Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

Organisms living in temperate localities often experience changes in population size across seasons. These cyclic booms and busts have the potential to dramatically alter the genetic composition of populations through the joint action of natural selection and drift.

Diversity of viewpoints—across attributes such as ethnicity, gender, age and educational background, breeds innovation. Organizations have become more active in their efforts to hire and work with a broader societal group of people. Having a diverse workforce is a prerequisite to creating products, services, and business practices that can set a company apart and generate competitive advantage. At the global scale, diversity and inclusion allows organizations to adapt in an agile manner to the unique needs of different demographic groups, markets and cultures.

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

Approaches to disease management continue to involve biological controls however their inconsistent efficacy has limited in field application. Using complementary approaches to understand microbial interactions could help close this gap. Currently, my research examines microbe-microbe interactions at a population and whole community levels to understand antagonistic and suppressive traits that could potentially be exploited to reduce plant disease. Firstly, I aim to determine if bacteriocin production by bacterium provides a fitness benefit to bacteria in leaf apoplast.

Land and Water Revisited is a story about the relationship between humans and their environment as told by the people of the Teotihuacán Valley of México.

Geopolitics can be understood as an analytical category simultaneously for approaching the contemporary world order, as well as to interrogate sexuality and gender identity as it is produced through/with statecraft, and in the striving of sexually marginalized communities to create bodily security. Global governance, international human rights principles have failed to protect transgender cross border migrants. Simultaneously, the present epidemiological initiatives around the COVID19 pandemic is yet to fully address the impact of the pandemic upon the lives of LGBTQ communities.

Terry McGlynn, California State University Dominguez Hills

Welfare weights which assign a greater weight to the welfare of the rich are commonly used in regionally disaggregated climate-economy models. This paper considers two modelling alternatives which give equal weight to the welfare of all people living at particular time in order to identify the climate policy path which maximizes global human welfare.

Part of Gas Turbine Seminar Series, Navigating academia, industry, and government careers: Steve Csonka, Executive Director of CAAFI will discuss how/why the aviation industry is fostering the development of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) to help meet our industry’s sustainability objectives, and how the SAF can be derived from some very unique sources. Steve will also discuss his circuitous academic and career path, and how he has arrived at role that he finds unusually fulfilling and impactful, despite the smells. 

How can we manage teams to simultaneously improve inclusivity and leverage the power of diverse thought? This seminar will discuss practical tools for fostering a DEI culture in a coronavirus world in which team members connect virtually.

Perceptions of river health are strongly influenced by expectations regarding a natural river. Many observers expect clear water, a slightly sinuous river with pools and riffles, and some riparian trees. River health, however, is much more complicated and multifaceted. Dr. Wohl uses mountainous headwater rivers in Colorado to examine the influence of physical complexity on river health. Complexity can be described with respect to the stream bed, banks, cross-sectional form, and planform of the river and floodplain.

NASA/Goddard has an Interagency Agreement with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM, Dept. of Interior) to assess the feasibility of using satellite data to measure Air Quality (AQ) over the US continental shelf and adjacent coast. In May 2019 we conducted an oceanographic cruise on the Research Vessel Point Sur to collect trace gas measurements (O3, NO2, CH4, CO2, VOC, CO) and to validate satellite column NO2 over the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).

The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of regional governing entities, yet they are an entrenched part of our federalist system. Some regional governance operates at a point between the levels of local, state, and federal control. For example, local governments sometimes coordinate with each other (“horizontally”) to address urban sprawl or shared infrastructural issues. Other, more complex regional institutions involve both horizontal and vertical coordination, in which governments at one level work together but also implement federal mandates.

The rate at which data are being generated greatly exceeds our ability to analyze them. These developments are quickly leading toward a data-rich but knowledge-poor environment.

Frederik Simons, Princeton University to present Through the Ocean to the Mantle: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas  with a Fleet of Floating Seismic Robots

This seminar will present a broad overview of how plant: virus: vector interactions shape the development of plant diseases in agriculture, and how we can use these discoveries to improve plant health. Since plants are protected by several chemical and physical barriers, plant viruses enter their host cells either via vectors or though breaches in the plant cell wall. Vectors need to locate plants, land, probe and feed on their hosts, as well as to decide if the plants are suitable hosts for nutrition and reproduction. 

Evolution of Complex Traits: A Case Study in Plant Photosynthesis Plant Biology Karolina Heyduk, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Penn State graduate students who are interested in water scholarship and research are invited to attend a fall kick-off meeting for an emerging water student group. The online event is scheduled for 4 p.m. Oct. 16. Interested individuals must register to attend the meeting.

Sustainability Series for Commonwealth Employees The series is intended to give commonwealth employees opportunities to hear from subject matter experts and receive updates on each topic to enrich their knowledge while engaging in group conversations.  The series is intended to give commonwealth employees opportunities to hear from subject matter experts and receive updates on each topic to enrich their knowledge while engaging in group conversations. 

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.