News Archives

Plant Biologist Anthony Cashmore Elected to National Academy of Sciences

PHILADELPHIA  University of Pennsylvania biologist Anthony R. Cashmore has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, one of 72 American scientists newly recognized for their distinguished re-search achievements.Election to the NAS is considered one of the highest honors accorded U.S. scientists and engineers.  Including Cashmore, 38 Penn researchers are now NAS members.

Just her desserts

Muller named Penn Health System CEO

Ralph W. Muller has been named chief executive officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, effective July 1. Muller, 57, served from 1986 to 2001 as president and chief executive officer of the University of Chicago Hospitals and Health System. While at Chicago, he brought a virtually bankrupt hospital back to fiscal health and oversaw a major construction campaign that culminated in a new, state-of-the-art ambulatory care center and a new children’s hospital, set to open in 2004.

Show of the year

In our last issue, we told you about the year-long undergraduate curatorship seminar for Penn fine arts students (Current, April 17). The final exam goes on display Saturday, May 3.

BOOKQUICK/New from the University Press

“Why Education Is Useless” Daniel Cottom 256 pages, $26.50 cloth Education is useless because it destroys our common sense, because it isolates us from the rest of humanity, because it hardens our hearts and swells our heads. Bookish persons have long been subjects of suspicion and contempt—nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the United States during the past 20 years.

Scientists Produce Mouse Eggs from Embryonic Stem Cells, Demonstrating Cells' Totipotency Even Outside the Body

PHILADELPHIA  Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created the first mammalian gametes grown in vitro directly from embryonic stem cells. The work, in which mouse stem cells placed in Petri dishes  without any special growth or transcription factors  grew into oocytes and then into embryos, will be reported this week on the web site of the journal Science.

Campus Buzz

Operation Priceless Treasure: By virtue of its being one of the two institutions involved in the excavations that unearthed the Royal Tombs of Ur in the 1920s and 1930s, the University of Pennsylvania Museum is taking the lead along with its excavation partner, the British Museum, in tracking down the objects looted from the Iraqi National Museum of Antiquity after Saddam Hussein’s ouster.

New dean for Annenberg

The Annenberg School has tapped one of the nation’s most respected scholars in American politics, public opinion research and mass media to be its next dean. Michael X. Delli Carpini (C/G’75), who currently serves as director of the Public Policy Program for the Pew Charitable Trusts, will succeed Kathleen Hall Jamieson in this leadership post.

Sun worshippers

So finally the sun is starting to make an appearance. Don’t waste a beautiful day eating lunch at your desk. Read on for tips on where and how to catch the best rays on campus, just don’t forget to bring along your sunglasses and the SPF. MAUREEN COTTERILL Manager, Graduate School of Education “The roof of the GSE building is a great place. Just kidding, I try to avoid the sun at all times.”

Program exposes Philly to the world

What can someone learn about the Middle East from a can of beans and a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes? Quite a bit, it turns out. “Food is a great leveler, people understand food,” said Sue Dyke, program coordinator of the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s International Classroom (IC) Program. Thus a can of beans—a breakfast staple in many Arab countries—shows how traditions endure into the modern era, while the pictures and legends on the Egyptian corn flakes box show how foreign influences are incorporated into other cultures.