Three national educational funders explain a new program that is highlighting innovative practices in schools around the country.

In honor of a recently retired professor, a generous alumnus donation has enabled the creation of the Martin W. Trethewey Early Career Professorship.

The Penn State Department of Mechanical Engineering is honoring several outstanding undergraduate students through its annual awards.

Penn State senior Abigail Cowser was recently named one of 10 American Society of Civil Engineers "2020 New Faces of Civil Engineering - College Edition."

Fifteen graduating seniors from the College of Engineering have been selected to serve as student marshals for Penn State’s spring commencement ceremony, to be held virtually on May 9.

So, how do we manage? What do we do when consistently engaging in the difficult discussion about rape culture is hard on our hearts, but helpful for our students?

Overall, average scores were up two points since 2014 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in Technology and Engineering Literacy.

Pennsylvania College of Technology will expose high schoolers to the rewarding possibilities of manufacturing careers, thanks to a grant-supported initiative. The college will host the Thingamajig Fabricators Pre-College Program from July 19-23 on its main campus. Students entering grades 9-12 are eligible for the session, featuring hands-on experience with 3D-design software, mills and lathes, and welding.

The Dallas String Quartet will deliver its passionate fusion of classical and contemporary music to the Community Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 19.

When can schools use federal funds to help students with disabilities prepare for life after special education? A new resource from the federal education department offers a road map.

Very carefully, experts say, while understanding that federal laws governing special education were not written with online education in mind.

The requests put the nation's special education administrators in conflict with disability rights advocates who fear waivers will place millions of special education students at risk.

Chemistry major Sojung Kim and microbiology major Cuyler Luck will represent the Eberly College of Science as student marshals during Penn State’s virtual spring commencement ceremonies on Saturday, May 9.

Mentoring a student-teacher won't hurt a teacher's district evaluation score—in fact, it might even give it a boost, according to a working study.

To help ease the transition to remote instruction, educators have launched virtual professional learning communities to share resources, ask questions, and give advice.

Some educators and advocates fear the rule will dissuade immigrants from seeking certain government benefits, and that further burdens will fall on schools.

It took rickshaw driver Mohammad Rasheed a year to save 300 rupees to buy his daughter a bike, so when he found three billion rupees ($22.5 million) had passed through an unused bank account in his name, he was stunned ... and scared.

Unable to host their senior capstone showcase as an on-campus celebration of their work with family and friends in attendance, graduating students in the Graphic Design undergraduate program in the Stuckeman School at Penn State are turning to Instagram to highlight their design work in a creative way to an even larger potential audience during the week of May 4-8.

As editor Wilhelm Crous puts it, "We haven't seen this movie before."

Where businesses are fighting to survive, agility is the name of the game, says Mignon Reynecke.

Trees, shrubs and woody vines are among the top food sources for honey bees in urban environments, according to an international team of researchers. By using honey bees housed in rooftop apiaries in Philadelphia, the researchers identified the plant species from which the honey bees collected most of their food, and tracked how these food resources changed from spring to fall. The findings may be useful to homeowners, beekeepers and urban land managers who wish to sustain honey bees and other bee and pollinator species.

Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences is staying connected to alumni during the COVID-19 pandemic by moving its monthly Alumni Society board meetings and other alumni activities online.

Cameroon, until now a point of stability in the region, faces potential instability in the run-up to the presidential elections scheduled for late 2011.

Burundi’s year-long crisis has not gone away. It started with President Pierre Nkurunziza’s determination to claim a third term, trampling over the constitutional arrangements that ended a decade-long civil war. Press freedom is a major casualty of the new strife; but the turmoil has also transformed the way in which Burundians get information. For better or worse, social media has filled the vacuum left by the shutting down of the most popular radio stations and forcing out of many of the country’s professional journalists.

Background: This study summarizes drug resistance analyses in 4 recent phase 2b trials of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) fusion inhibitor presatovir in naturally infected adults.

Methods: Adult hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) recipients, lung transplant recipients, or hospitalized patients with naturally acquired, laboratory-confirmed RSV infection were enrolled in 4 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies with study-specific presatovir dosing. Full-length RSV F sequences amplified from nasal swabs obtained at baseline and postbaseline were analyzed by population sequencing. Substitutions at RSV fusion inhibitor resistance-associated positions are reported.

Results: Genotypic analyses were performed on 233 presatovir-treated and 149 placebo-treated subjects. RSV F variant V127A was present in 8 subjects at baseline. Population sequencing detected treatment-emergent substitutions in 10/89 (11.2%) HCT recipients with upper and 6/29 (20.7%) with lower respiratory tract infection, 1/35 (2.9%) lung transplant recipients, and 1/80 (1.3%) hospitalized patients treated with presatovir; placebo-treated subjects had no emergent resistance-associated substitutions. Subjects with substitutions at resistance-associated positions had smaller decreases in viral load during treatment relative to those without, but similar clinical outcomes.

Conclusions: Subject population type and dosing regimen may have influenced RSV resistance development during presatovir treatment. Subjects with vs without genotypic resistance development had decreased virologic responses but comparable clinical outcomes.

Carbapenem pharmacokinetic profiles are significantly changed in critically ill patients because of the drastic variability of the patients' physiological parameters. Published population PK studies have mainly focused on specific diseases and the majority of these studies had small sample sizes. The aim of this study was to develop a population PK model of imipenem in critically ill patients that estimated the influence of various clinical and biological covariates and the use of Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) and Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy (CRRT). A two-compartment population PK model with Creatinine clearance (CrCL), body weight (WT), and ECMO as fixed effects was developed using the non-linear mixed effect model (NONMEM). A Monte Carlo simulation was performed to evaluate various dosing schemes and different levels of covariates based on the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic index (f%T>MIC) for the range of clinically relevant minimum inhibitory concentrations(MICs). The results showed that there may be insufficient drug use in the clinical routine drug dose regimen, and 750mg Q6h could achieve a higher treatment success rate. The blood concentrations of imipenem in ECMO patients were lower than that of non-ECMO patients, therefore dosage may need to be increased. The dosage may need adjustment for patients with CrCL ≤ 70ml/min, but dose should be lowered carefully to avoid the insufficient drug exposure. Dose adjustment is not necessary for patients within the WT ranging from 50-80 kg. Due to the large variation in PK profile of imipenem in critically ill patients, TDM should be carried out to optimize drug regimens.

Staphylococcus aureus osteomyelitis is a debilitating infection of bone. Treatment of osteomyelitis is impaired by the propensity of invading bacteria to induce pathologic bone remodeling that may limit antibiotic penetration to the infectious focus. The nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug diflunisal was previously identified as an osteoprotective adjunctive therapy for osteomyelitis, based on the ability of this compound to inhibit S. aureus quorum sensing and subsequent quorum-dependent toxin production. When delivered locally during experimental osteomyelitis, diflunisal significantly limits bone destruction without affecting bacterial burdens. However, because diflunisal's "quorum-quenching" activity could theoretically increase antibiotic recalcitrance, it is critically important to evaluate this adjunctive therapy in the context of standard of care antibiotics. The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of vancomycin to treat osteomyelitis during local diflunisal treatment. We first determined that systemic vancomycin effectively reduces bacterial burdens in a murine model of osteomyelitis, and identified a dosing regimen that decreases bacterial burdens without eradicating infection. Using this dosing scheme, we found that vancomycin activity is unaffected by the presence of diflunisal in vitro and in vivo. Similarly, locally-delivered diflunisal still potently inhibits osteoblast cytotoxicity in vitro and bone destruction in vivo in the presence of sub-therapeutic vancomycin. However, we also found that the resorbable polyurethane foams used to deliver diflunisal serve as a nidus for infection. Taken together, these data demonstrate that diflunisal does not significantly impact standard of care antibiotic therapy for S. aureus osteomyelitis, but also highlight potential pitfalls encountered with local drug delivery.

Chagas disease, caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, is one of the main causes of death due to cardiomyopathy and heart failure in Latin American countries. The treatment of Chagas disease is directed at eliminating the parasite, decreasing the probability of cardiomyopathy, and disrupting the disease transmission cycle. Benznidazole (BZ) and nifurtimox (NFX) are recognized as effective drugs for the treatment of Chagas disease by the World Health Organization, but both have high toxicity and limited efficacy, especially in the chronic disease phase. At low doses, aspirin (ASA) has been reported to protect against T. cruzi infection. We evaluated the effectiveness of BZ in combination with ASA at low doses during the acute disease phase and evaluated cardiovascular aspects and cardiac lesions in the chronic phase. ASA treatment prevented the cardiovascular dysfunction (hypertension and tachycardia) and typical cardiac lesions. Moreover, BZ+ASA-treated mice had a smaller cardiac fibrotic area than that in BZ-treated mice. These results were associated with an increase in the number of eosinophils and reticulocytes and level of nitric oxide in the plasma and cardiac tissue of ASA-treated mice relative to respective controls. These effects of ASA and BZ+ASA in chronically infected mice were inhibited by pretreatment with the LXA₄ receptor antagonist, Boc-2, indicating that the protective effects of ASA are mediated by ASA-triggered lipoxin. These results emphasize the importance of exploring new drug combinations for treatments of acute phase of Chagas disease that are beneficial for chronic patients.

The off-label use of third generation cephalosporin (3GC) during in ovo vaccination or vaccination of newly hatched chicks, was a common practice worldwide. CMY-2-producing Escherichia coli have been disseminated among broiler production. The objectives of this study were to determine the epidemiological linkage of bla_CMY-2-positive plasmids among broilers both within and outside Japan because grandparent stock and parent stock were imported in Japan. We examined the whole genome sequences of 132 3GC-resistant E. coli isolates collected from healthy broilers during 2002-2014. The predominant 3GC-resistance gene was bla_CMY-2, which was detected in the plasmids of 87 (65.9%) isolates. The main plasmid replicon types were IncI1-I (n=21; 24.1%), IncI (n=12; 13.8%), IncB/O/K/Z (n=28; 32.2%), and IncC (n=22; 25.3%). Those plasmids were subjected to gene clustering and network analyses and plasmid multi-locus sequence typing (pMLST). The chromosomal DNA of isolates was subjected to MLST and single nucleotide variant (SNV)-based phylogenetic analysis.

MLST and SNV-based phylogenetic analysis revealed high diversity of E. coli isolates. ST429 harboring bla_CMY-2-positive IncB/O/K/Z was closely related to isolates from broiler in Germany harboring bla_CMY-2-positive IncB/O/K/Z. pST55-IncI and pST12-IncI1-I and pST3-IncC were prevalent in western Japan. pST12-IncI1-I and pST3-IncC were closely related to those detected in E. coli isolates from chicken in American continent, whereas 26 IncB/O/K/Z were related to those in Europe. These data will be useful to reveal the whole picture of transmission of CMY-2-producing bacteria in and out of Japan.

"Folks in some foundations are quietly expressing frustration that they've been cautioned to stay in their lane and only fund things aligned with their pre-COVID strategy," says Stacey Childress.

The Penn State Smeal College of Business has announced the recipients of its spring 2020 Senior Awards.

Jake Griggs, who will graduate Saturday with a 3.95 GPA with dual majors in management and political science, has been named Smeal’s spring 2020 management and organization student marshal.

Both in and out of the virtual classroom, Penn State Lehigh Valley departments are connecting with students during remote learning

Payments Association of South Africa has warned consumers to be cautious when sharing personal information which can be used by fraudsters to make unauthorised debit orders.

Developed by physicians and neuroscientists, Apollo isn't the sleekiest of wearables—you might mistake it for a court-ordered ankle bracelet—but it put a little pep in my step, and is an interesting talking point, if nothing else.

Germany's Shekiera Martinez, at 16, has written herself into UEFA's record books by scoring nine goals in a final tournament.

Community and university leaders collaborate to help students and parents residing in the McKeesport Area School District.

The UEFA Futsal EURO is being enhanced, and will soon be joined by two new futsal competitions – the UEFA Women's Futsal EURO and the UEFA European Under-19 Futsal Championship.

Penn State Hazleton’s Student Services and Engagement team is continuing to forge personal connections with students while operating under the restrictions in the virtual environment created by the COVID-19 crisis.

When the novel coronavirus pandemic prompted the transition to remote learning at Penn State, faculty and administrators in the Department of Mechanical Engineering were prepared for the challenge.

Penn State Campus Recreation is now offering a library of more than 50 workouts online through YouTube as well as live classes that are held every business day on the Penn State Campus Recreation Instagram. Group fitness instructor Alexis "Lexi" Neimeyer talked about her experience on the transition to virtual fitness classes.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the nation, nurses worldwide are coming to the frontlines of health care to help patients every day. Penn State student nurses, Megan Lucas and Lorrie Youngs, are among the ones helping those in need and their experiences have reinforced their passions about becoming a nurse in the first place.

This sequel to Lian Li's original Strimer RGB PC-modding accessory has bolder lighting and more advanced patterns to make your build shine. We built it into a PC to see how it glows.

Very carefully, experts say, while understanding that federal laws governing special education were not written with online education in mind.

The requests put the nation's special education administrators in conflict with disability rights advocates who fear waivers will place millions of special education students at risk.