Katherine Unger Baillie

Visits to the dentist are a critical component of staying healthy, and too many low-income children lack ready access to high-quality care. The lack of access puts them at a higher risk for tooth decay, which can cause chronic pain and in some cases dangerous infections. Oral health problems are one of the top reasons why children in Philadelphia miss school.

By Erica AndersenCertain mosquitoes don’t get heartworm, and Barbara Biney was keen to find out why.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Think of a city known for policy creation, think tank-driven research and international development, and Washington, D.C. should spring to mind.

A new study by University of Pennsylvania veterinary researchers has found that blood samples collected from an intravenous catheter using a special “mixing” technique are as accurate as those collected via venipuncture, in which a needle is used to access the vein directly.

Each of your cells contains two copies of 23 chromosomes, one inherited from your father and one from your mother. Theoretically, when you create a gamete — a sperm or an egg —  each copy has a 50-50 shot at being passed on. But the reality isn’t so clearcut.

Cancer of the pancreas is rare, but deadly. Research from Penn Vet may slow its spread.

Homeless people are uniquely vulnerable, at risk of a variety of health problems, including chronic illness, hunger, pain, and infections. While resources exist to provide homeless populations with health insurance and care, those resources don’t always make their way to the people who need them.

Read a few lines of Chaucer or Shakespeare and you’ll get a sense of how the English language has changed during the past millennium. Linguists catalogue these changes and work to discern why they happened. Meanwhile, evolutionary biologists have been doing something similar with living things, exploring how and why certain genes have changed over generations.

Cancer of the pancreas is a deadly disease, with a median survival time of less than six months. Only one in 20 people with pancreatic cancer survives five years past the diagnosis. The reason is the cancer’s insidiousness; tumor cells hide deep inside the body, betraying no symptoms until late in the disease, when the cancer has almost invariably spread to other organs.

Pork is the world’s most consumed meat, thanks in large part to the Chinese. China consumes half of the planet’s pork and, accordingly, is home to roughly 50 percent of the world’s pigs.