Newly rediscovered historical medical notebooks solve some mysteries about famous Muybridge images
Muybridge was recruited by Penn in 1884 for a project using emerging motion picture technology to understand human and animal locomotion. He partnered with Francis Dercum, then chief of HUP’s Dispensary for Nervous Diseases, to study how neurological conditions impacted the movements of neurology patients. This year, Geoffrey Noble, a former neurology resident in the Perelman School of Medicine, found the original clinical records for nine of Muybridge and Dercum’s photographic subjects. The notebooks, which are the handwritten clinical records of the Dispensary’s physicians, include rich details about the patients photographed by Muybridge and Dercum. The photographs served as a foundation for Dercum’s analysis of the abnormal gait due to “locomotor ataxia.”
Griffin Pitt, right, works with two other student researchers to test the conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and temperature of water below a sand dam in Kenya.
Griffin Pitt’s upbringing made her passionate about water access and pollution, and Penn has given her the opportunity to explore these issues back home in North Carolina and abroad.
Helping robots work together to explore the Moon and Mars
Penn Engineers, NASA, and five other universities tested robotic systems designed to help unmanned explorers cooperate in the dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, paving the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
From framework to actions: Provost John L. Jackson Jr. talks Penn Forward
In a Q&A, Provost John L. Jackson Jr. explains the relationship between the strategic framework In Principle and Practice and Penn Forward—a new University-wide process and action plan that will advance Penn forward for the next decade and beyond.
