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The Big Picture

Penn Staters are making a world of difference in support of the University’s teaching, research, and service mission.

Take a moment to look inside this special edition of IT News. We call it the IT News Focus because each issue explores a specific topic, idea, area, or trend making an impact across Penn State or the nation.

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Bryan Swistock, who helped create the app, is a water resources educator from Penn State Extension.

Safe to drink

App is helping Pennsylvania homeowners solve water problems

December 04, 2014 | Lauren Ingram

Turning on the tap to get a glass of water, brush your teeth or take a shower shouldn't be a guessing game. A metallic taste, sulfuric smell or unsightly residue can not only ruin a cold drink, but can also be a hazard to health and home.

To combat this water dilemma, a group of water specialists and educators from Penn State Extension developed a mobile app called H2OSolutions to help Pennsylvania homeowners discern the ins-and-outs of managing private water systems: any wells,...

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Students in Penn State's School of Music performing

Music in the key of (D)igital

A new degree option will allow students to specialize in music technology

December 05, 2014 | Katie Jacobs

As students in Penn State’s School of Music prepare for end-of-semester concerts and recitals, they’ll engage in the same rituals as musicians hundreds of years before them. They’ll clamp new reeds in their clarinets, run bars of resin along their violin bows and make sure all instruments are in tune and tip-top shape.

These traditions will never go away, but alongside music’s traditional world of pristine instruments, bright spotlights and hushed recitals is a newer, digital one —...

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Penn State User ID Log In page

The Penn State user ID

A brief history and a look forward

December 04, 2014 | Jennifer Struble

Everyone at Penn State has one. To date there are more than 168,500 at the University and each and every one is unique. Used multiple times daily, each one enables Penn Staters to check their University email, schedule courses, view semester grades and verify health information.

It’s the Penn State user ID, and even though it’s a critical part of Penn State information technology (IT), the reason behind its inception and continued use remains a mystery to most.

“The user ID...

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Soundbite
December 04, 2014

Online tool is first to help parents, pediatricians assess newborn weight loss

A new online tool called the Newborn Weight Tool, or Newt, was developed by Dr. Ian Paul, a professor of pediatrics and public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine and a pediatrician at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. The tool is available for free at www.newbornweight.org and helps parents determine worrisome amounts of weight loss in breastfed newborns so babies can get the interventions they need to be healthy. The tool could also give many new mothers the confidence to continue breastfeeding, the optimal form of feeding after birth.

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Soundbite
December 04, 2014

Google Glass a good fit for Penn State Erie class

Pelin Bicen, an assistant professor of marketing in the Black School of Business at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College uses a Google Glass-inspired development model to challenge students in her Innovation and New Product Development course to focus not only on developing a product that a customer may want but also developing a market for it during the process.

 

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Soundbite
December 04, 2014

Cyber Santa connects with patients

Many children will have to spend the holidays in hospitals. At Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital, Santa got to video chat with and spread cheer to young patients.

view video
Soundbite
November 26, 2014

Technology training opportunities through Dec. 12

Though the winter break is almost here, there are still a lot of free technology workshops available. December will feature workshops on ANGEL, Microsoft Office, image editing on iPads and more. And for those who can’t brave the winter cold, there are a lot of free online technology training sessions, too.

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Soundbite
November 26, 2014

Web Conference at Penn State announces keynotes

President and chief marketing officer of Sterling Brands, author, educator and strategist Debbie Millman, and web designer, speaker, writer and co-developer of Pattern Lab, Brad Frost, are two of four keynotes slated to present at the 18th annual Web Conference at Penn State. This year's conference, "Design the Future," is scheduled for June 22 and 23, 2015, at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel at University Park. A full day of workshops, presented by Josh Clark and Ray Villalobos, will follow and conclude the conference on June 24.

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Soundbite
November 21, 2014

Students earn $30,000 after pitch for potential social media app

Three Penn State students earned $30,000 in an international conference competition coordinated by Aish HaTorah, an apolitical network of Jewish educational centers in 35 branches on five continents. The students’ winning idea, called "Who Jew Know," focused on a college campus-based social media app for Jewish students.

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Soundbite
November 20, 2014

Rice try

According to iCracked and iDropped, the idea that you can magically dry out your phone by burying it in a baggie of Uncle Ben's Instant Rice is just a myth. The damage doesn’t happen because the water is jangling around inside the phone, it happens when water shorts out the internal circuits. When your phone goes for a quick dip, your best option is to power down, unplug it from any power source, dry it off and repower it. If it’s been fully submerged for more than a few seconds, though, odds are it will need professional attention.

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image of the 3D printer

Dreaming in 3-D

Students in Penn State's 3-D Printing Club are turning ideas into objects 

November 19, 2014 | Lauren Ingram

Taylor Hornung, a graduate student studying mechanical engineering, rummages through a cardboard box and proudly pulls out a cobalt blue Nittany Lion Shrine, followed by a chess rook and owl figurine. It's a seemingly ordinary assortment of plastic trinkets, yet these objects are not your average baubles. They were all created using 3-D printers by students in Penn State's 3-D Printing Club.

The students not only printed each object — 0.25-millimeter layer by 0.25-millimeter layer —...

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micrograph of Ebola virus budding from the surface of a Vero cell

Connecting across borders

A nurse brings her experience with Ebola to a Penn State MOOC

November 19, 2014 | Katie Jacobs

The man watched the nurses rush by, scanning their feet and looking for a particular pair of black-and-white polka dot Wellington boots that belonged to Danielle Ballantyne, his nurse. He’d already been waiting in the Ebola Management Center for an hour, but he was prepared to wait longer.

He needed to speak with her.

After waiting another half hour, the man finally saw the polka dot boots. He waved Ballantyne down — he’d been declared cured of Ebola and was free to go home....

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a female teacher with 2 students

I, Bully

Penn State team uses artificial intelligence to help teachers deal with bullies

November 19, 2014 | Katie Jacobs

A 12-year-old boy named Alex sits on a school bus, trying desperately to shield himself from the punches thrown at him by a kid in the next seat. The blows come after his tormentors already threatened to break his bones and scared off the few friends he did have.

Alex’s crime? A wide nose, mouth that droops down at the corners and perhaps a little social awkwardness. It’s a scene in the documentary “Bully,” and one that’s often repeated in schools across America.

Bullying has...

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craig parrott flying a drone

Penn State crop educator explores drone-driven crop management

Grant enables Penn State Cooperative Extension to evaluate drone technology

November 18, 2014 | Julie Eble

A flock of pigeons flies over the soybean field where J. Craig Williams is standing. He reaches down and rips off a brown pod from one of the withered plants and splits it open. Grabbing a tiny bean between his calloused fingers, he flips it up into his mouth and bites down. “You want them to crack or pop between your teeth,” he says while chewing on the brown bean. “That’s how you know when they’re mature and ready for harvest.”

Williams, a Penn State Cooperative Extension dairy and...

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Soundbite
November 18, 2014

Bilinguals have stronger, faster brains than the rest of us

Penn State researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure how their subjects’ brains changed while learning a new language and found there is evidence that language-learning actually sharpens the brain by changing its mechanics.

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Soundbite
November 17, 2014

Penn State Lunar Lion Team to be featured on 'Higher Education in Focus'

Members of the Penn State Lunar Lion Team will join Penn State President Eric J. Barron and WPSU-TV’s Patty Satalia during the next episode of “Higher Education in Focus” at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20 on WPSU-TV.

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Soundbite
November 17, 2014

Web Conference 2015 to feature design workshops

The Web Conference at Penn State will feature Josh Clark, author and designer specializing in mobile design, strategy and user experience, and Ray Villalobos, author and teacher at lynda.com, who will present workshops at Web 2015: Design the Future.

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Soundbite
November 17, 2014

Researchers tackle social networking privacy gaps

Researchers at Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology and the University of Kansas have partnered in an effort to reduce the gap between perceived and actual privacy for users of social networks.

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Soundbite
November 17, 2014

Campuses to benefit from Penn State Center relocation, technology upgrades

The Penn State Center and Extension are relocating their spaces and targeting an April 2015 move-in to the Energy Innovation Center in the heart of Pittsburgh. This relocation will include many new changes, including a One Button Studio and a Mirror app.

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Soundbite
November 17, 2014

Penn State joins technology consortium Unizin

Penn State is broadening its digital learning horizon with its new partnership with Unizin. The partnership will allow the University to share educational content with other consortium members.

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