Wednesday, Jun 25 2008
Controlling seizures
Steve Schiff's recent work on characterizing and controlling spatiotemporal patterns in the cortex of the brain was featured in a recent article on 'Clues to Controlling Seizures' at Technology Review.
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Wednesday, Jun 25 2008
Focus on Materials Simulation
The most recent issue of the Materials Research Institute's Focus on Materials features the research of professors Sofo and Crespi, and highlights Penn State efforts in materials simulation.
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Monday, Jun 23 2008
Physics and Jazz...
Professor Stephon Alexander shares his thoughts on Physics and Jazz at the website "big think".
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Sunday, May 25 2008
Japan Carbon Award
Peter Eklund has been awarded the Japan Carbon Award for Life-Time Achievement. This award is presented to a researcher for "one's lifelong great contributions in the field of carbon materials science and technology or service to the International Carbon Groups". Peter will be recognized in The 2008 International Conference on Carbon (Carbon2008, Carbon08) in Nagano for his seminal work on Synthesis and Optical Probes of Carbon Materials.
Tuesday, May 20 2008
Information is not lost in the evaporation of black holes
Abhay Ashtekar, Victor Taveras, and Madhavan Varadarajan have published an Editor's Choice PRL entitled "Information is not lost in the evaporation of black holes", as featured in Nature News Research Highlight, PhysOrg, Science Daily, New Scientist, Fox News, MSNBC and the Today show.
More... (Image: NASA)
Tuesday, May 20 2008
Paul Axt Prize
John McManigle, graduating senior in Physics (with minors in Math and Biology) was awarded the Paul Axt Prize of the Schreyer Honors College at the SHC medals ceremony on Friday, May 16th. The citation for the Paul Axt Prize reads
"The Paul Axt Prize recognizes a Schreyer Scholar who has seized the opportunities offered by the University and the Honors College to create an undergraduate education notable for both its breadth and depth."
Mr. McManigle was already the recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship (2006) and an NIH Scholarship (2008) in his Penn State Career. He will pursue an M.D. - Ph.D. program at Duke University Medical School and Oxford University (UK) starting this summer. His honors adviser was Prof. Rick Robinett of the Physics Department. John did undergraduate research as part of "The Neurochip Project" with Prof. Anne Andrews of the Neuroscience Institute and the Veterinary Biomedical Science Department and Prof. Paul Weiss of the Physics and Chemistry Departments.
Wednesday, May 7 2008
Academic Computing Fellowship
Garrett Evans has won a 2008-2009 Academic Computing Fellowship from the Penn State Graduate School. The award covers tuition and stipend, and also provides funds for travel and other support. Garrett has worked with both Dezhe Jin and John Collins on computational neuroscience topics and the Fellowship award described his proposal in this area as 'innovative'.
Garrett's work involves understanding the complex dynamical and computational properties of systems of neurons and neural connections (synapses), components which are mostly well-understood in isolation. He employs both analytical and computer simulation methods.
Tuesday, Apr 15 2008
WISE Recognition Award
Professor Milton Cole has been selected to receive the WISE Recognition Award, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the recruitment, retention and mentoring of women in science.
Tuesday, Apr 1 2008
Science Exhibition Reception
The Center for Gravitational Wave Physics invites you to attend a Science Exhibition Reception highlighting the scientific achievements of the Center's students, postdocs and technical staff. Center members will be on hand with poster exhibits of their work and refreshments will be available.
Center for Gravitational Wave Physics 2008 Poster Reception
April 25, 2008; 3: 30 p.m. to 5:0 p.m.
Third floor Chemistry/Life Sciences building
Friday, Mar 28 2008
Faculty Scholar Award
Professor Nitin Samarth has been awarded the 2008 Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal in the Physical Sciences for his contributions to semiconductor spintronics, an emerging area of condensed matter physics that explores new paradigms for information technology. He has pioneered the development of a variety of spin-engineered semiconductor systems, ranging from the macro- to the nano- scale. These have lead to key discoveries in spintronics, including the observation of long spin coherence times and the spin Hall effect at room temperature. His work has been featured on the covers of Scientific American, Science and Nature. Samarth is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and received the George W. Atherton award for excellence in teaching at Penn State in 2007.
Tuesday, Mar 4 2008
Eunseong Kim wins Lee Osheroff Richardson Prize
The 2008 Lee Osheroff Richardson North American Science Prize, from Oxford Instruments, has been awarded to Eunseong Kim for seminal contributions to the understanding of solid helium.
Tuesday, Feb 5 2008
Departmental Newsletter
The latest edition of the departmental newsletter is now available.
Sunday, Feb 3 2008
"Skinny" Pions Sail Through Nucleus
Like protons and neutrons, pions are built of smaller subatomic particles called quarks. Normally, pions traversing the nucleus feel the strong force of the protons and neutrons they encounter, causing a fraction of the pions to be reabsorbed by the nucleus. If the strong force is described in terms of the underlying quarks and gluons, however, such reabsorption is predicted to disappear. This vanishing act is a result of small-sized, point-like or "skinny" pions being produced in sufficiently energetic collisions between beams of particles and atomic nuclei. Under these circumstances, the escape probability of the pions increases towards unity, just as a pair of oppositely charged particles, when brought close together, can traverse undisturbed through a field of other charged particles. In an experiment at the Department of Energy's Jefferson Lab, a beam of electrons was used to knock pions out of various atomic nuclei ranging from deuterium to gold. The escape probability of the produced pions was found to increase with higher-energy collisions, i.e., the nucleus became increasingly transparent to the pions. This rate of increase, as well as the variation in transparency with different nuclear targets, was found to agree with the predictions of Strikman and collaborators, which assume the pions were produced in a small-size, ie. "skinny," configuration and remained so while traversing the nucleus. The Jefferson Lab pion experiment thus observed for the first time the turning-on of the color transparency phenomenon in the most basic quark-antiquark system.
Thursday, Jan 31 2008
Alumni Association Dissertation Award
Nicolas Yunes, a graduate student in the Department of Physics, has received the Penn State Alumni Association Dissertation Award. The award "is considered to be among the most prestigious available to Penn State graduate students and recognizes outstanding achievement in scholarship and professional accomplishment." Nico, a student of Ben Owen, has collaborated with a number of faculty in the department during his tenure at Penn State. The title of his dissertation is "At the Interface: Gravitational Waves as Tools to Test Quantum Gravity and Probe the Astrophysical Universe." It is interesting to note that Nico is the third physics graduate student to win this award in the last three years. Tony Clark, a student of Moses Chan, won the award in 2006 and Elena Margine, a student of Vin Crespi, won in 2007.
Saturday, Jan 5 2008
Capturing Large Molecule Fish with Small Molecule Bait
The groups of Paul Weiss and Anne Andrews have designed a molecular capture surface that can catch large molecular "fish" with small molecular "bait." A single layer of molecules that resists biomolecule binding is first self-organized onto a gold substrate. This film has inherent defects: these form widely spaced holes into which the tethered "bait" molecules can insert themselves. When the resulting surface is exposed to different proteins, only those with high affinity for the bait bind to the surface. The small bait could be serotonin, a neurotransmitter important in depression and anxiety, and the large fish antibodies. In the future, this type of surface will be used to capture brain receptor proteins or synthetic sensors. The image shows a related structure, wherein stripes of serotonin have been patterned onto the substrate.
Tuesday, Dec 18 2007
Pablo Laguna elected to the Mexican Academy of Sciences
Professor Pablo Laguna is one of four international members elected to the Acedemia Mexicana de Ciencias in 2007. The Academia Mexicana de Ciencias is the Mexican equivalent of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences. The Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, founded in 1959, is an organization of the most distinguished scientists working in diverse institutions in Mexico, as well as Corresponding Members in other countries who are prominent in their disciplines and have contributed in various ways to the development of research in Mexico. A ceremony to celebrate the occasion is planned for March 2008 at Dr. Laguna's alma mater, the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana - Iztapalapa in Mexico City.
