Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

Fall 2020 ESSC Brown Bag Series with Lara Fowler, Penn State Law, Institutes of Energy and Environment 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/97448097169

Pyrite Oxidation in Rocks: From Atomic Observation to Global Implications, Xin Gu

The Student Farm, established as a one-acre educational farm pilot program in 2016, has engaged thousands of students and community members in learning about food systems, agriculture, and sustainability. The farm is now actively expanding to three and a half acres, and establishing infrastructure for four-season growing and education. This talk will provide an overview of the history and future plans, with a focus on the student leadership, engagement, and individual and collective agency that are the heart of the program.

Citrus greening (aka Huanglongbing, HLB) caused by the phloem-limited, fastidious α-proteobacteria 'Candidatus Liberibacter' spp. is the most devastating citrus disease in the world.  Harnessing the beneficial potential of native microbiota may be one of the few logistically and economically potential solutions for controlling HLB. We investigated the effect of management practices on HLB control via changes in soil microbiota, and used this information to develop a synthetic microbial community (SynCom) with a stable and predictable outcome in the field.

Jing-ke Weng, Massachusetts of Institute of Technology on September 14, 2020 @ 12:10 pm to 01:10 pm via Zoom Contact Ying Gu yug13@psu.edu

NASA’s next-generation laser altimeter mission, the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), launched on 15 September 2018, carrying the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) as its sole payload.  ICESat-2 is the planned successor of the ICESat mission, which was on orbit from 2003 to 2009; ICESat-2 was designated as a top priority in the NASA Earth Science Decadal Survey in 2007.  ATLAS is a photon-counting lidar that directs laser beams (532 nm) at the Earth’s surface, fires a stream of light 10,000 times per second, and measures the distance between t

Tailocin and antibiotic persistence in a model plant pathogenic bacterium

Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy (EEEP) seminar: The Impact of China’s Place-based Environmental Regulations on its Hog Industry and Water Quality: A Synthetic Difference-in-differences Approach Wendong Zhang, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Iowa State University; affiliated with the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development

One of the least understood aspects in atmospheric chemistry is how urban emissions influence the formation of natural organic aerosols, which affect Earth’s energy budget. The Amazon rainforest, during its wet season, is one of the few remaining places on Earth where atmospheric chemistry transitions between preindustrial and urban-influenced conditions. Here, we integrate insights from several laboratory measurements and simulate the formation of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) in the Amazon using a high-resolution chemical transport model.

Fall 2020 ESSC Brown Bag Series with Colin Zarzycki, 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/98425157146

Joshua Garber, Penn State, will present The Punctuated Continuum of Plate Tectonics Revealed by Global Igneous Rocks

Join the A Multiscale Approach to Managing Forests for Birds and Other Wildlife webinar and learn about the unique “power” of birds as barometers of forest health. This webinar was approved for Society of American Foresters CFE credits, Master Gardener Update Training, and may qualify for other credits.

Esther Ngumbi, University of Illinois on September 4, 2020, 11:10 AM - 12:00 PM Seminars will be hosted by Zoom. A link will be provided https://ento.psu.edu/events/seminar-title-tba-66 the week of the seminar.

The Tick Webinar Series aims to educate the public about tick species and identification, vector-borne diseases, tick ecology, and much more. Join the Vector-Borne Disease Extension Team for this informative series to learn how to keep your home and animals safe!  

Informal discussions of wind energy research and education at Penn State, with the intent of engendering new projects and collaborations. To join, please email your name and department/unit/organization to iee@psu.edu.  

Meteorology Colloquium with Alexandra Jahn  

Methane emissions from the natural gas supply chain have recently been recognized as a major source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. A wide array of potential abatement measures suggests strong efficiency benefits of employing emissions pricing to mitigate them. However, comprehensively monitoring methane emissions from natural gas infrastructure is prohibitively costly at this time. This presentation outlines a novel sampling-based approach to applying emissions pricing in a setting where pollution is costly – but not impossible – to measure.

Evolution by natural selection occurs when the frequencies of genetic variants change because individuals differ in Darwinian fitness components such as survival or reproductive success. Differential fitness has been demonstrated in field studies of many organisms, but our ability to quantitatively predict allele frequency changes from fitness measurements remains unclear. Here, we characterize natural selection on millions of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genome of the annual plant Mimulus guttatus.

Biologically Inspired Mass Spectrometry: Keeping Protein Assemblies Intact and Native BMB Seminar Series Dr. Neil Kelleher, Walter and Mary E. Glass Professor of Molecular Biosciences, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Chemistry, Feinberg School of Medicine Professor of Medicine,

Since the dawn of human civilization, technological breakthroughs have catalyzed many social/political revolutions. Some even impacted other species. Although Homo sapiens is not the strongest species, tools and fire allowed it to become the alpha species that has systematically exploited or wiped out other species, including many that are much stronger than them. I will present several historical and contemporary examples that illustrate the dark side of science and technology.