The recent slowdown in climate warming is due, at least in part, to natural oscillations in the climate, according to a team of climate scientists, who add that these oscillations represent variability internal to the climate system. They do not signal any slowdown in human-caused global warming.

Earth and Environment

Earth and Environment

Ann Tarantino’s “Water Lab,” an exhibition of her work using water as both medium and subject, will be on display in the Borland Project Space, March 2 to 6, with a public reception and artist’s talk from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 5.

If you are an organic-crop producer in the Northeast or a farmer interested in transitioning to organic, there is a new resource available to help provide the research-based information you need to be successful. The newly published Penn State Organic Crop Production Guide is among the most comprehensive university-produced guides in the country.

The Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at Penn State has established the Social Science Acoustics Lab in Keller Building at the University Park campus. The lab is used in a variety of ways to investigate the impact natural sounds have on human health.

New recipes for concrete -- and new ways to monitor old concrete -- aim for safer, longer-lasting bridges. Penn State civil engineering faculty are researching methods for enhancing the maintenance and durability of civil infrastructure, including anything made of concrete, from bridges to roads to buildings.

Biodiversity, including small predators such as dragonflies and other aquatic bugs that attack and consume parasites, may improve the health of amphibians, according to a team of researchers. Amphibians have experienced marked declines in the wild around the world in recent decades, the team added.

The "Hockey Stick" graph, a simple plot representing temperature over time, led to the center of the larger debate on climate change, and skewed the trajectory of at least one researcher, according to Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology, Penn State.

As much as 75 percent of global seed diversity in staple food crops is held and actively used by a wide range of small farmholders -- workers of less than three to seven acres -- with the rest in gene banks, according to a Penn State geographer.

High concentrations of dissolved iron from abandoned coal mines in Pennsylvania have been contaminating some of the Commonwealth’s streams and rivers for many years, potentially affecting aquatic habitats and drinking water for millions of residents. To combat this problem, a team of Penn State researchers has proposed a method to eliminate much of the iron before it reaches the waterways.

Gordon Warn, associate professor of civil engineering, along with two other Penn State faculty members, recently received a National Science Foundation award to fund their research on resilient and sustainable building design.

Derek Elsworth, professor of energy and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State, is among the 67 new members and 12 foreign associates elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) on Feb. 5.

When trying to interpret the fossil record, we must first understand how they ended up where they are -- and that means taking a close look at the sediments that surround them, says Penn State scientist Mark Patzkowsky.