Latest News

May 29, 2018

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.

May 28, 2018

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by traumatic military experiences is associated with feelings of anxiety, anger, sadness and/or guilt. New Penn State research is evaluating how PTSD symptoms increase risks for academic difficulties as well.

May 16, 2018

Hillary Peterson is every brown marmorated stink bug's worst nightmare. The Penn State doctoral degree student does not intend to rest professionally until she and other entomologists devise a way to reduce burgeoning populations of the invasive insect, originally from Asia, which are damaging crops and aggravating people. The goal of their research is to develop biological controls to interfere with the pest's reproduction.

May 15, 2018

Art, culture, sport, and a new kind of volunteer bring old and young together to strengthen the social fabric.

May 14, 2018

Penn State Extension Master Gardeners across the state are helping to restore bee populations through their Pollinator Preferences and Pollinator-Friendly Gardener Certification programs.

May 14, 2018

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

May 14, 2018

Rob Crassweller, professor of horticulture and extension tree-fruit specialist in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, has received the 2018 American Society for Horticultural Science Outstanding Extension Educator Award.

May 9, 2018

Use of the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 could help to breed cacao trees that exhibit desirable traits such as enhanced resistance to diseases, according to Penn State plant scientists.

May 1, 2018

It is well known that certain wasps suppress the immune systems of their caterpillar hosts so they can successfully raise their young within those hosts. Now researchers at Penn State show that, in addition to suppressing caterpillar immune systems, wasps also suppress the defense mechanisms of the plants on which the caterpillars feed, which ensures that the caterpillars will continue to provide a suitable environment for the wasps' offspring.

May 1, 2018

The cruel truth is that throughout the white-tailed deer's range only about half of all fawns live to see their first birthday — most are killed by predators. However, they have a much better chance of surviving if they are born in farmland rather than in forest, according to Penn State researchers, who collaborated with Pennsylvania Game Commission deer biologists.

April 25, 2018

Pennsylvania's black bear population is experiencing a mange epidemic, and a Penn State research team will work with the state Game Commission to gain a better understanding of the disease and develop strategies to manage it.

April 23, 2018

Hundreds of students and judges bustled about in the HUB-Robeson Center Wednesday evening for the 2018 Undergraduate Research Exhibition on the University Park campus of Penn State. From musical presentations in the Flex Theater posters in Alumni and Heritage halls, the University's best were promoting the fruits of their academic and artistic pursuits.

April 18, 2018

Andrew Read, Evan Pugh University Professor of Biology and Entomology in the Eberly College of Science and the College of Agricultural Sciences, has been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

April 16, 2018

Grape growers, orchardists, nursery operators, homeowners and others in southeastern Pennsylvania are bracing for the spring emergence of the spotted lanternfly, an invasive insect from Asia that appeared for the first time in the United States in Berks County nearly four years ago. Penn State Extension educators and College of Agricultural Sciences researchers are working with state and federal agriculture officials to stop the pest's spread.

April 13, 2018

Emma Rosenthal, a doctoral student in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, will be able to advance her research interests in plant pathology after receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation. The funding will support Rosenthal's research on bacterial leaf spot, a disease that infects lettuce plants.

April 9, 2018

An innovation that could have a huge impact on water quality problems in the United States, a system capable of removing almost all phosphorus from stored livestock manure, was developed by a team of researchers from Penn State and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service.

April 4, 2018

Manipulating the temperature and the length of time under which cocoa beans are roasted can simultaneously preserve and even boost the potency of some bioactive and antioxidant compounds while protecting desired sensory aspects of chocolate, according to Penn State researchers.

April 2, 2018

A mobile app designed by Penn State researchers to help farmers and others diagnose crop diseases has earned recognition from one of the world's tech giants. PlantVillage, developed by a team led by David Hughes, associate professor of entomology and biology, was the subject of a keynote video presented at Google's TensorFlow Development Summit 2018, held March 30 in Mountain View, California.

April 1, 2018

Researcher, author and educator Kevin McGowan will recount the results of his 30-year study of more than 2,500 individual crows -- including their home and family life, flock life, and crow-human interactions -- at 5 p.m. on April 4 in 112 Forest Resources Building on Penn State's University Park campus.

April 1, 2018

Research in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences aims to fortify foods people frequently eat — eggs and chicken — with heart-healthy, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids.

March 29, 2018

Leading the worldwide effort to get a better handle on methane emissions from animals, an international consortium of researchers devised more accurate models to estimate the amount of the potent greenhouse gas produced by dairy cattle.

March 28, 2018

Investing in public education may boost upward economic mobility — and ease income inequality, something that is becoming a big concern for economists and policymakers in the United States.

March 27, 2018

The Center for Pollinator Research at Penn State, in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Davis; the University of Minnesota; and Dickinson College will receive more than $2 million from the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research and the United States Department of Agriculture to translate basic research into online decision support tools to help beekeepers and land managers maintain and expand populations of managed and wild bees.

March 23, 2018

Jason Kaye, professor of soil biogeochemistry, is the recipient of the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences' 2017 Alex and Jessie C. Black Award for Excellence in Research.

March 23, 2018

Kathleen Sexsmith, assistant professor of rural sociology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, is the recipient of the college's 2017 Roy C. Buck Faculty Award, which recognizes the best article accepted or published by a refereed scholarly journal in the social sciences within the past two years.

March 19, 2018

Working with mushroom growers and residents in southern Chester County, Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences is ramping up ongoing research efforts to alleviate mushroom phorid fly infestations in southeastern Pennsylvania.

March 15, 2018

Valentine's Day may have passed for this year, but if you're in love with sweet, firm, antioxidant-rich — and award-winning — tomatoes that will perform well in your garden this season, you're in luck, thanks to a researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. "Valentine," a new variety of grape tomato that germinated in the breeding program of plant scientist Majid Foolad, now is available commercially after nearly two decades in development.

March 13, 2018

Millions of Americans will celebrate the St. Patrick's Day holiday this month with a "traditional" meal of corned beef and cabbage — but most won't pause to consider what makes the meat so distinctive or how it ended up being a tradition.

March 13, 2018

Carpenter ants infected with a specialized parasitic fungus are not subjected to aggression or isolation from their nest mates, and they continue to share in the colony's food resources until they leave the nest for the last time to die, according to a study led by Penn State researchers.

March 7, 2018

A good way to describe ramps, it has been said, is to note what they are not. Ramps are not leeks, nor are they scallions or shallots. Ramps look like scallions, but they're smaller and have one or two broad, flat leaves.