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These awards should be used for presenting original research at national or international meetings. Please note that either an oral or poster presentation is required to be eligible for these funds. One travel award per degree is allowed. Awards are limited to $500 for domestic travel and international travel.

Gypsum recycled from manufacturing and construction waste has gained popularity as a bedding source for the dairy industry. However, when gypsum — a source of sulfate — finds its way into low-oxygen manure-storage facilities via removal as soiled bedding, this innocuous product can turn into a deadly gas with a few moves of an agitation device, a dangerous threat that researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences believe can be counteracted with an additive.

While current training for food safety and sanitation usually incorporates high-technology presentations, such as videos and slide shows, there is still a need for low-tech approaches, according to Penn State researchers.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) today announced 14 grants totaling approximately $10 million for research to help sustain healthy populations of pollinators, which are crucial to the nation’s food security and environmental health. The funding is made possible through NIFA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program, authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill. Among the awarded projects is Distinguished Professor of Entomology Christina Grozinger's research on adapting beekeeping practices to landscape-based stressors.

A collection of bacteria in the gut may use a cell-signaling protein to help regulate vitamin D, a key nutrient that, among other benefits, is involved with building and maintaining bones, according to a team of researchers. In a study on mice, researchers found that microbiota — a community of microorganisms in the gut that can help digest food and maintain immune function — may regulate the metabolism of endocrine vitamin D through a protein called fibroblast growth factor 23, or FGF 23, said Margherita T. Cantorna, distinguished professor of molecular immunology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Climate projections indicate more warming will occur in the Northeast than other sections of the United States, and that has implications for corn crops and dairy farms in the region by 2050, researchers warn. While rising temperatures are not likely to cause serious reductions in corn crops in the northern and central parts of the Northeast, they threaten corn yields in the southern reaches of the region, according to Heather Karsten, associate professor of crop production ecology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Penn State researchers have joined forces with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to release the first app, called Nuru, to help African farmers recognize fall armyworm — a new and fast-spreading crop pest in sub-Saharan Africa — so that they can take immediate steps to destroy it and curb its spread.

An international team of researchers has discovered evidence of 27 previously unknown viruses in bees. The finding could help scientists design strategies to prevent the spread of viral pathogens among these important pollinators.

The spotted lanternfly is starting to sour the grape and wine industries in southeastern Pennsylvania, and research underway in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences aims to spoil the invasive pest's party.

An analysis of employment change in the state since 2001 suggests the existence of "two Pennsylvanias" during the period from 2001 to 2017, according to economists in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

A faculty team in Penn State's Department of Food Science is offering a novel microbiology workshop in June and July to visiting college students from around the Commonwealth and Puerto Rico. The workshop, hosted by the College of Agricultural Sciences, will include nine students from seven Pennsylvania institutions — Gettysburg College, Juniata College, Lafayette College, La Roche College, Mount Aloysius College, Saint Vincent College and Shippensburg University — and five students from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez.

Development of wound dressings made of semi-synthetic biomaterials will be the focus of a five-year, $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

As the emergence of the spotted lanternfly continues to threaten portions of Pennsylvania’s agricultural industry, two researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences who are studying the invasive insects joined colleagues from more than 20 universities on Capitol Hill today (June 6) to show members of Congress and their staffs the importance of funding agricultural research.

There is no such thing as utopia when it comes to food security, as millions of people around the world have limited food resources. One of those places is Cambodia in Southeast Asia, one of the world's poorest countries, where the rural poverty rate is 24 percent, and 40 percent of children younger than 5 are chronically malnourished, making them vulnerable to significant health problems.

At the least, wastewater from oil and gas drilling should be treated in a waste treatment facility before it is used on dirt roads to suppress dust or deice roads. At the best, affordable, nontoxic dust suppressants should be developed and used, according to a multidisciplinary team of researchers.

Zombie ants clamp on to aerial vegetation and hang for months spewing the spores of their parasitic fungi, but researchers noticed that they do not always clamp on to the same part of the plant. Now the researchers know that the choice of leaves or twigs is related to climate and that climate change forced the fungi to adapt to local conditions.

The six bundles of Holstein joy born at the Penn State Dairy Barns in April of last year — the outcome of a research project to improve genetic diversity in the breed — have garnered a fan following.

It’s such a simple gesture, a hand reaching out to stroke a cheek. Between friends and loved ones, it conveys caring, trust, tenderness. Between people who met just a few hours ago and who think they don’t have much in common, it can feel scary, threatening, too intimate.

When it comes to the importance of bees, Connie Schmotzer does not mince words.

Typhoid Mary may have infected a hundred or more people, but asymptomatic carriers of malaria infect far more people every year through mosquito vectors. An international team of researchers is working toward a way to identify malaria patients including infected individuals who show no malaria symptoms through mosquito vectors.