Attention, freshmen: Theres a whole wide world to explore west of 40th Street, and on Saturday, Oct. 2, the Welcome to the Neighborhood Festival gives you a chance to sample it all in one place.
While the festival is designed to introduce new students to the energy, vitality and diversity of Penns home neighborhood, theres something for everyone at the daylong event. Both Penn and neighborhood performance groups will showcase their talents; local vendors will offer a wide range of arts and crafts; six of University Citys best restaurants will offer a taste of their cuisine, and community organizations from all over West Philadelphia will offer festival-goers opportunities to get involved with the neighbors.
In addition, there will be African, swing, salsa and line dance lessons, carnival games, speakers, and a volleyball and three-on-three basketball tournament.
WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD FESTIVAL: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Clark Park, 43rd to 44th streets from Baltimore to Woodland avenues. Info: visit www.ucnet.com/welcome or call the Office of City and Community Relations, 215-898-4830.
Penn engineers and collaborators have developed a transparent, micro-engineered device that houses a living, vascularized model of human lung cancer—a “tumor on a chip”—and show that the diabetes drug vildagliptin helps more CAR T cells break through the tumor’s defenses and attack it effectively.
Tumor-on-a-chip offers insight into cancer-fighting cells in immunotherapy
Penn engineers and collaborators have built a living tumor on a chip to expose how cancers block immune attacks, and how one existing drug could make immunotherapy like CAR T more effective against solid tumors.
Professor of city and regional planning Erick Guerra recently published a book exploring the economic and societal impacts of American highways. He explains some of the pitfalls associated with an ever-expansive highway system, arguing that spending more on highways might not be the solution to the country’s transportation issues.
Penn urban planner Erick Guerra’s new book, “Overbuilt,” argues that additional spending on building more highways might not be the solution to the country’s transportation issues. In a Q&A, Guerra shares his insights.
Xin Sun prepares samples collected from the Eastern Tropical North Pacific aboard a research vessel. By adding stable isotope tracers to these vials, Sun and her team can track how different microbial groups convert nitrogen compounds into nitrous oxide, revealing how subtle shifts in oxygen and organic matter change the ocean’s chemistry.
Can tiny ocean organisms offer the key to better climate modeling?
In the shadowy layers of the Pacific, microbes decide how much nitrous oxide—a potent greenhouse gas—rises skyward. New research from Penn’s Xin Sun offers an improved understanding of microbial ecology and geochemistry—key to forecasting global emissions in response to natural and man-made climate change.
Two X-ray plates from Arthur Goodspeed, believed to have created the world’s first X-ray image, were donated by his family to Penn’s University Archives.
While the festival is designed to introduce new students to the energy, vitality and diversity of Penns home neighborhood, theres something for everyone at the daylong event. Both Penn and neighborhood performance groups will showcase their talents; local vendors will offer a wide range of arts and crafts; six of University Citys best restaurants will offer a taste of their cuisine, and community organizations from all over West Philadelphia will offer festival-goers opportunities to get involved with the neighbors. 
