PHILADELPHIA — Whether human or baboon, it helps to have friends. For both species, studies have shown that robust social networks lead to better health and longer lives.

Molly McGlone, assistant dean for advising at Penn, teaches courses in music and urban studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, including a residential program in Fisher Hassenfeld College House called “Music and Social Change.” McGlone is also a member of the West Philly Coalition for Neighborhood Schools, and

PHILADELPHIA — A collaboration between researchers at Columbia University and Marija Drndić of the University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a three-year, $1.5 million grant for a project aimed at reducing the cost of genome sequencing.

In a world full of 140-character Tweets and sound bite-driven politics, cutting down an hour-long lecture into minute-long remarks might sound like another worrying sign of the times. But if your objective is to get people to stumble upon a bit of knowledge that they might not have otherwise considered, adopting the style of a carnival barker can be a winning approach.  

Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. On Sept. 17, that ancient starlight found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, captured and recorded it for the first time.

Late one night in 2010, Harvey Rubin received an email from his neighbor, the actor David Morse, perhaps best known for his work in the films “The Negotiator,” “The Green Mile” and “16 Blocks.” Morse was watching television coverage of the Haitian earthquake, and wondered why his friend, Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn, was attending to a child dying of diphtheria.

PHILADELPHIA — Computers may be getting faster every year, but those advances in computer speed could be dwarfed if their 1’s and 0’s were represented by bursts of light, instead of electricity.

WHO:            Dean Denis Kinane, School of Dental Medicine, Dean Afaf Meleis, School of Nursing Dean Emeritus D.

PHILADELPHIA — Ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt’s Nile Delta document the region’s ancient droughts and fires, including a huge drought 4,200 years ago associated with the demise of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, the era known as the pyramid-building time.

The night before the Olympic torch was lit in London, a different sort of international competition was beginning at the School of Engineering and Applied Science.