Penn State is changing its official University Park calendar for November 1997.
Under the change, classes at University Park will end at 12:05 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 26 -- the normal ending time of fourth-period classes. Other locations may adopt the change, as appropriate.
All morning classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving will remain scheduled as before. Instructors whose classes would have met after 12:05 p.m. Wednesday are expected to provide opportunities to make up the class time missed because of the early closing. If needed, the Registrar's Office will work with faculty and departments on rescheduling.
The University will monitor how the schedule change works this year and the results of its assessment will be used to guide Thanksgiving holiday scheduling in future years.
The University Libraries announce extended hours during the final exam period, May 2-11. The hours are as follows:
* Friday, May 2: 7:45 a.m. to 9 p.m., and certain areas from 9 p.m. to midnight*
* Saturday, May 3: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and certain areas from 9 p.m. to midnight*
* Sunday, May 4: 9 a.m. to midnight, and certain areas until 2 a.m.**
* Monday, May 5 - Thursday, May 8: 7:45 a.m. to midnight, and certain areas from midnight to 2 a.m.**
* Friday, May 9: 7:45 a.m. to 9 p.m., and certain areas from 9 p.m. to midnight*
* Saturday, May 10: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
* Sunday, May 11: CLOSED
*Includes Reserve Reading Room and East Pattee floors 1-4 only;
**Includes Reserve Reading Room, West Pattee floors 1-2, and East Pattee floors 1-4. (During extended hours these areas are open for studying and in-house use of materials. )
* Music Listening Room: Regular hours
* Pollock Library: Continue 24-hour service during the final exam period until closing at 5 p.m. Saturday, May 10. It will remain closed Sunday, May 11.
* All University Park campus branch libraries: Regular operating hours through Friday, May 9. They will close at 5 p.m. Saturday, May 10, and will remain closed Sunday, May 11.
In addition, University Libraries at University Park will observe a revised schedule during Intersession May 12-June 11.
For more information on hours of library service, call (814) 865-3063, type HELP HOURS when using the Library Information Access System (LIAS), or visit the Libraries' home page at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/ and click on Library Info.
The Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) is hosting a free Open House from 4 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 7, at the Applied Sciences Building to give the public an opportunity to see state-of-the-art Russian technologies that may soon be spun off to American industries.
The Open House is part of a series of technical workshops and meetings on turbomachinery, thermal power and welding technology being held at the Applied Research Laboratory May 6-9. The formal workshops and meetings are open to registered participants only and will feature 15 Russian engineers and their peers from U.S. industry and academia who will demonstrate and discuss state-of-the-art technologies from both countries.
For additional information, contact Edmond D. Pope, ARL foreign science and technology, at (814) 865-2921 or e-mail edp2@psu.edu.
The Penn State Information and Directory Assistance Office will be operating on the following hours for the Memorial Day holiday:
Monday, May 26 -- 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The office will resume normal hours of operation (7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.) on Tuesday, May 27.
Penn State Educational Office Professionals will hold their Spring Recognition Reception at 5 p.m. Wednesday, May 14, in Room 118 of the Agricultural Science and Industries Building on the University Park campus. The featured speaker is Laura Frye, manager of human resources and administrative services for the College of Engineering. The topic is "Get Involved." Also featured will be the Outstanding Office Personnel Awards and installation of officers.
For reservations or information please contact Anne Stover (amc1@psu.edu or (814) 865-6393). Penn State Educational Office Professionals is a professional organization whose membership consists of faculty, staff and technical service personnel. PSEOP is dedicated to promoting professional development among Penn State's office employees. For more information, contact membership coordinator Sandy McClain (ssm4@omnibus.ce.psu.edu or (814) 865-5403).
The Office of Telecommunications, in conjunction with the Center for Academic Computing, will be upgrading the dial-up capabilities in place at 13 campuses to provide faster, more reliable modem dial-up to Internet access services. These upgrades will allow for faster access speeds and decrease the possibility of getting a busy tone upon dial-up. Seven campuses will receive new digital dial-up capability in the form of units supporting dial-up over ISDN lines. Six campuses will upgrade the size and speed of their modem pools.
The seven locations involved in the ISDN upgrade are: Altoona, Abington, Delaware, Erie, Great Valley, Harrisburg and York. The six campuses receiving additional higher speed modems are: Allentown, DuBois, Fayette, New Kensington, Schuylkill and Shenango.
Between now and the end of spring semester, the ISDN units will be installed at the seven campuses listed above. This change should be completely transparent to those campuses where the ISDN equipment will be installed on the same phone line as the current modem pool. However, at Abington, Erie, Harrisburg, Great Valley and York, the telephone number for dial-up service at those locations will change effective May 16. Until then, you should continue using the old modem number.
A list of campus modem numbers is provided on the Web at http://cac.psu.edu/internet/dialup.html.
A significant collection of travel-related information and tools is available at Penn State's Travel Services site. Some of the features include:
* A listing of Penn State contract travel agencies along with a travel profiler function that allows travelers to forward their travel preferences electronically to selected agencies;
* A listing of Penn State contracted hotels/motels with links that in many cases allow travelers to check room availability;
* Links to Penn State's travel policies, forms and per diem rates.
* World times;
* Currency converters;
* Weather information and airport delays; and more.
This is the most comprehensive travel Web site in the Big 10. The Travel Services site can be found at http://guru.sp.psu.edu/central/travel/.
There are two ways to save one to four days in delivery time on your 1-ounce to 2-ounce first-class letter:
1) Do not use staples or paper clips in the letter;
2) Type the address on your letter with a mono-spaced font such as Courier 10, Prestige Elite or Letter Gothic.
For more information on how to expedite your mail, please call Gregg J. Asciutto at (814) 863-8153.
A wealth of digital data on the geography of Pennsylvania is now available on the Web, thanks to Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA), a joint project of Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Users can search for maps on the geology of Pennsylvania, networks of streams and roads within a specific county, and where recreational parks exist throughout the Commonwealth. The Web address is http://www.pasda.psu.edu. For those without Internet access, the system is available for use at the Penn State Libraries.
Penn State's Environmental Resources Research Institute has the lead responsibility for project management; the University Libraries' Maps Room is the point of contact for PASDA users and metadata preparation; and the Deasy GeoGraphics Laboratory, a unit of the Department of Geography, is contributing Web interface design and development of data search and delivery capabilities.
Whether you are off to the city or a dig on the plains, you can stay in touch with Penn State all summer through Newswire. If you have access to e-mail, you can receive daily news releases from the Department of Public Information as soon as they are prepared on issues such as the budget, new programs, upcoming events, major new appointments and faculty research. Most releases are also posted the same day on the University Relations home page at http://www.psu.edu/ur/.
Penn State Newswire has an easy-to-read text format with a list of stories
at the top allowing readers to decide immediately what they want to read.
Anyone connected to a modem can subscribe by sending an
e-mail message to pat5@psu.edu with your
name and return e-mail address. You may unsubscribe at any time. For more
information, contact Bill Mahon or Christy Rambeau at (814)-865-8517.
Tickets are available for the May 9 Penn State Forum presentation by Ralph Gomory, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, on "New Opportunities for Learning Outside the Classroom" at the Nittany Lion Inn. Lunch begins at 11:30 a.m. followed by the speech at noon. Tickets are $10 and include lunch. Reservations can be made by calling (814) 865-7590, or stop by the Faculty Staff Club office in 110 HUB.
Michael M. Micci, associate professor of aerospace engineering,
won a
Discover Magazine award for his prototype microwave rocket.
The Hobby-Eberly Telescope, the largest optical telescope
in the United States,
was invented by Lawrence W. Ramsey and Daniel W. Weedman. It won an
innovation award from Discover Magazine.
A prototype microwave rocket engine invented by Michael M. Micci, associate professor of aerospace engineering, and the largest optical telescope in the continental United States, invented by Lawrence W. Ramsey and Daniel W. Weedman, professors of astronomy and astrophysics, are among 35 innovations being honored by Discover magazine.
The two Penn State inventions are among four awards in the Aviation and Aerospace category of the 1997 Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation. Nearly 4,000 innovators from around the world were invited to participate in the awards competition.
Micci's invention, the Microwave Arcjet Thruster, will be on display at Discover magazine's interactive showcase at Innovations, a pavilion in Walt Disney World's Epcot Center. Ramsey's and Weedman's invention, the William P. Hobby-Robert E. Eberly Telescope, will be commissioned in late 1997 at the McDonald Observatory in a remote area of western Texas known for having the darkest skies in North America. Both inventions will be featured in the July issue of Discover magazine, which hits the newsstands in mid-June.
Micci and his team developed the innovative rocket propulsion system using parts from an ordinary 1000W kitchen microwave oven. It shows promise as a cheaper, safer thruster for positioning and maneuvering satellites in space. The invention has the potential to affect technology that uses satellite communications, reducing rates on long-distance telephone calls, television satellite broadcasts and direct television. His commercial partner in the Microwave Arcjet Thruster project is Research Support Instruments Inc., of Lanham, Md. (Micci's invention was featured on the Sept. 26, 1996, Research page of Intercom.)
Ramsey and Weedman invented the concept for the Hobby-Eberly telescope in 1983 at Penn State. Its innovative design resulted in construction costs approximately 20 percent less than those of other telescopes in its class. A number of features allow the 24-ton primary mirror to remain stationary while observing an object, eliminating the need for a highly complex mirror-support system. The mirror, which is 36-feet across and one of the largest of any optical telescope in the world, is made up of 91 identical pieces that were mass produced -- another cost-saving aspect of the design. The telescope was built by a partnership involving The University of Texas at Austin, Penn State, Stanford University and the German universities of Gottingen and Munich.
Ramsey and Thomas Sebring, project manager for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, are named as recipients of the Discover award. (Ramsey's and Weedman's inventions were featured in the April 21, 1994, and Jan. 15, 1997, issues of Intercom.)
According to the Walt Disney Co., which publishes Discover, the awards "recognize breakthrough technologies and honor the men and women whose creative genius improves the quality of everyday life."
Gary Peterson, manager of agricultural short courses, brought his daughter Pamela, center, to work with him on the University Park campus during the fifth annual "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" Thursday, April 24. It was there that Pamela Peterson had the opportunity to work on assembling a lawn mower-type small engine with Julie Masser, right, a freshman engineering student and apprentice peer instructor in the Women in Engineering Program. Peterson was one of about a dozen daughters to participate in Women in Engineering Program activities set up by Andrea Joyce, a junior mechanical engineering student and program intern and instructor.
Roughly 295 people participated in "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" activities at University Park, giving girls a first-hand look at what occurs in the workplace and exposing them to the wide range of options open to them. The Women in Engineering Program project was one of 50 "career sites" at University Park to open its facilities and resources for the occasion.
"Take Our Daughters to Work Day" is a national event sponsored by the Ms. Foundation. At the University, the event is sponsored by the Commission for Women.
Darryl Holman, postdoctoral fellow in the Population Research Institute, has found that the earlier onset of menopause in women in developing countries may not be due to the natural progression of aging.
By A'ndrea Elyse Messer
Public Information
Women in developing countries who reach menopause early may be experiencing the same condition as anorexics and runners, rather than the natural progression of aging, according to a researcher.
"Rural women in developing countries tend to experience menopause about eight years earlier than in developed countries," Darryl Holman, postdoctoral fellow in Penn State's Population Research Institute, said. "On average, American women experience menopause at about 51 years old, while rural Bangladeshi women, for example, are about 43 years old at menopause."
Holman proposes two possible explanations. Rural women in developing countries naturally enter menopause earlier, or the apparent earlier age of menopause is a stress-related shutdown of the ovarian cycling. He notes that urban women in developing countries tend to have a later age of menopause.
"By the time women in developing countries reach their early 40s, they have had repeated pregnancies, breast-fed for most of their adult lives and have a relatively high disease load," Holman said.
"These women have very low body mass, and their amenorrhea -- absence of menstruation -- may be due to the same things that affect runners and anorexics."
Menopause naturally occurs when a woman's ovaries have no follicles left that can develop to release fertile eggs. Because women have a set number of follicles that begin to undergo atresia -- degeneration and reabsorption -- in the fetus, when all the follicles are used up, they enter menopause.
Holman does not think that rural women in developing countries are born with fewer follicles, which would account for an earlier menopause. Rather, he thinks that these women are undergoing a variety of stresses that combined, stop the normal cycle of hormones. Runners and anorexics frequently experience amenorrhea due to a combination of low body weight and stress.
"Menopause is characterized biochemically by high levels of two hormones, luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and low levels of estrogen," Holman said. "Amenorrhea is characterized by low levels of LH and FSH but may have normal levels of estrogen."
Holman notes that improved nutrition, better medical care and fewer pregnancies will all occur as these countries develop, and the age at menopause will increase approaching that of the United States.
"One consideration of this phenomenon is that women will need to practice birth control later in their lives," Holman said.
This illustration is among the Latin American works that will be preserved using the $59,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The University Libraries, one of nine participating CIC libraries, will receive a $59,000 grant to preserve a portion of the Luis Albert Sanchez (Latin American) Literature Collection. The grant is part of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).
Luis Albert Sanchez (1900-1994), one of Peru's most respected intellectuals and politicians, was educated at the National University of San Marcos in Lima and earned his degree in literature and law. He later pursued a doctorate in history and philosophy and letters at the University of Lima and a second doctorate at the University of Chile. A scholar and statesman with wide-ranging interests, Sanchez was among the intellectual elite of Latin America for many decades. And, most significantly for literary scholarship, he collected a very large library representing the Latin American literature of his generation. The holdings of the Sanchez collection are particularly strong in Chile, Mexico, Peru and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries.
A team of librarians headed by University Libraries preservation Librarian Sue Kellerman, selected 600 volumes representing 570 titles from the collection for microfilming.
"Many of the works are now in deteriorating condition, and a number of them are in urgent need of preservation filming," Kellerman said. "Preserving these important Latin American works represents a major service to the 20th-century Latin American literary scholarship and research worldwide."
During this two-year national project, the nine libraries will preserve some 8,743 volumes on microfilm and an additional 699 original volumes will receive conservation treatment.
Together the materials preserved through this project represent carefully selected and broadly based records of the essential ideas and expressions across a range of subject areas (including American fiction, German literature, Africana and religious denominational history).
Information about the Sanchez collection preserved in microform will be distributed and made available through the University Libraries' online catalog and national bibliographic utilities.
