News Archives

Eye on the future: Increasing Access

Representative-elect

Mary Jo Daley, associate director of budget services in Penn’s Business Services Division, University Laboratory Animal Resources, now has a new job title: representative to District 148 in the Pennsylvania House.

Penn researchers help ready camera that maps the sky

Recently, atop a Chilean mountain, scientists from around the world marked the dedication of the Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created. The 570-megapixel camera is at the heart of the Dark Energy Survey, an international collaboration that aims to answer one of the fundamental questions about astronomy: Why is the universe expanding so quickly?

A Class of RNA Molecules Protects Germ Cells From Damage, Penn Vet Researchers Show

PHILADELPHIA — Passing one’s genes on to the next generation is a mark of evolutionary success. So it makes sense that the body would work to ensure that the genes the next generation inherits are exact replicas of the originals.

Penn Medicine: Yeast Protein Breaks up Amyloid Fibrils and Disordered Protein Clumps In Different Ways

PHILADELPHIA — Several fatal brain disorders, including Parkinson's disease, are connected by the misfolding of specific proteins into disordered clumps and stable, insoluble fibrils called amyloid. Amyloid fibrils are hard to break up due to their stable, ordered structure. For example, a-synuclein forms amyloid fibrils that accumulate in Lewy Bodies in Parkinson's disease. By contrast, protein clumps that accumulate in response to environmental stress, such as heat shock, possess a less stable, disordered architecture.

Q&A with Ira Harkavy

After Ira Harkavy had just finished his Ph.D. at Penn, his mentor in the history department, Lee Benson, delivered an address that called for practitioners in communities to work together with academics. It was a simple but powerful idea that took root in Harkavy’s imagination.

Penn Medicine: Parkinson's Disease Protein Causes Disease Spread and Neuron Death in Healthy Animals

PHILADELPHIA — Understanding how any disease progresses is one of the first and most important steps towards finding treatments to stop it. This has been the case for such brain-degenerating conditions as Alzheimer's disease. Now, after several years of incremental study, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania have been able to piece together important steps in how Parkinson’s disease (PD) spreads from cell to cell and leads to nerve cell death.

Taking note

Food for fines

Faculty and staff with library fines—take note. Through November, Penn Libraries is sponsoring the “Food for Fines” program to benefit Philabundance. For each item donated, $1 will be credited towards a library account, up to a maximum of $20. Credit cannot be applied to lost book replacement fees. Food donations will be collected at the Van Pelt Library Circulation Desk. Items should be non-perishable and packaged in boxes, cans, or plastic bottles.

The Shoah, remembered

The Shoah Foundation has its roots in Poland, once home to the largest Jewish community in Europe. Of the 3.3 million Jews who lived there before the Nazi invasion in 1939, 85 percent (more than 4 out of 5) were murdered during the Holocaust. While shooting the Academy Award-winning film “Schindler’s List” in Krakow in 1993, director Steven Spielberg was approached by scores of Holocaust survivors longing to share their stories.