Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

Finding Flowers: Examining the intersections of pollinator conservation research and social justice Insect Biodiversity Center Sheila Colla, York University December 4, 2020 @ 11:00 am to 12:00 pm Seminars will be hosted by Zoom. A link will be provided here the week of the seminar.

Energy for the Future Seminar: The Raw Materials in the Sustainable Production of Lithium-ion Batteries within the Framework of Energy Transition by Dr. Alexandre Chagnes, Full Professor, École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie (ENSG), France

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of man-made chemicals first manufactured in the 1940s. These chemicals, now in widespread use, have been found in the blood of humans and animals worldwide. PFAS have a range of human health impacts including cancers, immune system effects, and endocrine disruption.    In this webinar, a panel of three experts will explain the PFAS problem from the perspective of human health, the environment, governmental response, and solutions. A Q&A session will follow. 

Cities have been the crucibles for experimentation for centuries. In response to the 1793 yellow fever outbreak, garbage removal and sanitation departments took hold in cities. The 1850's cholera outbreak helped spur the development of public health and urban planning. Now here we are in 2020, a year that has thrown so much in the way of our municipal leaders. In addition to a pandemic, the US has seen a movement for racial justice that parallels that of the 1960's.

Meteorology and Atmospheric Science Colloquium: IBHS Research: a Multi-Faceted Approach to Natural Hazard Damage by Tanya Brown-Giammanco, Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS)

Urbanization has led to a rapid decline in open space in the U.S. If an individual’s preferences are affected by their early-life experiences with nature, then the value people place on conservation may decline as nature disappears and more people lack childhood engagement in natural settings. This paper uses a choice experiment study to quantify the values adults in the U.S. Midwest would gain from a large grassland restoration near them and how those values vary with their childhood experiences.

Earth System Science Center (ESSC) Brown Bag Series: Penn State Carbon Negative (PSUCan): Accelerating the Drawdown of Greenhouse-Gas Emissions at Our University by Charles Anderson, Institutes of Energy and the Environment; Robert Cooper, Office of the Physical Plant; and Timothy White, Institutes of Energy and the Environment, Penn State

Geosciences Colloquium: Complexities of olivine crystallographic preferred orientation and implications for mantle seismic anisotropy by Rachel Bernard, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Geology, Amherst College

Emerging Concepts in Biomaterials This session is part of the Penn State Future of Bioenergy and Biorenewables Workshop, presented by Penn State Center for Biorenewables

Water Insights Seminar: Toilet to Field: Addressing Perceptions in the Age of Misinformation by Michael Mashtare, Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Penn State

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

Central Park birder Christian Cooper. George Floyd. Removal of Confederate Statues. Renaming of institutions. Reparations. Systemic Racism. What's "environment" got to do with it? How do we meet this moment? Drawing from her book, Black Faces, White Spaces, her relationships "in the field" and lived experience, Dr. Finney explores the complexities and contradictions of our past, the realities of our present, and the possibilities of our future as it relates to green space, race, and the power to shape the places we live in our own image.

State-of-the-art performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) procedures, such as FEMA P-58, generally treat buildings as “islands” with respect to modeling regional impacts and post-earthquake recovery. This talk presents an overview of recent research to advance direct simulation of regional impacts and recovery within a PBEE framework. Specifically, Dr. Baker will demonstrate work to scale single-building performance-based assessments to a regional scale.

Meteorology and Atmospheric Science Colloquium: Tropical Weather and the Myth of ‘Diabatic Heating’ Kerry Emanuel, Lorenz Center, MIT  

This paper examines the effects of three large, coal-fired power plant closures on student absences and achievement in the Chicago area. We find that schools near the plants experienced a 7 percent reduction in absences relative to those further away following the closures. Math achievement in these schools increased following the closures, although our estimates are imprecise. Using data on wind, air conditioning, and magnet schools, we show that schools with higher baseline pollution exposure experienced the greatest gains from the plant closures.

Addressing water quality in the Chesapeake and its watersheds, including Pennsylvania, has been a long-standing challenge. The need for further action has been highlighted by a recent set of lawsuits by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a set of states against the Environmental Protection Agency for its failure to address water quality concerns in Pennsylvania and New York.

Earth System Science Center (ESSC) Brown Bag Series: Investigating Interdecadal Variability in the North Atlantic Using a New Time-Evolving Self-Organizing Maps Method Sharon Gu, Ph.D. Graduate Student, Department of Meteorology & Atmospheric Science, Penn State https://psu.zoom.us/j/95545207606

The PHRC welcomes Brett C. Singer, staff scientist, head of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Systems and lead of the Indoor Environment Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as the 2020 Hankin Distinguished Lecturer. His lecture is entitled Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities for Indoor Air Quality in U.S. Homes. 

Department of Geosciences Colloquium: Pyrite oxidation in the global sulfur and oxygen cycles: Insight from triple oxygen isotopes of sulfate Jordon Hemingway, Geochemist, and Postdoctoral Fellow, Hoffman Laboratory, Harvard University https://psu.zoom.us/j/95676460061   

Feedstocks for the Future by Armen Kemanian, Michael Jacobson, Charlie Anderson  This session is part of the Penn State Future of Bioenergy and Biorenewables Workshop, presented by Penn State Center for Biorenewables