Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations and Its Benefits webinar will introduce Ryan Steadley, the Executive Director of STRONGER, an acronym for State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations. STRONGER is a multi-stakeholder nonprofit organization whose mission is to enhance protection of human health and the environment by educating and providing services for the continuous improvement of state upstream oil and gas regulatory programs.

Decoding Enhancer Function In The Developing Mammalian Brain with Alexander Nord, University of California, Davis

Civil and Environmental Engineering Virtual Seminar Series: Scientific Machine Learning for Efficient Computational Design of Engineering Systems with Hadi Meidani, Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This talk will detail the methodology used to generate a physics based country-wide probabilistic flood and hurricane risk model comprised of 50,000 years of statistically simulated precipitation and hurricane events.  This model is appropriate for use in establishing material risk at high resolution in the continental US (10m x 10m resolution), a model which is in use by the insurance industry and by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).  In addition to providing general comments on the methodology, we will also discuss how climate change effects losses and model verifi

The short-term interests of some financial actors can conflict with the long-term objectives of companies. In this presentation we explore the world of activist hedge funds. Results from a series of studies show that activist hedge funds unequivocally detract from the pursuit of business sustainability. Activist hedge funds tend to target more socially responsible companies, including those with more demographically diverse boards.

Madagascar figures prominently in debates over contemporary and past human exploitation of island biomes. It has long been argued that initial human arrival on Madagascar precipitated catastrophic changes in local ecologies, including, famously, the extinction of a suite of megafauna. Despite this starkly portrayed shift from an uninhabited island to one devastated by human settlement, our diachronic understanding of Madagascar’s coupled human-natural systems remains limited.

Fall 2020 ESSC Brown Bag Series with Xingchao Chen (XC), Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, Penn State To maintain social distancing as much as possible during the novel coronavirus pandemic, seminars will be conducted via Zoom this semester. A hyperlink to the Zoom meeting for each seminar is given in the schedule below in the row corresponding to that seminar. Unless otherwise noted, all seminars are from 11:15am - 12:30pm Zoom link: https://psu.zoom.us/j/98035610152

Amanda Hendrix, Planetary Science Institute to present Using UV Spectroscopy to study Solar System Worlds

Graduate Student Poster Session is part of the Penn State Future of Bioenergy and Biorenewables Workshop, presented by Penn State Center for Biorenewables

Throughout the country, Engineers and developers are facing the same challenge; balancing project development needs while meeting the stormwater management requirements. Over the past few decades, stormwater management requirements have become more complex as flooding, drought, and ecological damage to watersheds have become more apparent. Although there are regional nuances, stormwater management goals can be generalized into three main categories: volume control, rate control, and water quality.

The Water Insights Seminar Series engages the University and broader community in collaborative learning and discussion about critical water challenges from local to global scales.   All seminars are scheduled for Tuesdays from 12:00 - 1:00 pm and will be held via Zoom. Zoom room open from 11:30 for setup and log-in. Meetings (video, audio, and chat) will be recorded. No waiting room, and no passcode. Participants will be muted automatically upon entry.

This year's Materials Day will be highlighted by the theme The Convergence of Materials and Life. Materials and devices on and inside the body will lead to better diagnostics, monitoring, and therapy. Join us virtually for a unique and informative Materials Day experience.

The effects of climate change are already being felt across the Pennsylvania in the form of more severe weather, flooding, changes in our forests and other ecosystems, and human health impacts. How we respond over the next decade will determine how severe those impacts become, and a key to our success will be the leaders of tomorrow – today’s college students. Please join Secretary Dunn, Mr. Czarnecki, Mr. Newton, and other DCNR staff in a conversation about Pennsylvania’s changing climate and your role in helping to shape our future.

Part of the EESI EarthTalks series “Changemaking made EESI: Fostering inclusive research communities in the Earth and environmental sciences”

Hairy root disease (HRD) caused by Agrobacterium rhizogenes is a problematic disease leading to substantial losses in marketable yield in hydroponically grown tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum). Growers use strict hygiene protocols and sanitation, relying on hydrogen peroxide and other sanitizers to clean hydroponic systems after disease outbreaks, however, this is an expensive and time-consuming process. Biological control is emerging as a possible solution to this troubling problem.

In 2008, after an alarming number of Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) aviation accidents, the FAA was threatening to disallow commercial aviation over Alaska because the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Alaska did not satisfy minimum safety requirements for flying under conditions of poor visibility using instrument flight rules (IFR).  Because its topographic base layer was also not accurate enough to support orthorectification of aerial or satellite imagery, Alaska was the only state with no statewide digital orthophotos and had never been mapped at any scale to national mapping

The presentation will describe how the concept of electromagnetically soft and hard surfaces and metamaterial horns came about. I will also discuss practical antennas enabled by these EM techniques, as well as future opportunities and challenges in antenna and RF design. 

Penn State’s Center for Energy Law and Policy is hosting a series of webinars this semester focusing on the economic, human health, legal and industry aspects of Pennsylvania joining RGGI.

Harnessing plant-fungal interactions for enhanced plant growth and protection Imtiaz Ahmad, Penn State​

Energy for the Future Seminar: Sustainable Production and the Circular Economy by Nabil Z. Nasr, Assoc. Provost for Academic Affairs and Director of Golisano Institute for Sustainability; Rochester Institute of Technology; CEO-The REMADE Institute Rochester, New York