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.”
Nanoparticle blueprints reveal path to smarter medicines
New research involving Penn Engineering shows detailed variation in lipid nanoparticle size, shape, and internal structure, and finds that such factors correlate with how well they deliver therapeutic cargo to a particular destination.
A generous gift from alumni Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman brings the work of internationally acclaimed artist Jaume Plensa to the University of Pennsylvania. The latest addition to the Penn Art Collection expands Philadelphia's public art.
A massive chunk of ice, a new laser, and new information on sea-level rise
For nearly a decade, Leigh Stearns and collaborators aimed a laser scanner system at Greenland’s Helheim Glacier. Their long-running survey reveals that Helheim’s massive calving events don’t behave the way scientists once thought, reframing how ice loss contributes to sea-level rise.
