Skip to Content Skip to Content

School of Arts & Sciences

Visit the School's Site
Reset All Filters
3713 Results
How one gene in a tiny fish may alter an aquatic ecosystem
a tiny fish swims under green, murky water

Threespine stickleback, which occupy lakes across the northern latitudes, are a tiny fish with an outsize impact on evolutionary research. Penn biologist Seth Rudman has found that a single gene affects the way they interact with their environment. (Photo: Seth Rudman)

How one gene in a tiny fish may alter an aquatic ecosystem

Linking genomics to evolution to ecology, the work takes an unusual approach to reveal broad implications of how species adapt to their local environment.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Spicy foods: To eat, or not to eat
Chili peppers and flakes

Spicy foods: To eat, or not to eat

Cold months come with fiery foods—but is that heat good for you? Penn’s Paul Rozin and Nitin Ahuja, along with a registered dietician, chime in to explore its effects on mind and body.
Supreme Court decision a boon for truck drivers and, potentially, the gig economy
A white long-haul truck on an open highway.

A recent Supreme Court decision now allows transportation workers to sue their employers in class-action lawsuits. This verdict could have implications for truckers, but could also affect Uber drivers and others in the gig economy.

Supreme Court decision a boon for truck drivers and, potentially, the gig economy

Three Penn experts discuss the ruling, which gives transportation workers the ability to sue their employers in class-action lawsuits, sidestepping forced arbitration.

Michele W. Berger

Shooting hoops with Ashley Russell
Ashley Russell of the women's basketball team poses with a ball on the Palestra court.

Shooting hoops with Ashley Russell

The senior guard and co-captain of the women’s basketball team talks a shooter’s mentality, rebounding at the guard position, and the key to avoiding turnovers.
Procrastinating on climate change
flooded parking garage with floating life preservers

Procrastinating on climate change

Joseph Kable, Baird Term Professor of Psychology, studies how people make (or don’t make) decisions. He calls the circumstances around climate change a “perfect storm of features” that’s leading us to not act. 

Penn Today Staff

Copyright expiration releases works to the world
Cover of book Vinzi by Johanna Spyri showing child sitting in a windowsill and the title page of the book reading Vinzi a story of the Swiss Alps by Johanna Spyri translation by Elisabeth P. Stork and Illustrations in color by Maria L. Kirk. Philadelphia and London J.B. Lippincott Company 1923.

The Penn Libraries is digitizing and sharing books published in 1923 that have come into the public domain. One is "Vinzi a Story of the Swiss Alps," by Johanna Spyri, author of the more-famous "Heidi." The edition is the first U.S. translation to English from German, published in Philadelphia.  

Copyright expiration releases works to the world

Works from 1923 have entered the public domain after a 20-year extension on copyright protections. The Penn Libraries is digitizing unique works to share.
How the appliance boom moved more women into the workforce
An old-fashioned washing machine, which looks like two wooden barrels on legs, next to each other and connected by large wiring.

Before running water and electricity, a single load of laundry could take four hours to wash. But with the advent of mechanical appliances, like the washing machine above, that dropped to 41 minutes.

How the appliance boom moved more women into the workforce

A new book from economist Jeremy Greenwood looks at the effects of technological progress on home life.

Michele W. Berger

Infection-resistant catheter plan wins Y-Prize
The four Y-Prize winners with their trophies.

The winners, from left: Ishir Seth, Tanvi Kapur, Beatriz Go, WenTao Zhang. (Photo: Michelle Eckert)

Infection-resistant catheter plan wins Y-Prize

The team of four undergraduates propose reinventing the catheter to prevent urinary tract infections at the source, using a wrinkle printing technology developed at Penn.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

‘Lost world, lost lives, and the displacement of a culture’
library archivist walking through book stacks

‘Lost world, lost lives, and the displacement of a culture’

Hundreds of books looted by the Nazis during World War II sit on the shelves of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, a window into a different time in history and individuals we may have otherwise never known.

Michele W. Berger

The physics of multitasking
colorful dots arranged to look like the neurons inside a brain

The physics of multitasking

Penn physicists characterize the limits of multitasking in biological networks, paving the way for future applications in fields from biology to medicine.

Erica K. Brockmeier , Erica K. Brockmeier