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Campus Buzz

See movies like a student: Now’s your chance to see first-run films in a first-class setting for chump change. The Bridge: Cinema de Lux at 40th and Walnut streets is running a special promotion for Penn and Drexel faculty and staff through Aug. 31—show your faculty/staff ID at the box office and pick up tickets for you and a guest at the student discount rate. Visit www.thebridgecinema.com or the theater for more information.

Sleep Deprivation within Five Hours of Learning Impairs Memory Consolidation in Mice

PHILADELPHIA -- Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have found new support for the age-old advice to "sleep on it."  Mice allowed to sleep after being trained remembered what they had learned far better than those deprived of sleep for several hours afterward.The researchers also determined that the five hours following learning are crucial for memory consolidation; mice deprived of sleep five to 10 hours after learning a task showed no memory impairment.  The results are reported in the May/June issue of the journal Learning & Memory.

CD-ROM Teaches Medical Students How Prime-Time TV Doctors Affect Patients' Feelings About Physicians

PHILADELPHIA-Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created a new training tool for medical students, a CD-ROM that examines how television medical dramas present ideas about doctors that may affect how patients interact with real physicians. Approximately 20,000 first-year medical students will get the CD-ROM as part of the traditional ceremony in which they're presented white lab coats welcoming them into medical school.

Study Suggests a Newly Mapped Enzyme Could Yield New Treatments for Female Sexual Dysfunction

PHILADELPHIA -- New research from the University of Pennsylvania and other institutions indicates that the enzyme arginase II, which can short-circuit a biochemical pathway leading to sexual arousal in men, is also present in the female genitalia and represents a promising target for new drugs to treat sexual dysfunction in women.  

Judith Rodin to Step Down as President of Penn in June 2004

PHILADELPHIA -- Judith Rodin, president of the University of Pennsylvania since 1994, announced today that she intends to step down from the office when she completes her 10-year term in June 2004. The announcement came following a regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Trustees on Penns campus.

Ivy League First: Criminology Department at Penn

PHILADELPHIA- The University of Pennsylvania has become the first Ivy League institution to establish a criminology department.Lawrence W. Sherman, director of Penn's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology and the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations, will chair the new department in the School of Arts and Sciences.Since the founding of Penn's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology in 2000, criminology research at the University has grown geometrically, with research projects being conducted from Australia to England.

University of Pennsylvania Honored with Clery Award for Campus Safety Improvements

PHILADELPHIA -- The University of Pennsylvania is one of two institutions of higher education selected to receive the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Award for 2003.Established in 1994, the award is presented annually by Howard and Connie Clery in memory of their daughter Jeanne Ann to schools and individuals who have done extraordinary things to make college and university students safer.  Jeanne Ann Clery was murdered in her Lehigh University dorm room in 1986 by a fellow student who was unknown to her.

Fine Arts faculty lend sculptor a hand

Former Penn student and world-renowned cartoonist Charles Addams (FA’34,Hon’80) would not have missed the reference. The new entryway into the Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall—the Kelly Family Gates—bears a striking resemblance to one of Addams’ most memorable characters, Thing of the Addams Family.

Water served with every meal

STAFF Q&A/David Millar

STAFF Q&A/Penn network security guru Dave Millar fiddles around with friends and colleagues If it’s noon Thursday, it must be string-along time. That’s the time when Dave Millar and a bunch of his friends and colleagues on and off campus gather in Steinhardt Plaza behind Steinberg-Dietrich Hall for a folksy jam session.