News Archives

“Electing the President, 2000: The Insiders’ View”

Edited by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman 240 pages, $17.95 paper The contest to elect the 43rd president of the United States was the costliest in the nation’s history. With the outcome uncertain for 36 days after the nation voted, it was also the country’s longest general election to date. “The election of 2000 will be scrutinized and debated for generations,” wrote the political staff of The Washington Post.

Egypt shares its treasures

Behind the June 1 announcement of giant dinosaur bones discovered by two Penn doctoral students is a story of Egyptian connections, kids who were dreamers, and faculty with the goods. We’ll start with the bones, which Penn Ph.D. Josh Smith (Gr’01) and doctoral student Matt LaManna quarried in Egypt in 2000. The bones belong to a gargantuan new genus of plant-eater, Paralatitan. Picture a four-legged creature taking up most of College Green at 80 to 100 feet long and weighing 60 to 70 tons. The genus might have been the largest dinosaur to walk the earth.

A Penn venture seeds its first tech business

You’ve got a project to complete today. You turn on your trusty personal computer, only to see the blue screen of death. Uh-oh. Your Windows got broken. Your drivers won’t drive. Your PC has become a useless hunk of metal. But don’t reformat your hard drive yet. There’s good news. Some University of Pennsylvania researchers have created and patented software to prevent problems like yours. Here’s the bad news. You can’t buy that software — yet.

We appreciate the lunch

Sickle cell hits home — and homeland

As a young man in Ghana, Professor of Pediatrics Kwaku Ohene-Frempong knew he wanted one day to do something that would benefit the children of Africa. He discovered what that something was by chance, as a Yale undergraduate. “I didn’t know anything about sickle cell disease in high school,” he said. But a lecture he attended at Yale Medical School introduced him to the genetic disorder that affects mainly people of African descent. “Afterwards, looking around, I realized that this was what killed my cousin,” he said.

Tips on getting into college

Now is the time when high school juniors and seniors start thinking about college. Which one is right for me? What sorts of courses will help me improve my chances of getting in? Should I do a lot of extracurricular activities? How important are test scores and essays? The staff of Penn’s Undergraduate Admissions Office knows the answers to these and many other questions about the college admissions process, and they’re willing to share them with you and your family.

Nancy Streim

Three years ago, the University announced that it would help create a new public elementary school in University City. The school will open Sept. 6. It is beginning small. Its first students will be three classes each of kindergarteners and first graders, but eventually, the school will serve 700 students from pre-kindergarten up to grade eight, phasing in the other grades by the 2005-2006 school year. The classes also begin small, with kindergarten planned at up to 17 students per class, and the upper grades with 23 per class.

Rubenstein named EVP and dean

The new executive vice president for the Health System and dean of the School of Medicine is an accomplished medical researcher and administrator. But Arthur H. Rubenstein, M.D., is still a teacher at heart. “It’s in my bones and blood,” he said at a July 31 news conference. “I hope to teach in any way I can” while running the system. Rubenstein, 63, was named to the dual posts July 30.

Chinese opera meets Western symphony

May 26: We arrived at Tsinghua University in the late afternoon for our first rehearsal in China. This was our first time rehearsing with our guest musicians, Zhao Yihua and Li Yiping playing, respectively, the jinghu and the pipa, two traditional Chinese instruments. Sun Ping, Dr. Averbach, and the orchestra had all grown relatively accustomed to one another through our many rehearsals at Penn, but Mr. Zhao and Mr. Li were new to this cross-cultural music. They had to understand how they were to mesh with the orchestra, Sun Ping, and Dr. Averbach.

A minute or two on...

After taking last summer off for the Republican Convention, Summer Programs’ popular 60-Second Lecture Series returned to campus this summer, featuring some of Penn’s best faculty speaking — briefly — on subjects of interest. Excerpts from the best of this summer’s lectures appear below.