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Science & Technology
Penn Engineering Receives Largest Research Grant in School History to Lead Robotics Consortium
PHILADELPHIA –- The University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science has received the largest single award in the School’s 156-year history to help create the fundamental networks and technologies that will put unmanned machines on the front lines of battle.
University of Pennsylvania Chemist and Mathematician Awarded Sloan Research Fellowships
PHILADELPHIA -– Tobias Baumgart, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, and Joachim Krieger, assistant professor of mathematics at Penn, have been named Alfred P.
Penn Engineering Receives $7.5 Million to Develop Cooperation Principles for Robot Teams
PHILADELPHIA –- The University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science has received a five-year, $7.5 million grant to draw inspiration from biological organisms, including humans, in order to create principles of cooperation to control teams of next-generation, unmanned, robotic vehicles.
Penn Researchers Identify First Sex Chromosome Gene Involved in Meiosis and Male Infertility
PHILADELPHIA -– A team of scientists led by University of Pennsylvania veterinary researchers have identified a gene, TEX11, located on the X chromosome, which when disrupted in mice renders the males sterile and reduces female fecundity. This is the first study of the genetic causes of infertility that links a particular sex chromosome meiosis-specific gene to sterility.
Policing Cells Demand ID to Tell Friend From Foe, Say University of Pennsylvania Cell Engineers
PHILADELPHIA – University of Pennsylvania scientists studying macrophages, the biological cells that spring from white blood cells to eat and destroy foreign or dying cells, have discovered how these “policemen” differentiate between friend and foe. The paper appears as the cover article in the March 10 edition of the Journal of Cell Biology.
Penn Scientists Find a Protein That Inhibits Ebola From Reaching Out to Infect Neighboring Cells
PHILADELPHIA -– Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine have identified a protein, ISG15, that inhibits the Ebola virus from budding, the process by which viruses escape from cells and spread to infect neighboring cells.
Surface Dislocation Nucleation: Strength Is But Skin Deep at the Nanoscale, Penn Engineers Discover
PHILADELPHIA –- For centuries, engineers have bent and torn metals to test their strength and ductility. Now, materials scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science are studying the same metals but at nanoscale sizes in the form of wires a thousand times thinner than a human hair.
Viruses Evolve To Play By Host Rules, According to University of Pennsylvania Researchers
PHILADELPHIA -- Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University have examined the complete genomes of viruses that infect the bacteria E. coli, P. aeruginosa and L. lactis and have found that many of these viral genomes exhibit codon bias, the tendency to preferentially encode a protein with a particular spelling.
Heightened Weighing Discomfort Among Women May Increase Their Health Risks, Penn Study Indicates
PHILADELPHIA -– A new study from the University of Pennsylvania points to increased health risks for women owing to their higher level of discomfort about being weighed in public. The study showed that college-age females, more than their male counterparts, experience high degrees of discomfort at the prospect of being weighed in the presence of others.
University of Pennsylvania Selects Weiss/Manfredi, M+W Zander to Design Singh Nanotechnology Center
PHILADELPHIA -- The University of Pennsylvania has selected the architectural design firm Weiss/Manfredi along with M+W Zander, an engineering and construction firm that specializes in projects with a scientific focus, to design the Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology.
In the News
The world’s oceans just broke an important climate change record
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that the warming of the oceans is helping to destabilize ice shelves and fuel more powerful hurricanes and tropical cyclones.
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New Penn AI master’s program aims to prep students for ‘jobs that we can’t yet imagine’
Chris Callison-Burch of the School of Engineering and Applied Science discusses Penn’s new online master’s program in artificial intelligence.
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The University of Pennsylvania is the first Ivy to offer an AI master’s
The School of Engineering and Applied Science has announced its first master’s degree in artificial intelligence, led by Chris Callison-Burch.
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Penn Engineering rolls out an online master’s degree in AI, first in Ivy League
The School of Engineering and Applied Science has announced the first graduate program in artificial intelligence among Ivy League universities, led by Chris Callison-Burch.
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Penn Engineering announces first Ivy League Master’s degree in AI
The School of Engineering and Applied Science has announced the first graduate program in artificial intelligence among Ivy League universities, led by Chris Callison-Burch.
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Man does DNA test, not prepared for what comes back ‘unusually high’
César de la Fuente of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Perelman School of Medicine says that Neanderthal DNA provides insights into human evolution, population dynamics, and genetic adaptations, including correlations with traits such as immunity and susceptibility to diseases.
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Forecast group predicts busiest hurricane season on record with 33 storms
A research team led by Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences is predicting the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season will produce the most named storms on record, fueled by exceptionally warm ocean waters and an expected shift from El Niño to La Niña.
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Satellite images capture extraordinary flooding in the United Arab Emirates
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences explains how three low-pressure systems formed a train of storms that battered the United Arab Emirates.
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My Climate Story: Philly students take science from abstract to personal
The “My Climate Story” project at the Environmental Humanities Department helps students and teachers learn about climate change’s impact in everyday backyards, with remarks from Bethany Wiggin. The idea is credited to María Villarreal, a College of Arts and Sciences second-year from Tampico, Mexico.
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Penn professor on gen AI’s rapacious use of energy: ‘One of the defining challenges of my career’
Benjamin Lee of the School of Engineering and Applied Science says that hardware and infrastructure costs are growing at high rates for generative AI.
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