A study by Douglas Jerolmack of the School of Arts & Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Science and colleagues has uncovered the mechanical properties of the mud used to coat Major League baseballs, with additional remarks from postdoc Shravan Pradeep and Paulo Arratia.

Michael Morse of Penn Carey Law says that ballots are anonymous and won’t be connected back to a name when tabulated.

In an opinion essay, postdoc Emily Pfender of the Leonard Davis Institute and Perelman School of Medicine cautions that social media can set back women’s health by perpetuating fear and misinformation instead of empowering informed choices.

Dennis Culhane of the School of Social Policy & Practice says that criminalizing street camping will simply force homeless people to sleep somewhere else, saddling them with bench warrants and unpayable fines.

Jeffrey Green of the School of Arts & Sciences discusses the Penn Political Union, sponsored by the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy in the School of Arts & Sciences, which hosts student debates and speakers across the ideological spectrum.

Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School explains why it’s difficult to get young people started with blue-collar careers and vocational education.

Peter Conti-Brown of the Wharton School says that whether a president can remove the Federal Reserve chair is ambiguous because the law doesn’t explicitly provide “for cause” protection for the role.

Economists at Penn estimate that Donald Trump’s tax and spending plans would increase the deficit by $4.1 trillion.

A collaborative study by researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Science has shed new light on amorphization, the transition from a crystalline to a glassy state at the nanoscale.

A study from the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the School of Arts & Sciences estimates that Baltimore’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy reduced homicides and shootings in the city’s western police district by about a quarter and reduced carjackings by about a third.