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First author Prabhav Borate, a graduate student in engineering science, demonstrates how lab earthquakes are created: by grinding two blocks of rock together until a failure occurs. Credit: Poornima Tomy / Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

Predicting lab earthquakes with physics-informed artificial intelligence

By refining an artificial intelligence approach to predicting earthquakes in the laboratory, or labquakes, engineers at Penn State are paving the way to one day help forecast natural earthquakes.

Yongsoo Kim, associate professor of neural and behavioral sciences at the Penn State College of Medicine, is leading a new five-year, $17.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Mental Health. Credit: Jason Plotkin / Penn State. Creative Commons

$17.9M NIH grant to research neurodevelopment disorders

Illuminating key biological pathways that underlie neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is the goal of a new five-year, $17.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health to a national team of researchers.

Researchers attached QR codes to the backs of thousands of bees to track when and for how long they left their hives. Credit: Provided by the researchers. All Rights Reserved.

‘Buzz me in:’ Bees wearing itty bitty QR codes reveal hive secrets

Researchers attached QR codes to the backs of thousands of bees to track when and for how long they left their hives.

Credit: nortonrsx/Getty Images. All Rights Reserved.

Predicting the progression of autoimmune disease with AI

A new artificial intelligence model more accurately predicts who — among those with preclinical symptoms of autoimmune disease — will proceed to advanced disease stage.

Salmonella infections in dogs may be an overlooked transmission vector to humans, researchers reported in a new study.  Credit: SeventyFour/Getty Images. All Rights Reserved.

Pet dogs often overlooked as spreader of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella

A team of Penn State researchers have found that household dogs are an overlooked transmission point for zoonotic pathogens such as nontyphoidal Salmonella.

Flies play a crucial role as pollinators, second only to bees in terms of the volume of crops and habitat they pollinate. Pictured here is a blue fly pollinating common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).  Credit: Martha B. Moss/Penn State Extension Master Gardener / Penn State. Creative Commons

Pollinators most vulnerable to rising global temperatures are flies, study shows

New research led by Penn State scientists suggests flies are increasingly at risk due to rising global temperatures.

A led by Penn State researchers compared two treatments for a common uterine infection, called clinical metritis, that can lead to serious health problems for dairy cows. One treatment was based on antibiotics and the other was not. Both treatments had a similar clinical cure rate in mild cases of the disease. Credit: Penn State. Creative Commons

New treatment for dairy cows could help fight antibiotic resistance, study finds

A concentrated sugar solution could be just as effective as antibiotics at treating a common infection in dairy cows, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.

This image depicts a conceptual mobile application designed to empower health care providers to capture and analyze placenta images at birth for immediate diagnostic insights. Credit: Sonhita Chakraborty / Penn State. Creative Commons

Placenta assessment tool aims to improve neonatal, maternal care

A multi-national, multi-institutional team led by Penn State researchers developed a new tool that enables doctors to examine placentas right at the bedside using just a phone.

New research finds sex-specific regions of the brain can relieve the detrimental effects of chronic stress in male and female mice. Left: Schematic showing a cortical microcircuit with three types of interneurons expressing somatostatin (SST), parvalbumin (PV) or vasointestinal peptide (VIP) and their distinct patterns of innervation of glutamatergic output neurons (PNs), with thin lines representing axons that send chemical signals and the thicker lines of PNs representing dendrites that receive information. There is selective innervation of the distal ends of PN dendrites by axons of SST neurons. Right: Increased activity of SST neurons by genetically induced disinhibition, on top right, or by chemogenetic activation of SST neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex, on bottom right, leads to stress resilience and facilitates the reversal of the detrimental behavioral effects of stress exposure in male but not female mice. Credit: Bernhard Lüscher / Penn State. Creative Commons

Brain regions that relieve effects of chronic stress in mice differ based on sex

In two new studies, researchers made mice resilient to stress by activating neurons in different brain regions and found that the changes involved are highly sex-specific

Center for Socially Responsible AI awards seed funding to seven diverse projects

The Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence (CSRAI) has announced the results of its most recent seed-funding competition.