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Popular science

We all don’t study genetics for a living, so we all might not readily attend a lecture devoted to that topic. But what if the lecture was in everyday language and held at a bar? The new Penn Science Café Lecture Series, to be held at the MarBar (above the Marathon Grill) is designed to bring scientific topics out of the laboratory and into a casual setting. Featuring some of the University’s best scientific minds, the series allows Penn professors to chat about the topic of their choice in language all of us can understand. First up on Jan.

Bookquick/“Art in a Season of Revolution Painters, Artisans, and Patrons in Early America”

This lushly illustrated book about art-making in the 18th century positions both well-known painters and unknown artisans within the framework of their economic lives, their families and the geographies through which they moved. “Art in a Season of Revolution” departs from standard practice and re-situates painters as artisans. Moreover, it gives equal play to the lives of the makers and the lives of the objects, studying both within the interdependent social and economic webs linking workers, theorists, suppliers and patrons throughout the mercantile Atlantic.

Enjoying a 'peculiar' retirement

Since her retirement, Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s career has really taken off. Not too long ago, frustrated with her job at the State University of New York at Stony Brook—a place that often made her feel, she says, like an academic “outlier,” despite her sterling reputation as a historian of science and technology— Cowan decided it was time to move on.

Quake, tsunami among worst ever

The geologic forces that caused the massive earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asia late last month are so enormous, even an expert like Gomaa Omar says he has a hard time putting them into words. “These forces are huge,” says Omar, a graduate group chairman in Penn’s Department of Earth and Environmental Science. “They are beyond human comprehension.”

Stealing beauty, culture

Penn archaeologist Clark Erickson is an expert on the ancient cultures of Peru and Bolivia. Over the years he’s also become something of an expert on international crime. That was never in his career plan, but the sites he excavates in South America have become major magnets for looters in search of valuable antiquities to sell on the black market.

Eating by the book—a no-fad diet for life

As a working mother of two, Lisa Hark knows what it’s like to have hungry kids in the car at the end of a long day, begging to stop at the Wawa for a donut. “Healthy food first,”is Hark’s mantra, and she’s often found that once the hunger pangs have been satisfied, the siren song of junk food fades off into the distance.

News briefs

Women of color luncheon on tap

At Work With...La Tanya Love

What’s On

Performances/Lectures/Events   JAN. 27 - FEB. 9 Thursday, Jan. 27 TALKS   LET’S HAVE LUNCH: Writers House Program Coordinator Tom Devaney (“Letters to Ernesto Neto,” 2004) hosts a lunch and conversation from noon to 1 p.m. at Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk. RSVP required to wh@writing.upenn.edu. Info: 215-573-WRIT or www.writing.upenn.edu/~wh/.

Hearing voices

Poets, says Al Filreis, are a technologically savvy bunch. That’s one reason the Penn English professor is so optimistic about PennSound, the web-based sound archive he’s created with fellow English professor Charles Bernstein that makes MP3 files of poetry readings available to anyone who cares to download them.