Penn Museum to offer tours for the hearing impaired
Actor and comedian CJ Jones signs the “Highlights of the Galleries” tour in American Sign Language at the Penn Museum and brings new expression to the objects in the galleries. Photo credit: Penn Museum
The Penn Museum is developing multimedia tours for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, scheduled to begin this fall. In partnership with Sign World TV, an entertainment company serving America’s 30 million deaf and hard-of-hearing, the Museum will produce a “Highlights of the Galleries" tour delivered in American Sign Language.
The video tour will feature Sign World TV founder and deaf actor/comedian CJ Jones, whose many credits include guest spots on “Frasier,” “Cold Case,” “A Different World” and “Sesame Street.” The tours will be available to the public on iPods as well as downloadable files on the web.
“It was a remarkable process to witness as he had to fingerspell many of the proper nouns like ‘Merenptah’ and ‘Kebensenuef,” says Amy Ellsworth, the Museum’s digital media developer and keeper of the Penn Museum Blog. “Occasionally, his hand would wilt after a particularly challenging word.”
The project began as the brainchild of Penn Museum’s IT specialist, Jason Stefaniuk, an active member of Philadelphia’s deaf community who died last October. It was his vision to initiate programs for the deaf community at the Penn Museum in coordination with the Penn Language Center.
In December, the Museum hosted a fundraiser that generated $4,000 for the project. Jason’s colleagues have dedicated the new tours to his memory.
Novel plant-based approach to a better, cheaper GLP-1 delivery system
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell investigates the use of a lettuce-based, plant-encapsulated delivery platform as a new oral delivery of two GLP-1 drugs previously approved by the FDA in injectable form.
No brain, no gain: Neuronal activity enhances benefits of exercise
Research led by Penn neuroscientist J. Nicholas Betley and collaborators finds that hypothalamic neurons are essential for translating physical exertion into endurance, potentially opening the door to exercise-mimicking therapies.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
Beating the heat: Designing cooling for bodies in motion
Dorit Aviv, director of Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, studies how humans, technology, and design intersect, paving the way for the development of novel approaches to cooling people efficiently.
Actor and comedian CJ Jones signs the “Highlights of the Galleries” tour in American Sign Language at the Penn Museum and brings new expression to the objects in the galleries. 
