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Whither E-Commerce?
It's not the mail-order business in a new medium. Markets, shoppers
— the industry itself — are fundamentally different. But the new
telecommunications/Internet industry could empower consumers —
if government regulations don't nip the market and if businesses
play fair. "To ensure a level playing field for corporations, maximum
choice for consumers, and equality of access for the public will
require a level of policy discourse yet to be achieved," says a
report by Penn State's Institute for Information Policy." "Confusion
and misperceptions about this industry run rampant," adds Jorge
Schement, codirector with Richard Taylor. Last spring, Governor
Ridge chose the IIP to help shape Pennsylvania's e-commerce policies.
IST School Opens
Up to 100 undergraduates will be into IST this fall, as Penn State's
new School of Information Sciences and Technology opens. Designed
with input from business and industry, IST has a practical goal:
train some of the 1 million computer experts needed nationwide by
2005. To elements of computer science, computer engineering, and
management information systems, IST adds communication and business
skills, logic and discrete mathematics, computer languages, and
new media. IST students will learn to use technology to "analyze,
abstract, and apply information," according to dean James B. Thomas.
Life in the Universe
Led by geoscientist Hiroshi Ohmoto, Penn State has joined ten other
institutions in NASA's Astrobiology Institute, in which astronomers,
astrophysicists, biologists, exobiologists, chemists, physicists,
planetologists, and geologists combine to research "life in the
universe." One goal is to design science strategies and technologies
for future NASA missions to search for habitable planets or evidence
of life outside the Solar System.
New Hip Stiff?
U.S. doctors perform 200,000 hip replacements a year. But up to
10 percent of their patients develop a painful bony growth that
makes the new hip stiff. In animals, researchers at Penn State's
College of Medicine found that giving a single dose of radiation
therapy 24 hours before the operation (not after, as is current
practice) prevents this growth. Researcher Mustasim Rumi is currently
studying how the bone forming cells are activated.
Making Cents of Waste
Coal plants that cut air pollution create a new problem: "clean"
burners don't burn it all. "Power plants are left with a mixture
of fly ash and unburned coal," says Mercedes Maroto-Valer, a research
associate in Penn State's Energy Institute. The fly ash can be sold
to cement makers. But the unburned coal? Maroto-Valer wants to turn
it into activated carbon, used in air conditioners, water purifiers,
and cigarette filters. Tested against anthracite coal (the current
source), she found the coal-burner waste made "suitable" activated
carbon. Its surface area wasn't as large, but its yield was high
and it cost much less.
Afrotopia
"The terminology used in today's race and identity debates is deliberately
designed to confuse the public and politicize the issues," says
historian Wilson Moses, author of Afrotopia: The Roots of African
American Popular History (Cambridge University Press). Setting Afrocentrism
against affirmative action and multiculturalism, for example, he
finds "intentionally misleading." Afrocentrism does not derive from
current politics, but from "enlightenment Christianity, 18th-century
progressivism, and Black resistance to White supremacy," Moses says.
Historically, it sought to demonstrate why African Americans should
be assimilated into the American mainstream.
No More Light Bulbs
Penn State's Applied Research Lab and the Navy have a five-year,
$25-million agreement to establish a center in electro-optics. Applications
of this new technology range from phone lines to the lights in a
submarine. Remote source lighting, for instance, uses fiber optics
to "pipe" light from a central bright light source, doing away with
light bulbs. It could reduce lighting costs up to 85 percent on
some ships. Luxury cars could have remote source lighting as early
as 2001.
Faculty Scholars
The 1998-99 Faculty Scholar Medals were awarded to Marylène Dosse
(arts and humanities), Kwadwo Osseo-Asare (engineering), Alan Walker
(life and health sciences), Richard B. Alley and Gregory Swiatek
(physical sciences), and Sherry L. Willis (social and behavioral
sciences). Dosse, a pianist who focuses on French music, has released
over 20 recordings. Osseo-Asare is an expert on water processing
of metals and ceramic powders and on polishing in the microelectronics
industry. Paleoanthropologist Alan Walker is world-reknowned for
his work on human origins. Alley was honored for studies of Earth's
glacier-ocean-atmosphere system and its implications for global
warming. Mathematician Swiatek showed how the quadratic family of
equations are key to understanding the behavior of dynamical processes.
Willis's behavioral research has led to new ways to reverse cognitive
decline in the elderly.
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