Health & Medicine, Society & Culture

Focus on research: Solitary confinement is bad for the brain

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by Jordan Gaines Lewis

Editor’s note: The following article originally appeared on The Conversation on July 2, 2015. The fourth season of Orange is the New Black was released on Friday, June 17, 2016. 

The inmates of Litchfield Penitentiary, the fictional setting for the Netflix TV series Orange is the New Black, are not shy women.

They’ve landed in prison for murder, fraud, stalking, drug-smuggling, theft, and political activism. They do illegal activities behind the officers’ backs. They make their opinions known loud and clear to one another. And they’re not opposed to throwing a few punches, if duty calls.

But all will cease if you threaten to send them to the SHU. Why?

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Science & Technology

How DNA testing ID’ed the last of the Romanovs

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The Adventures in Genomics video series — produced by Illumina, a life sciences technology company — highlights the many discoveries and benefits of “next-generation” DNA sequencing. This recent episode tells the story of how, with the help of this powerful tool,  forensic scientist Mitch Holland helped to solve the nearly century-old mystery of where exactly the last member of the Russian royal family ended up.  Continue reading How DNA testing ID’ed the last of the Romanovs →

Earth & Environment, Research|Penn State magazine

Optical illusions and the view from space

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Take a good look at the photo below. Shot from a satellite, it shows a section of the Grand Canyon, with the dark ribbon of the Colorado River winding through it. Notice anything “off” about the image? Especially in the upper portion and in the area of the big hairpin turn at lower right?

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Google Earth image courtesy Sonny Harman

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Science & Technology

Focus on research: How might drone racing drive innovation?

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By Jack Langelaan

Over the past 15 years, drones have progressed from laboratory demonstrations to widely available toys. Technological improvements have brought ever-smaller components required for flight stabilization and control, as well as significant improvements in battery technology. Capabilities once restricted to military vehicles are now found on toys that can be purchased at Wal-Mart.

Small cameras and transmitters mounted on a drone even allow real-time video to be sent back to the pilot. For a few hundred dollars, anyone can buy a “first person view” (FPV) system that puts the pilot of a small drone in a virtual cockpit. The result is an immersive experience: Flying an FPV drone is like Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia flying a speeder bike through the forests of Endor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wSG3m4VNlo?wmode=transparent&start=0

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Science & Technology

Robots to the refuse

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If you long for the sort of space-age future once envisioned on the Jetsons, here’s one to watch: a robot-drone combo that could soon make garbage pick-up automatic.

ROAR, which stands for Robot-based Autonomous Refuse handling, is a joint project of the Volvo Group in collaboration with a Swedish waste-recycling company and engineering students at two Swedish universities and Penn State.

“Within Volvo Group we foresee a future with more automation,” says Per-Lage Götvall, Volvo Patent Coordination Manager. “This project provides a way to stretch the imagination and test new concepts to shape transport solutions for tomorrow.” The concept the ROAR team came up with is shown in this video.

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