Clipmarks | Penn state Clips

The 50 Best Colleges Ranked By Looks

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:18:13 GMT

clipped by: reimers

Clip Source: www.popcrunch.com

50. Illinois

49. Missouri

48. Pacific

47. Maryland

46. Oregon State

45. Virginia Tech

44. Louisville

43. Indiana

42. TCU

41. Washington State

Clip Source: www.popcrunch.com

40. Stanford

39. Iowa

38. Purdue

37. Penn State

36. Oklahoma

35. Nebraska

34. Colorado

33. North Carolina State

32. Michigan

31. Vanderbilt

Clip Source: www.popcrunch.com

30. Duke

29. Utah

28. North Carolina

27. Michigan State

26. UNLV

25. Tennessee

24. Ohio State

23. Kentucky

22. Wisconsin

21. Arizona

Clip Source: www.popcrunch.com

20. South Florida

19. Washington

18. Alabama

17. University of Miami (FL)

16. Kansas

15. Clemson

14. Cal

13. Arkansas

12. Texas

More University of Texas co-eds

11. Oregon

Clip Source: www.popcrunch.com

10. Louisiana State University

More Louisiana State co-eds

9. University of Georgia

More University of Georgia co-eds

8. Auburn University

More Auburn University co-eds

7. UCLA

More UCLA co-eds

6. South Carolina

More University of South Carolina co-eds

5. Ole Miss

More Ole Miss co-eds

4. University of Florida

More University of Florida co-eds

3. Florida State University

2. University of Southern California

1. Arizona State University

More Arizona State co-eds

PRESIDENT of Penn State asked not to attend Palin's speech AT PENN STATE

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 03:55:39 GMT

clipped by: polymath22

Clip Source: www.collegian.psu.edu

Penn State President Graham Spanier was asked not to attend Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Tuesday night speech at Rec Hall, a university official confirmed Thursday.

A staffer working for Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign told a member of Penn State public information that the campaign did not want Spanier to greet Palin after calling him a "big Democrat," Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon said.

Tags: person.sarah_palin, person.graham_spanier, democrat, republican, campaign

Another GOP voter-suppression suit rejected

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:28:39 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Now Pennsylvania.

Clip Source: tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com

Penn Judge Rejects GOP Suppression Bid

Add Pennsylvania to the list of states where GOP voter suppression efforts are going down in flames.

A state judge yesterday declined to support a grab-bag of a lawsuit filed by the party, which had sought to require ACORN both to turn over a list of the 140,000 voters it says it has registered, which could have made it easier for the GOP to challenge voters at the polls.

According to the Associated Press, the judge, Robert Simpson Jr., said "he was not convinced that the party and its fellow individual plaintiffs can ultimately prove their allegations that ACORN is fostering voter-registration fraud and that the state's election system lacks the safeguards to stop it."

Tags: voters

Researchers teach computers to search for photos based on their contents

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:51:38 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: One could imagine some very "job specific" details being used. Type in slime ball and see who comes up.

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

A pair of Penn State researchers has developed a statistical approach, called Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time (ALIPR), that one day could make it easier to search the Internet for photographs. The public can participate in improving ALIPR's accuracy by visiting a designated Web site http://www.alipr.com, uploading photographs, and evaluating whether the keywords that ALIPR uses to describe the photographs are appropriate.

ALIPR works by teaching computers to recognize the contents of photographs, such as buildings, people, or landscapes, rather than by searching for keywords in the surrounding text, as is done with most current image-retrieval systems. The team recently received a patent for an earlier version of the approach, called ALIP, and is in the process of obtaining another patent for the more sophisticated ALIPR. They hope that eventually ALIPR can be used in industry for automatic tagging or as part of Internet search engines.

Tags: computers

'Tis the Season of Election Dirty Tricks: Scaring Student Voters

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:53:37 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Other underhanded tactics seek to confuse voters about their voter registration. In 2006, voters in Virginia reportedly received fake voicemail messages from the state elections commission claiming that the voters were registered in another state and could be criminally charged if they cast their vote in Virginia.

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

Election officials and watchdog groups are bracing for the wave of sneaky or suspicious phone calls, leaflets and emails that typically hit battleground states in the final 30 days of the presidential campaign.

Young voters at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Penn. have already been targeted, with students reporting that flyers have been posted around campus warning that undercover police will be at the polls on Election Day looking to make arrests.

Political experts say the Drexel flyer is a classic example of voter suppression – a practice that involves scaring, angering, or confusing voters so that they stay at home on Election Day.

Tags: ditry, politics, elections, democracy, scummy, gop

Honey for Coughs

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:20:09 GMT

clipped by: milktaster

Clip Source: www.ifood.tv

A new study from Penn State College of Medicine found that honey might make an effective and safe alternative for over-the-counter children's cough medicines. The randomized, partially double-blinded study found that when children received a small amount of buckwheat honey before bedtime, it provided better relief of nighttime cough and sleep difficulty than no treatment or the common over-the-counter cough suppressant dextromethorphan (DM). The results are published in December’s Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (“Effect of Honey, Dextromethorphan, and No Treatment on Nocturnal Cough and Sleep Quality for Coughing Children and Their Parents,” Ian M. Paul, MD, MSc; Jessica Beiler, MPH; Amyee McMonagle, RN; Michele L. Shaffer, PhD; Laura Duda, MD; Cheston M. Berlin Jr, MD, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2007;161(12):1140-1146.

Tags: health, honey for coughs

Scientists Develop New Computational Method To Investigate Origin Of Life

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:33:15 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: "Retroelements are an ancient and highly diverse class of proteins; therefore, they provide a rigorous benchmark for us to test our approach. We are happy with the results we derived, even though our method is in an early stage," said Patterson. The team plans to make the algorithms that they used in their method available to others as open-source software that is freely available on the Web.
Scientists map out the evolutionary histories of organisms by comparing their genetic and/or protein sequences. Those organisms that are closely related and share a recent common ancestor have greater degrees of similarity among their sequences.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Scientists at Penn State have developed a new computational method that they say will help them to understand how life began on Earth. The team's method has the potential to trace the evolutionary histories of proteins all the way back to either cells or viruses, thus settling the debate once and for all over which of these life forms came first.

"We have just begun to tap the potential power of this method," said Randen Patterson, a Penn State assistant professor of biology and one of the project's leaders. "We believe, if it is possible at all, that it is within our grasp to determine whether viruses evolved from cells or vice-versa."

The team is focusing on an ancient group of proteins, called retroelements, which comprise approximately 50 percent of the human genome by weight and are a crucial component in a number of diseases, including AIDS.

Tags: life, computers, science

Barbadians slam snake 'discovery' as old news

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:07:57 GMT

clipped by: pitim

Clip Source: edition.cnn.com

Residents of the wealthy Caribbean nation have been heating up blogs and clogging radio airwaves to vent their anger at a U.S. scientist, who earlier this week announced his "discovery" of the world's smallest snake and named it "Leptotyphlops carlae," after his wife Carla.

"If he needs to blow his own trumpet ... well, fine," said 43-year-old Barbadian Charles Atkins. "But my mother, who was a simple housewife, she showed me the snake when I was a child."

One writer to the Barbados Free Press blog took an even tougher tone, questioning how someone could "discover" a snake long known to locals, who called it the thread snake.

"How dare this man come in here and name a snake after his wife?" said the writer who identified themselves as Margaret Knight.

The man she refers to is Penn State University evolutionary biologist S. Blair Hedges, whose research teams also have discovered the world's tiniest lizard in the Dominican Republic and the smallest frog in Cuba.

Penn School District Proposes Taser Policy

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:13:41 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Parents vocal in their opposition. Can you think of a better example of moving toward a police state than having such devices on campus for use in keeping students in line?

Clip Source: www.pittsburghlive.com

The Uniontown Area School Board, as well as concerned citizens and parents, had an opportunity Wednesday to learn about Tasers that will be proposed in the school district and share their opinions on the subject.

Even before Don Homer, the director of security for the school district, could show the proposed Tasers to be used and explain how they operate, those attending a special meeting voiced opposition.

World's smallest snake found in Barbados

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:45:06 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

The world's smallest species of snake, with adults averaging just under four inches in length, has been identified on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

The species -- which is as thin as a spaghetti noodle and small enough to rest comfortably on a U.S. quarter --was discovered by Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State. Hedges and his colleagues also are the discoverers of the world's smallest frog and lizard species, which too were found on Caribbean islands.

Hedges determined that the Barbados species is new to science on the basis of its genetic differences from other snake species and its unique color pattern and scales.

Hedges determined that this species, which he named Leptotyphlops carlae, is the smallest of the more than 3,100 known snake species.

Hedges thinks the Barbados snake may be at or near the minimum possible size for snakes, though he cannot say for sure that no smaller species exists -- several other snake species are nearly as small.

Tags: animal life, biology, snakes

Map Makers Can Avoid Confusing The Color Blind

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:23:07 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: This would be really helpful - more study should be done.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2000) — For 8 percent of men, color blindness is not just a fashion inconvenience, but an impairment that makes reading maps and other visual data difficult if not impossible. Now, a Penn State geographer has developed color schemes that allow most color-blind people to interpret the images.

Tags: color blind, maps

Using blogs in a college philosophy class

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:25:33 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: A Penn State professor gives a short overview of his use of blogging in introductory undergraduate classes.

Clip Source: ets.tlt.psu.edu

Faculty Success Story: Christopher Long

Christopher Long in the College of the Liberal Arts teaches “Tragedy, Comedy, Politics” and “20th Century Philosophy” courses. To help students develop their critical thinking and writing skills, he asks each student to create a blog on which they post assignments. The blogs allow students to write for a broader audience than their instructor alone and encourage them to develop a unique voice. Long’s ability to provide regular, dynamic feedback helps students grow as writers and thinkers.

Long said, “I intentionally chose a decentralized model, where each student would have his or her own blog, because I wanted them to have a sense of owning their work. My main goal for using blogs is to get students actively involved in their own education.” The student blogs, as well as blogs Long set up for each course, were created using the Blogs at Penn State.

Students are often asked to relate current events to course readings.

Tags: education, teaching, pedagogy, social, 2.0, blogging, blog, academe

smallest ever snake found

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:23:04 GMT

clipped by: boozich
clipper's remarks: Like other members of the "small" club, L. carlae only produces one offspring at a time, in this case a single slender egg (some other snakes give birth to live young). In addition, its young are giants relatively speaking. In general, the hatchlings of the smallest snakes are one-half the length of an adult, while the largest snakes have hatchlings that are only one-tenth the length of an adult.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

The new snake named Leptotyphlops carlae has a unique color pattern, which consists of continuous stripes from the eyes to tail-tip, with and additional pair of narrow lines along the mid-section. Credit: Blair Hedges, Penn State.

As slim as a spaghetti noodle and able to fit snugly on a U.S. quarter, a new species of snake has been found hiding out in a forest on Barbados. The reptilian runt is now the world's smallest snake.

Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State, discovered the snake, which just under four inches (10 cm) in length as an adult, in a fragment of forest on the eastern side of Barbados.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

World's smallest snake discovered...

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:24:06 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

By Jennifer Carpenter
Science reporter, BBC News

The world's smallest snake, averaging just 10cm (4 inches) and as thin as a spaghetti noodle, has been discovered on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

The snake, found beneath a rock in a tiny fragment of threatened forest, is thought to be at the very limit of how small a snake can evolve to be.

Females produce only a single, massive egg - and the young hatch at half of their adult body weight.

This new discovery is described in the journal of Zootaxa.

The snake - named Leptotyphlops carlae - is the smallest of the 3,100 known snake species and was uncovered by Dr Blair Hedges, a biologist from Penn State University, US.

The snake's habitat is usually under rocks eating termites

Modern genetic fingerprinting is often the only way to tell species apart.

By having a single egg at a time, the snake's young are one-half the length of the adult. That would be like humans giving birth to a 60-pound (27kg) baby

World's Smallest Snake

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:39:57 GMT

clipped by: thekittenbunny

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

In this photo taken in 2006 and released on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008, by U.S. scientist S. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State University, the globe's tiniest snake is shown curled up on a U.S. quarter. Hedges said Sunday he has discovered the globe's tiniest species of snake in the easternmost Caribbean island of Barbados, with full-grown adults typically less than four inches (10 centimeters) long. He named the diminutive snake 'Leptotyphlops carlae' after his herpetologist wife, Carla Ann Hass.