All posts tagged: Penn State

Drinking water during meals may not help people eat less

Drinking water during meals may not help people eat less

Published by Jenni Sidey

Water beside a dinner plate is often treated as a simple defense against overeating. The logic seems straightforward: fill the stomach with liquid, feel full sooner and stop eating. A new analysis challenges that familiar advice. Researchers at Cornell University and Penn State found that people who drank more water during meals also tended to eat more food. Every additional 100 grams of water corresponded to about 39 more grams of food, or roughly 49 extra calories. The association does not prove that water caused the increase. The analysis drew on earlier laboratory experiments that were not designed to establish cause and effect. Still, the results complicate widespread advice that treats water as an automatic tool for reducing food intake. Every additional 100 grams of water corresponded to about 39 more grams of food, or roughly 49 extra calories. (CREDIT: Laila Milevski/Cornell University) “There’s been this widespread advice that if we drink water, it fills us up,” said Paige Cunningham, assistant professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. “But …

Worker bees help choose the next queen in bumble bee colonies

Worker bees help choose the next queen in bumble bee colonies

Published by Jenni Sidey

A baby bumble bee can end up on one of two very different paths. It can grow into a small worker that never reproduces, or become a large future queen built to survive winter and start a colony of her own. New research suggests that split is not dictated mainly by the queen. Instead, it is dictated by the workers doing the feeding. In Bombus impatiens, a common North American bumble bee, Penn State researchers found that worker bees help determine larval fate by passing along juvenile hormone in the food they make from nectar and pollen. In particular, larvae that received enough of that hormone during a narrow window late in development were far more likely to become queens. The finding shifts the picture of colony life. Rather than a top-down social order controlled by a single monarch, the study points to a more distributed system. In this system, caregivers can shape the colony’s future. “Since all these females share the same DNA, it’s a striking example of how the same genotype can produce …

JWST finds methane in the atmosphere of a rare temperate Saturn-sized planet

JWST finds methane in the atmosphere of a rare temperate Saturn-sized planet

Published by Jenni Sidey

TOI-199 b, a rare temperate giant planet, sits between scorching hot Jupiters and frozen gas giants, and JWST has found methane in its atmosphere. That first close look begins to fill a major gap in planetary chemistry, while raising questions. Methane is common on the cold giants of our solar system, but it has been missing from one important middle ground: giant planets warm enough to be temperate, yet not roasted by their stars. That gap has now narrowed with a close look at TOI-199 b, a Saturn-sized world more than 330 light-years away. The planet circles its star every 105 days and has an estimated temperature of about 175 degrees Fahrenheit. That is still hot by everyday standards, but far milder than the blistering “hot Jupiters” that dominate many exoplanet atmosphere studies and far warmer than Jupiter and Saturn, which sit in deep cold far from the sun. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, researchers analyzed the atmosphere of TOI-199 b and found strong evidence for methane. The result makes the planet one of …

8-year-old’s backyard discovery upends a century of plant-insect science

8-year-old’s backyard discovery upends a century of plant-insect science

Published by Jenni Sidey

What looked like a few seeds beside an ant nest in a backyard turned out to be something stranger, and far more consequential. When 8-year-old Hugo Deans spotted several BB-sized objects under a log near an ant nest, he assumed the ants had gathered seeds. His father, Penn State entomologist Andrew Deans, recognized them as oak galls, the small plant growths made when certain wasps trigger an oak tree to build a protective structure around their larvae. That much fit with established biology. What did not fit was why ants were hauling them around. That question led researchers to a layered ecological story involving oak trees, gall wasps and ants, one that may force a rethink of a classic example from biology textbooks. “For myrmecochory, ants get a little bit of nutrition when they eat the elaiosomes, and the plants get their seeds dispersed to an enemy-free space,” Deans said, referring to the well-known process in which ants carry seeds fitted with edible appendages. “The phenomenon was first documented over 100 years ago and is …

Decade-long muon calculation shrinks hope for a fifth force of nature

Decade-long muon calculation shrinks hope for a fifth force of nature

Published by Jenni Sidey

For years, one tiny mismatch in particle physics carried outsized hopes. The muon, a heavier and short-lived cousin of the electron, seemed to wobble in a magnetic field just a little differently than the Standard Model said it should. That gap, known through the particle’s anomalous magnetic moment or muon g−2, looked to many physicists like a possible opening to something deeper, perhaps even a fifth force of nature. Now that opening looks much narrower. An international team led by Penn State physicist Zoltan Fodor has published what it describes as the most precise calculation yet of the key strong-force contribution behind the muon’s magnetic behavior. Their result, published in Nature, brings theory and experiment into agreement within half a standard deviation, suggesting the long-running discrepancy was not a sign of new physics after all. Artist’s conception of the mystery of the magnetic moment of the muon — a sub-atomic particle similar to, but heavier than, an electron (represented by the Greek letter mu). (CREDIT: Dani Zemba / Penn State) New calculation method “There were …

Programmable hydrogel ‘smart skin’ can hide images, shift texture, and morph shape

Programmable hydrogel ‘smart skin’ can hide images, shift texture, and morph shape

Published by Jenni Sidey

At first glance, it looks like a plain, slightly glossy sheet. Then it goes through a quick bath, the temperature shifts, and a famous face comes back from nowhere. In one demonstration, a film made from hydrogel, a water-rich material that feels a bit like soft contact lens plastic, suddenly brought the Mona Lisa into view. The image was not printed with ink. It was encoded into the material itself, and it stayed invisible until the right conditions flipped the switch. That trick is part of a broader effort at Penn State to make what the researchers call a programmable “smart synthetic skin,” a thin, shape-shifting material that can be tuned to change its appearance, texture, and mechanical behavior when exposed to outside triggers like heat, solvents, or physical stress. Hongtao Sun, an assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering at Penn State and the project’s principal investigator, said the concept was inspired by cephalopods, including octopuses, which can control the look and feel of their skin to blend in or signal to each other. …