Read the latest news about research conducted by investigators in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Our faculty and students are continually advancing technology, creating solutions and expanding knowledge with new and innovative research.
Urbanization not always bad for food and land use diversity
11/19/2021
11/19/2021
Widely accepted myths that urbanization negatively impacts food and land use biodiversity are incorrect, according to a team of researchers who developed a framework for evaluating this intersection. Their results could also affect nutrition and food insecurity in urban areas.
Penn State Breazeale Reactor expands in size and in opportunities
11/18/2021
11/18/2021
Penn State's Radiation Science & Engineering Center and the Ken and Mary Alice Lindquist Department of Nuclear Engineering broke ground on a 10,000-square-foot, $9.5 million expansion of the Breazeale Reactor on Oct. 21.
Climate uncertainty colors flood risk assessment
11/18/2021
11/18/2021
Understanding how climate change will affect the flooding of rivers may become easier with a new framework for assessing flood risk that's been developed by an interdisciplinary team from Penn State.
Can defects turn inert materials into useful, active ones?
11/18/2021
11/18/2021
Demonstrating that a material thought to be always chemically inert, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), can be turned chemically active holds potential for a new class of catalysts with a wide range of applications, according to an international team of researchers.
Study challenges standard ideas about piezoelectricity in ferroelectric crystals
11/17/2021
11/17/2021
For years, researchers believed that the smaller the domain size in a ferroelectric crystal, the greater the piezoelectric properties of the material. However, recent findings by Penn State researchers have raised questions about this standard rule.
Coal creation mechanism uncovered
11/11/2021
11/11/2021
The mechanism behind one of the first stages of coal creation may not be what has long been thought, according to a team of researchers who found that microbes were responsible for coal formation and production of methane. The finding has implications for methane fuel recovery from some coal fields.
Engineers use deep learning to predict earthquakes in the lab
11/09/2021
11/09/2021
A team of Penn State researchers led by Parisa Shokouhi, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, demonstrated that deep learning algorithms, which train with data to generate predictions, could make the ability to predict future earthquakes more attainable.
AI behind deepfakes may power materials design innovations, scientists say
11/08/2021
11/08/2021
The person staring back from the computer screen may not actually exist, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) capable of generating convincing but ultimately fake images of human faces. Now this same technology may power the next wave of innovations in materials design, according to Penn State scientists.
Study explores how climate change may affect rain in U.S. Corn Belt
10/25/2021
10/25/2021
Air humidity is more important than soil moisture in influencing whether it rains in the United States Corn Belt, an agricultural area in the Midwest, stretching from Indiana to Nebraska and responsible for more than 35% of the world's most important grain crop, according to a new study by Penn State researchers.
Monitoring glucose levels, no needles required
10/22/2021
10/22/2021
Penn State researchers created a prototype device that could lead to less intrusive glucose monitoring could becomming the norm.