Cool Images, Big Potential: Startup Uses Lasers to Create 3D Imagery

A laser that creates a three-dimensional picture of a bee’s head may sound like an experiment being conducted in Dr. Evil’s super-secret volcano base, but this technology is blossoming right here at Penn State — and it has real-world applications for research in agriculture and horticulture.

The head of a yellow jacket
The head of a yellow jacket

At a recent talk at the Millennium Science Complex, Benjamin Hall, an undergraduate student in energy engineering working part-time in the laser lab of the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State, discussed the technique — and showed images and videos that rival most Hollywood special effects. By placing an object, such as a plant root, on a moveable platform that passes under a laser, researchers can vaporize the sample section by section. The technique creates a series of surface images, which Hall then processes with a software program to create three-dimensional interior and exterior — and unbelievably cool — images of the sample.  Continue reading Cool Images, Big Potential: Startup Uses Lasers to Create 3D Imagery

Eternal Life on Earth and in the Universe

I’m pretty sure I’ll never write my autobiography and I’m almost just as sure no one will write my biography unless I’m missing something.  I’ve written thousands of stories in 38 years as a science writer so I’ll remain on the web forever.  Doesn’t bother me.

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Roland Winkler, Leibnitz Institution of Astrophysics, Potsdam

Some people, without autobiographies or biographies, still end up memorialized in books, which is what recently happened to some Penn State faculty members from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

Another science writer, Lee Billings, wrote a book, “Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars,” which is about looking for other living, sentient beings in the universe.  This book ended up on my desk because I get sent this type of book from time to time.  I thought wow, I wonder if Jim Kasting, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences, was in the book.  Looked in the index and sure enough he was, as was his twin brother, wife and children.

Not only was he in the book, but nearly an entire chapter, “Out of Equilibrium” was about his work, very cool.

But I was actually sent the book because another faculty member, Michael Arthur, professor of geosciences, former department head and co-director of SolitudeCover2the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, was in the book.  That’s what the letter that came with the book said.  His chapter is “The Big Picture.”  I was puzzled.  Arthur is a sedimentary geologist.  He studies how rocks are formed, so I wasn’t quite sure how he fit into this book.  And the chapter talks about black shale, the Marcellus shale gas producing area and other petroleum and natural gas stuff.  In fact, another Penn State faculty member mentioned is Terry Engelder, professor of geoscience, who initially estimated how much gas was in the Marcellus.  I know, because I wrote that story.  But then I read on and realized that Arthur was using the Marcellus shale, the last shale oil/gas deposit to show no terrestrial plant inclusions — it was formed before life moved to land — as an example of the evolution of intelligent life.  And so the story moved from sea to land to animals of all kinds and finally to humans.  Intelligent life one presumes.  Although Lee refers to it as the sixth major extinction event, suggesting that humans in their agrarian onslaught homogenized the planet and wiped out myriad species.  So the history of the Earth leads to the search for intelligent life in the universe.

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Frank Lewecke

Kasting is known for his work on figuring out where, in the orbits around suns, habitable planets can exist.  These planets must be at a distance from their suns so that throughout the time it takes for life to evolve to intelligent beings, water remains liquid — at least most of the time.  So no totally frozen planets and no planets too hot for liquid water.  This becomes complicated because suns change their power through times.  Kasting also does work on the “faint young sun” paradox, which explains that the sun was weaker when young and grew stronger.  This moves the habitable zone further out as a sun ages.

So Kasting and Arthur are memorialized in this book. One, for looking far into the universe and future, and one for looking far into the past and beneath the earth.  Both trying to understand how we got where we are and how some other intelligent being might get there too.

There’s Fame, and then There’s Fame

The goal of most university faculty is to publish their research in a peer reviewed journal. This brings notice among their peers, sometimes fame and sometimes just a nod. Rarely, in the complex science, technology and engineering world of today, does a journal paper elicit much notice outside of the specific academic discipline.

Michael MannEven when I write a news story about a published paper, fame is usually very brief, no more than three to five days and the researcher goes back to the lab and ongoing work. Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame is usually spot on.

But sometimes, for good or bad, a paper has a more sizeable impact. No one knows this more than Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and director, Earth System Science Center here at Penn State. Long, long ago, on April 23, 1998, Mann and Raymond S. Bradley, University ofMassachusetts, Amherst, and Malcolm Hughes, Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, University ofArizona, published “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries” in Nature, the foremost British science journal. I’m sure none of these men thought it was that unusual a paper. But it was.

Out of that paper came more than a decade of discussion, anti-global warming warfare and personal attacks as well as the certainly recognizable “hockey stick graph.”

Hockey_StickThe hijacking of e-mails written by Mann and others in the climate field by still unknown hackers, heated up attacks and brought the general public, advocacy groups on both sides and anti-global warming anti-science groups out in force.

Lofty bodies as diverse as the U.S. House of Representatives, the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Senate and Penn State among others investigated Mann, his research and in every case agreed that the research was solid. Not that this served to end the attacks.  Because Mann once worked at a Virginia university, Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, began a witch hunt against climate scientists and specifically against Mann.

The travails of anti-climate science attacks are chronicled in Mann’s book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the front lines,” (Columbia University Press, 2012).

So, Michael Mann became famous, gave testimony before Congress, interviews to myriad print publications and appeared on TV. He also had YouTube video animations that made fun of him and was called every name in the book. Through all this, he continued to do research on global warming and climate change, publishing papers in Nature, Nature Geoscience and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for example. In 2013, the University named him a Distinguished Professor.

This month, Bloomberg News announced it’s top 50 most influential people. They divide the 50 into Bankers, Money Managers, Policy Makers, Power Brokers and Thinkers. Bloomberg is a business oriented new organization so it is no surprise these are the categories or that 48 of the 50 are either business people, economists or money managers of some kind. The 49th is a U.S. Attorney suing people for insider trading.

Even in the Thinker category, while many are academics, all but one are economists. Only Michael Mann does not fit this description, but he is one of the ten Thinkers, and cited for responding “to climate change deniers on his RealClimate blog.”

So, there’s fame, and then there is fame. Not all publicity is good publicity, but if one is willing to slog through the stinking marshes, maybe, just maybe you can come out the other side smelling like a rose.

The Last Word on the First Grad Degree

The start of an academic year is traditionally a time to look forward. In this blog entry, I choose to look back. Maybe it’s the historian in me.

In 2012-13 Penn State observed the 150th anniversary of the awarding of its first graduate degree.

CAlfred
C. Alfred Smith

One hundred fifty years ago, the academic year began in February and ran until early December, so the college was not even in session when, on January 3, 1863, President Evan Pugh penned a kind of “to whom it may concern” note of 202 words certifying that C. Alfred Smith “possesses a very good general knowledge of practical, analytical, and pharmaceutical chemistry and will be able to work successfully at any ordinary chemical work.”

Continue reading The Last Word on the First Grad Degree

Can You Spare a Paradigm?

I realized early that, as a research writer, I shouldn’t get too attached to my favorite paradigms, or my cherished biases.

Paradigms — those commonly accepted truths — are tested all the time in my line of work. Researchers are too remorseless in their probing and prodding for the truth to allow sacred cows to roam free in the wide-open pastures of commonly accepted knowledge.

During the past  weeks, I saw Penn State researchers corral in a few paradigms, some that I accepted as obvious truths.

Continue reading Can You Spare a Paradigm?