Evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould is famous for describing the evolution of humans and other conscious beings as a chance accident of history. If we could go back millions of years and “run the tape of life again,” he mused, evolution would follow a different path. 

Katherine Unger Baillie ・June 8, 2015

Marketers have said for years that Americans give up their data online, on apps and in stores because of the benefits they receive, such as discounts or special offers.  But a new national survey from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication rebuts this claim and offers a new explanation: resignation.

Jacquie Posey June 5, 2015

In 1913 in Southern California, two 241-mile-long electric lines began carrying power from hydroelectric dams in the Sierra Nevada to customers in Los Angeles—a massive feat of infrastructure. In 1923, power company Southern California Edison upgraded the line to carry 220,000 volts, among the highest voltage lines in the world at the time.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・June 3, 2015

Crystalline materials have atoms that are neatly lined up in a repeating pattern. When they break, that failure tends to start at a defect, or a place where the pattern is disrupted. But how do defect-free materials break?

Evan Lerner ・June 2, 2015

Cattle in the United States are generally managed to either produce milk or to produce beef. However, in most of the world, cattle are counted on to do both in what are called dual-purpose production systems.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・June 1, 2015

The senior design classes held in each of the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s six departments are an opportunity for University of Pennsylvania students to put their skills to the test, by picking a real-world problem and developing a new piece of technology to solve it.

Evan Lerner ・May 27, 2015

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone Kang Ko never planned to become a typical dentist. Long before he came to the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine to pursue his degree, he fell in love with teaching and research. 

Katherine Unger Baillie ・May 19, 2015

University of Pennsylvania astronomers are celebrating the dedication of a new planet-hunting telescope known as Minerva-Red. Installed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona, Minerva-Red is part of the Minerva project, an array of low-cost telescopes that are designed to discover planets orbiting stars other than the sun.

Evan Lerner ・May 19, 2015

If you have a map, you can know where you are without knowing which way you are facing. If you have a compass, you can know which way you're facing without knowing where you are. Animals from ants to mice to humans use both kinds of information to reorient themselves in familiar places, but how they determine this information from environmental cues is not well understood.

Evan Lerner ・May 18, 2015

Bonding with a friend of a friend is something most humans gravitate toward naturally, or at least Facebook likes to think so every time it suggests friends for you to “friend.”

Katherine Unger Baillie ・May 15, 2015