News Archives

Penn families get help with the college search

The students were eager. Tiffani Taylor was the youngest, just one day shy of 14. Her cousin Quiana Braxton, 17, was one of the oldest. And then there were the parents, aunts and friends. What they had in common was they were all about to face the college application ordeal — with a little help from the Office of Admissions. Nearly 50 people came to a seminar last week at College Hall, open to all members of the University community, to hear some advice from Admissions about admissions.

Sociology makes a splash

The American Sociological Association held its awards ceremony on Aug. 7. Douglas Massey, Ph.D., Chair of the Sociology Department and the newly elected president of the association, was chair of the awards committee and served as the master of ceremonies. Awards went to:

“The Hundred Years War: Volume 1, Trial by Battle; Volume 2, Trial by Fire”

Jonathan Sumption Volume 1: $27.50 paper, 670 pages; Volume 2: $45 cloth, 630 pages A “masterpiece,” said Oscar-winning screenwriter (“Darling,” “Eyes Wide Shut”) Fredric Raphael of Jonathan Sumption’s multi-volume history of the Hundred Years War. Sumption, former history fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, has just completed Volume 2, and complementing the publication of this second volume is a new paperback edition of the first volume.

Y2K: How to fear the millennium

Just what we needed: something else to worry about. Weapons of mass destruction, global warming, collapsing currencies around the world -- all of that is old hat at the end of the century of the electronic mass media. So now we have the Y2K computer bug. In its most extreme form, this gets us nothing less than the collapse of civilization as we know it. A couple of things are important to remember:

Classes advance deeper into cyberspace

You can now attend Penn without having to come to Philadelphia. Instead, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, Penn will come to you. The program that makes this possible is called PennAdvance, housed in the College of General Studies.

“It’s an efficient way to get around - there’s no traffic, and the routes are so direct.”

The plans for the plane he’s building are in front of Steve Semenuk, and a piece of the plane is behind him. Photo by Candace diCarlo

University systems should beat the bug

Like all big organizations using computer technology to get their business done, the University has been preparing for the Y2K issues that could bug its systems. As part of Penn’s Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure effort, the man in charge of Y2K preparedness, Michael Kearney, has agreed to write a series of articles to answer any Y2K worries you may have. Here’s the first one.

Alcohol czar

Baruch S. Blumberg

Amid good-humored joking in the media about E.T. and little green men, biochemist Baruch Blumberg, M.D., Ph.D., was appointed by NASA to head up its new Astrobiology Institute. The Institute’s aims include the study of the evolution of life on Earth and the search for signs of life on other planets.

University of Pennsylvania Deploys Supercomputer to Help Unravel Problems in Gene Therapy, Ozone Depletion

PHILADELPHIA The University of Pennsylvania has installed an IBM supercomputer to help solve some of humanity most perplexing problems, such as research on gene therapy, AIDS accessory proteins and atmospheric ozone depletion. The RS/6000 SP supercomputer is twice as powerful as the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer that defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov.