News Archives

Biotech goes to market this fall

A new regional biotechnology “greenhouse” will be ready, willing and able by the end of September to invest in life sciences research that shows commercial potential, said Jack Shannon, associate vice president in the Office of the Executive Vice President.

Research: Short teens become shortchanged adults

Short people get the short end of the stick when it comes to wages, with added height worth nearly $600 per inch annually. Now two Penn economists have done some research that shows, in short, that the cause for the wage shortfall for short people was neither employer discrimination against shortness nor unfair admiration for height. Much to their surprise, Professor of Economics and Finance Andrew Postlewaite and Professor of Economics Nicola Persico, along with graduating Ph.D. Dan Silverman, found that height at age 16 was the significant factor.

Ask Benny: The scoop on Penn's favorite majors

Dear Benny,What is the most popular undergraduate major at Penn and why is it so popular? —Advising My Daughter Dear Advisor, I put that question to Kent Peterman, director of academic affairs in the College. Until very recently, he told me, English and history traded places regularly as the most popular major, but within the last few years, economics has overtaken both. When I asked him for a possible explanation, he said, “I don’t know. You can speculate on why [certain] majors are popular, but I’d rather not do that.”

HR classes for your career

Human Resources has classes that can make all the difference in your career. Classes meet at 3624 Market St., Suite 1B South, unless otherwise noted. For information, call 215-898-3400 or visit www.hr.upenn.edu/learning. Registration required. Negotiating to Win

Activist bureaucrat

In the 1960s and 1970s, when Ira Harkavy was a student at Penn, its reputation with its neighbors was that of an 800-pound gorilla throwing its weight around West Philadelphia. The mistrust was so deep that even a laboratory high school proposed for the neighborhood met with strong objections.

“If Jesus Christ himself were the leader of the Palestinians over the past number of years, he could not have done much different, much more than Yasir Arafat.”

—Ian Lustick, Richard L. Simon Chair in the Social Sciences, on the Middle East conflict (“Alan Keyes is Making Sense,” MSNBC, April 11)

“An Archaeological History of Japan, 30,000 B.C. to A.D. 700”

A notion widely shared among the Japanese is that a unique culture has existed uninterrupted on the archipelago since the first human settlements more than 30,000 years ago. “An Archaeological History of Japan,” the inaugural volume in Penn Press’s new series “Archaeology, Culture, and Society,” challenges this notion by critically examining archaeological evidence and the ways in which it has been interpreted.

At Work with...Sondra Siegel

Soros blasts how Bush fights terror

The event was billed as a conversation on globalization with financier-philanthropist George Soros. But Soros managed to add American foreign policy to the agenda at the Granoff Forum on International Development and the Global Economy April 8. In his opening remarks, Soros, now known as much for his efforts to promote open, democratic societies worldwide as for the billions he made in the capital markets, departed from a talk on the virtues and defects of globalization to deliver sharp criticism of the Bush administration’s approach to fighting terrorism.

Faculty Feature: MANNA feeds the soul

Food is more than sustenance. For Kenwyn Smith and his fellow First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia parishioners, it turned out to be the means to revive the faith of a troubled congregation and the vehicle by which he—and many others—learned some priceless lessons. “If I think of all the books that I’ve read and all of the courses I’ve taken, I’d trade them all for the lessons I’ve learned from people with AIDS,” he said.