Evan Lerner

Technology tends to move toward the bigger and better, cramming more and more features into a given product. But sometimes, less is more.

Crystals are defined by their repeating, symmetrical patterns and long-range order. Unlike amorphous materials, in which atoms are randomly packed together, the atoms in a crystal are arranged in a predictable way. Quasicrystals are an exotic exception to this rule.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded the University of Pennsylvania a $24 Million, five-year grant to establish a Science and Technology Center (STC) focused on engineering mechanobiology, or the way cells exert and are influenced by the physical forces in their environment. This award is part of an overall $94 million from NSF to support four new STCs.

By Patrick Ammerman Evolution tends to create simple rules that can work in organisms of all kinds. These rules are often all that nature needs to build some of the most complicated parts of biology through thousands of years of adaptation.

A flurry of coordinated activity in a brain-spanning network of neurons may sound like the formation of a brilliant new idea, but it is actually the description of a seizure. Understanding why and how this synchronization spreads would be a critical tool in treating severe epilepsy.

A flurry of coordinated activity in a brain-spanning network of neurons may sound like the formation of a brilliant new idea, but it is actually the description of a seizure. Understanding why and how this synchronization spreads would be a critical tool in treating severe epilepsy.

The placenta is oddly ephemeral for an organ. It appears, grows, and changes throughout the course of pregnancy, and then is gone. After delivery, researchers have a few hours at most to work with donated placentae before the tissue dies, and that is the best among limited options. Experimenting on the organ in vivo is effectively impossible.

A team of University of Pennsylvania researchers has developed a computer model that will aid in the design of nanocarriers, microscopic structures used to guide drugs to their targets in the body.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed the first placenta-on-a-chip that can fully model the transport of nutrients across the placental barrier.

What if everything “smart” about your smartwatch was in the band?