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'Tipping Point' Author Malcolm Gladwell to Lead Penn Reading Project Group Sunday
WHO: Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for The New Yorker, is the author of "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference." This book was chosen for the University of Pennsylvania's Reading Project this year. The author will lead a small discussion group of Penn students.Gladwell, who calls this book "an intellectual adventure story," covered the AIDS epidemic as a reporter for the Washington Post, and, in his research, epidemiologists exposed him to a different way of looking at the world.
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Researchers Spin Carbon Nanotubes Into Usable Fibers
PHILADELPHIA -- Materials scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and chemists from Rice University report the first large-scale manufacture of fibers composed solely of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in the Sept. 3 issue of the journal Science. This new material is a macroscopic realization of many of the amazing mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of nano-scale ideal nanotubes.
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Trojan Horses, Xenon Imaging and Remote Controlled Genes: Chemical Cages Deliver Drugs and Peer into Cells
PHILADELPHIA -- As our understanding of biology increases, the tools of research become almost as important as the researchers wielding them. Currently, one of the major obstacles to research is actually getting inside of cells and tissue to see what is going on as it happens. At the University of Pennsylvania, researchers are caging xenon, gene-blocking strands of antisense DNA and even therapeutics to facilitate their entry into cells and enable researchers to observe nature's biochemical clockwork.
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Penn Law School Students Help Draft a Criminal Code for the Maldives
Penn Law School Students Help Draft a Criminal Code for the MaldivesAug. 24, 2004PHILADELPHIA Some University of Pennsylvania Law School students will have a unique opportunity to help the Maldives rewrite its criminal code.The Maldives, a nation of 1,200 islands in the Indian Ocean, is in the process of reforming its criminal laws. The country's citizens are Muslim, and its current criminal code is based on the Islamic law Shari'a.
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Go Left or Right? Single-Enantiomer Catalysts Could Create Safer Drugs.
PHILADELPHIA -- Many molecules are enantiomers: they have mirror- image versions that may have identical parts but are just as different as your left hand is from your right. The value of a drug, however, could depend on whether it is a lefty or a righty, so researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are creating catalysts that will force drug molecules to choose sides. Today, at the American Chemical Society 228th National Meeting, Penn chemist Marisa C. Kozlowski details the methods her lab is using to create the next generation of single-enantiomer catalysts.
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American Chemical Society Annual Meeting Highlights Penn's Masters of Chemistry Education
PHILADELPHIA -- Today, graduates of the University of Pennsylvania Masters of Chemistry Education program will explain how they turned their high school classrooms into working experiments in teaching chemistry. The presentations are the focus of an entire session of the at the American Chemical Society 228th National Meeting.
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Federal Assault Weapons Ban Has Mixed Success in Reducing Criminal Use of Banned Guns and Magazines
Since Congress enacted the federal assault weapons ban, the use of assault weapons in crimes has gone down, but criminal use of guns with large capacity magazines has remained steady or increased, according to a new report from the University of Pennsylvania's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology.
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Self-Assembling and Biologically Active Artificial Pores May Lead to a Future Full of Holes
PHILADELPHIA -- In the August 12 issue of the journal Nature, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania detail the creation of a library of small protein-like molecules that can self-assemble to form hollow corkscrew-like pores that could mimic pores seen in living systems. These molecules, formed from short chains of amino acids called peptides attached to tree-like fragments called dendrons, represent the first successful attempt at creating man-made pores that can form in solution and in bulk.
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Penn Sociologist Awarded $5.2 Million MacArthur Foundation Grant
PHILADELPHIA- Frank Furstenberg, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, has received a four-year, $5.2 million grant from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in support of the Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, which he chairs.The Network, established in 2000 with MacArthur support, examines the changing nature of early adulthood and the new challenges facing people aged 18 to 34 as they make the transition to become self-sufficient adults.
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Experts Predict a Close Win for Kerry
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry will win a bare majority of the major-party vote in a very close election, according to a new Delphi survey of American political experts conducted by J. Scott Armstrong, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.In contrast to traditional polls where people are asked how they will vote, Armstrong employed the Delphi process to ask 15 American political experts to predict how others will vote. Delphi requires responses from only five to 20 experts, versus 500 to 1,000 voters in a political poll.