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Postdocs
Can nature-inspired designs affect cognition and mood?
A team from the Center for Neuroaesthetics created a biophilic room to test the idea. Preliminary findings from a small pilot show promise, but also spur many questions about how to best use such a space.
How Penn’s School of Medicine supports students starting families
Juggling parenthood and studying is a lot easier with the formal support structures that the Perelman School of Medicine offers.
Art museums plant seeds of human flourishing
Researchers from the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project in the Positive Psychology Center at Penn have found that art museums are associated with wide-ranging benefits to human health.
Jamaal Green on geographic information systems, urban planning, and housing quality
The assistant professor of city and regional planning combines his expertise in city planning, housing, and mapping with his teaching, and conducts research on housing quality issues for low-income homeowners in Philadelphia.
An arms race that plays out in a single genome
School of Arts & Sciences biologist Mia Levine and Cara Brand, a postdoc, shed light on an example of coevolution in fruit flies that has implications for human health.
Genomic differences selected through evolution may offer clues as to why COVID-19 outcomes vary widely
A team from the University of Pennsylvania analyzed genomic data from global populations, including thousands of ethnically diverse Africans, to identify genetic variants that may be associated with clinical COVID-19 outcomes.
Penn Athletics hires Liz Nobis as first-ever mental health professional
Nobis earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Biola University’s Rosemead School of Psychology in 2021 and has been serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Penn’s Counseling Services for the past year.
People imitate accent features they expect to hear, even without hearing them
Research from postdoc Lacey Wade confirmed this idea, what she calls expectation-driven convergence, in a controlled experiment for the first time. The work reveals just how much the subconscious factors into the way people speak.
Researchers find topological phenomena at high technologically relevant frequencies
A collaborative new study led by researchers in the School of Arts & Sciences demonstrates topological control capabilities in an acoustic system, with implications for applications such as 5G communications and quantum information processing.
Decoding a material’s ‘memory’
A new study details the relationship between particle structure and flow in disordered materials, insights that can be used to understand systems ranging from mudslides to biofilms.
In the News
Is an Alzheimer’s blood test right for me?
Postdoc Claire Erickson and Emily Largent of the Perelman School of Medicine and the Leonard Davis Institute discuss which people should take an Alzheimer’s blood test.
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The brain may interpret smells from each nostril differently
A study by postdoc Gulce Nazli Dikecligil in the Perelman School of Medicine suggests that the smells flowing through each nostril are processed as two separate signals in the part of the brain that receives smell inputs.
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One graceless tweet doesn’t warrant cancellation
Elle Lett, a postdoc in the Perelman School of Medicine, wrote about how the word “freak” has been used to dehumanize Black women. “There is a history that dates back to the antebellum South” of “fetishizing, hypersexualizing and otherizing Black women in freak shows and displays to media and even medical textbooks,” Lett wrote. “Black women are consistently dehumanized in America. By using ‘freak of nature,’ you separate Black women from the rest of human existence.”
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