Penn in the News

Michael Grandner of the Perelman School of Medicine suggest the ideal naptime is 20-30 minutes.

An associate dean at the University of Virginia filed a defamation lawsuit on Tuesday against Rolling Stone magazine, which she said portrayed her as the “chief villain” in a discredited article about a gang rape on the university’s campus. Nicole P. Eramo, an associate dean of students, is also suing the author of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and Rolling Stone’s parent company, Wenner Media.

Doctoral candidate Steven Jasinski of the School of Arts & Sciences is quoted about studying a new dinosaur whose keen nose made it a formidable predator.

Doctoral candidate Steven Jasinski of the School of Arts & Sciences is quoted for helping identify a new species of dinosaur.

Doctoral candidate Steven Jasinski of the School of Arts & Sciences comments on identifying a new dinosaur species with a keen sense of smell.

Everyone knows that college costs are soaring. One quick look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ price index for college tuition and fees shows that. According to these data tuition costs are rising faster than even medical care. Although this is now the conventional wisdom, it’s quite wrong. We are not the first to point out the problems with the BLS measure of college prices.

Adam Grant of the Wharton School is cited for his book Give and Take and the “power of the ‘5 minute favor.’”

Are we living through a plague of hypersensitivity? Most readers will be aware of campaigns to dampen hateful speech, to stop "microaggressions," and to get professors to supply students with "trigger warnings" — verbal trailers or coming attractions — when anticipating visual and verbal disturbances. It’s as if we need the equivalent of G, PG, PG-13, R, and X ratings for both texts and talk.

Art instruction -- which has long featured nude models -- is not the same as instruction in other subjects. But a complaint from the parent of a student at the University of California at San Diego has drawn attention to the pedagogy behind a course in which all students (and the professor) are naked for a class session.

Jason Karlawish of the Perelman School of Medicine comments on how difficulty making financial decisions might indicate cognitive aging or a neurodegenerative disease.