Penn State Inspirational Quotes

In fact, a dolphin's whistles, pulses, and clicks, made by air sacs just below its blowhole, are among the loudest noised made by marine animals. A scientist at Penn State's Center for Information and Communications Technology Research has been analyzing these underwater messages not for meaning but for hints on how to make our wireless signals more effective. As the Ask Nature database describes, Dr. Mohsen Kavehrad uses "multirate, ultrashort laser pulses, or wavelets, that mimic dolphin chirps, to make optical wireless signals that can better penetrate fog, clouds, and other adverse weather conditions." The multiburst quality of dolphin sounds "increases the chances that a signal will get past obstacles" in the surrounding water. In the same way, Dr. Kavehrad's simulated dolphin chirps increase the odds of getting around such tiny obstacles as droplets of fog or rain. This strategy could expand the capability of optical bandwidth to carry even greater amounts of information. Such an application technology could optimize communication between aircraft and military vehicles, hospital wards, school campus buildings, emergency response teams, and citywide networks.

In the 1970s, a scientist named Leann Birch at Penn State University was inspired by Hilde, and decided to use modern scientific methods to figure out if the psychoanalyst’s hunches had been right. She conducted over thirty studies through the years, aiming to discover whether, using Hilde’s core ideas, you could actually reduce childhood obesity. To give an example of one of her studies, her team at Penn State Children’s Hospital took a group of 279 first-time mothers, and split them into two groups. The first group was given intensive support in learning how to tell the difference between when their kids were crying because they were hungry, or overstimulated, or distressed, or tired. Ian Paul, a doctor who worked on the study, told me that the mothers and babies were taught that “food should be used for hunger,” not for solving these other problems. The mothers were gently guided to feed their kids when they were hungry, and to respond to the other situations not with food, but with different techniques. The second group was not given any of this training. Leann then followed these parents and babies over time, to see if there was any difference. The children of the mothers in the first group turned out to be half as likely to become overweight or obese. This and other studies conducted over the years suggest that Hilde was right: how our parents read our signals of hunger and respond to them shape us deeply, and can play a significant role in our later weights.