5/18
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From Minesweepers to Intelligent Lightbulbs, Student Inventors Shine as PennVention Heads to the Finals
PHILADELPHIA -- A field of 56 has been winnowed to 11 as University of Pennsylvania students compete in PennVention, a contest for teams of Penn students to develop, patent and commericialize their inventions. The inventions range from high tech gadgets to fashionable consumer products, from potentially life-saving devices to an improved medical implant, with teams representing Penn School of Arts and Science, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Law School, School of Nursing and Wharton School.
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Annan to speak
Nobel Prize winner Kofi Annan will speak at Penn’s 249th Commencement ceremony May 16. Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, has found himself at the center of some of the modern world’s most pressing crises—from weapons searches in Iraq to efforts to the promotion of civilian rule in Nigeria to the ongoing Israel-Palestine peace process—and his vast experience makes him an outstanding choice to speak to Penn graduates, Penn President Amy Gutmann said.
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’XPN moves out, Penn Press moves in
FACILITIES/The historic mansion that WXPN vacated last summer will soon be home to Penn Press. It’s musical chairs time on campus. And when the music stops—or rather, when the dust settles—several Penn staffers will be reporting to work at a new address and a stately old mansion on Pine Street will reopen its doors as a luxury condo.
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Ask Benny: Is Eakins' famous painting still on campus?
Dear Benny, Is “The Agnew Clinic” by Thomas Eakins still hanging in one of the School of Medicine buildings? How did we come to have that painting? Is there some connection between Penn and Eakins? —Avid About Art
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A new focus
Q&A/When Becky Young started teaching at Penn, she was the only photography lecturer in the Fine Arts Department. Now photography is thriving at Penn, and for Young, it’s time to move on.
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As the Protein Folds: The Tail of the Gene Tells the Tale of Machado-Joseph Disease
PHILADELPHIA -- The repetition of three little "letters" within the gene that codes for the ataxin-3 protein is both the cause of and perhaps a solution to Machado-Joseph disease and an entire family of similar genetic disorders, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. Their findings, which appear today in the journal Molecular Cell, present a potential therapeutic role for the ataxin-3 protein for MJD and related disorders such as Huntington's disease.
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Corporate scandals, past and present
David Skeel remembers being asked the same two questions, over and over, in the wake of the corporate scandals that unhinged the business world in 2001 and 2002. “I started getting a lot of calls, and people were asking, first, ‘Have we ever seen these kind of scandals before?’ said Skeel, a Penn Law professor and expert in corporate and bankruptcy law. “Then they were asking, ‘And do these scandals have anything in common?’”
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Up Close
When painter and printmaker Chuck Close was a student at Yale in the early 1960s, he was greatly influenced by abstract expressionism. But as the decade wore on, Close became increasingly fascinated with a way of working that more closely resembled photography —something that would come to be known as photorealism. In his unique working process, Close would first photograph his subject and then put a grid over it, breaking the image down into many tiny individual elements.
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Tsunami aid—the long view
EDUCATION/Penn offers educational expertise to tsunami recovery. So many donations have poured into aid agencies helping the victims of the Southeast Asia tsunami that some groups have stopped requesting funds. Others have begun turning them away. But even after the estimated $12 billion needed for reconstruction is collected, plenty of work will remain, and Penn plans to offer help in an area it knows a little something about—education.
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Lights, cameras and action in Philly
As the 14th annual Philadelphia Film Festival prepares to take up residence downtown and in University City from April 7 through 20, Penn students enrolled in the new cinema studies program are getting ready to hit the theaters to catch films they would never normally see. It¹s a way of making connections between what goes on in the classroom and the outside world of film, says Professor of English and Director of the Cinema Studies Program Timothy Corrigan. It tells the students, "What we¹re doing here is not a hothouse activity. Let¹s get out in the streets."