Evan Lerner

Anyone who has flown in an airplane knows about turbulence, or when the flow of a fluid — in this case, the flow of air over the wings — becomes chaotic and unstable. For more than a century, the field of fluid mechanics has posited that turbulence scales with inertia, and so massive things, like planes, have an easier time causing it.

Early diagnosis is critical in treating Lyme disease. Existing tests, however, can only assess the presence of antibodies against bacterial proteins that take weeks to form after the initial infection and persist after the infection is gone.

A dye-based imaging technique known as two-photon microscopy can produce pictures of active neural structures in much finer detail than functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, but it requires powerful and expensive lasers.

This fall, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Neuroscience and Society will partner with the School of Arts and Sciences to offer a first-of-its-kind program that aims to educate non-scientists about the workings of the brain.

Whether researchers are studying the mating habits of snails or teaching robots to fold laundry, federal funding for scientific research has been used as a punchline, especially in times of partisan bickering and governmental belt-tightening. Why spend billions on accruing abstract knowledge when there are more pressing priorities on the national docket?    

Fortunately, no one had to fight for a seat at the head of the classroom. That’s because Ghrist’s lecture is a massive open online course, better known as a MOOC. Ghrist’s class was among the first to be offered by Coursera, the online learning platform with which Penn is partnering.

Thanks to Kate Miller, a bioengineering major in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, there will be a new computer programming class taught at Penn’s Girls in Engineering, Math and Science (Penn GEMS) summer camp.

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that children as young as 2 understand basic grammar rules when they first learn to speak and are not simply imitating adults.

For the third year in a row, Penn will be well-represented at the Philadelphia Science Festival, a 10-day celebration of the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and math.

The field of regenerative medicine holds great promise, propelled by a growing understanding of how stem cells differentiate themselves into many of the body’s different cell types. But clinical applications in the field have been slow to materialize, partially owing to difficulties in replicating the conditions these cells naturally experience.