Katherine Unger Baillie

Modeling the most common form of vision loss in older adults

Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss in people older than 50. Kathleen Boesze-Battaglia and colleagues have developed a model system that mimics many features of the human condition, giving scientists a platform to gain a deeper understanding of risk factors and possible treatments.

Katherine Unger Baillie

To resolve inflammation, location matters

A single protein can both restrain the initiation of inflammation and help to actively resolve it, according to new research led by George Hajishengallis of the School of Dental Medicine. He and his colleague found that the type of cell that secretes the protein determines which activity the protein promotes.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Keeping campus trees—all 6,800 of them—healthy and vibrant

Caring for the trees on Penn’s campus—an official arboretum since last year—is no small undertaking. Staff from Facilities and Real Estate Services and the Morris Arboretum lead the way in ensuring that the University’s trees remain safe, vibrant, diverse, and beautiful.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Marching toward the market

Rui Jing Jiang and Brandon Kao, winners of the 2018 President’s Innovation Prize, are well on their way to their goal: to gain FDA approval for a device to treat glaucoma.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Dry conditions may have helped a new type of plant gain a foothold on Earth

Plants reap energy from the sun using two photosynthesis pathways, C3 and C4. A new study led by Haoran Zhou, Erol Akçay and Brent Helliker suggests that water availability drove the expansion of C4 species, which may help to explain how different plant lineages came to be distributed on the planet today.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Staying alert to the rare but real risks of acute flaccid myelitis

Sarah Hopkins, a pediatric neurologist at the Perelman School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has seen an increase in cases of the paralyzing condition this year. She explains what parents and pediatricians should watch for.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Sniffing for science

In the “Citizen Science” course at the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Working Dog Center, Meghan Ramos and Tessa Seales work with dog owners to enhance their pups’ scent detection skills, with an eye toward bolstering the Center’s research.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Getting science right in the fake news era

Over his career as a science journalist, Carl Zimmer has seen legitimate science reporting denied and illegitimate science news taken as fact. In advance of a talk at Penn, Zimmer discusses the problem of misinformation and offers tips for avoiding being fooled by bogus science stories.

Katherine Unger Baillie

How plants cope with stress

With climate change comes drought, and with drought comes higher salt concentrations in the soil. Brian Gregory and graduate student Stephen Anderson have identified a mechanism by which plants respond to salt stress, a pathway that could be targeted to engineer more adaptable crops.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Staging the plague

Eighty-one students training in a diversity of health professions worked with regional and federal agencies to confront an imagined outbreak scenario centered around bubonic plague in Philadelphia.

Katherine Unger Baillie