Katherine Unger Baillie

Despite tremendous effort and good intentions, many international agricultural development endeavors efforts fail when the implementing agency leaves and the local farmers go back to their old practices.

[youtube]BGECO_dgASY[/youtube]

By Patrick Ammerman Scientists can seem set apart from other disciplines, interpreting the rules of the natural world without the involvement of the social sciences and the humanities. But a new initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is trying to change that by fostering new collaborations around the lynchpin issue of energy.

Take a glance around the oceans, rivers and lakes of today and you’ll confront an astonishing diversity of fish, from narrow-bodied eels to the 25-foot-long giant oarfish to delicate, fluttering seahorses. The vast majority of fish alive today — approximately 96 percent — are known as teleosts, a group of ray-finned fish that emerged 260 million years ago.

Protein drugs, which derive from biological sources, represent some of the most important and effective biopharmaceuticals on the market. Some, like insulin, have been used for decades, while many more based on cloned genes are coming to market and are valued for their precise and powerful functions.

 Despite tremendous effort and good intentions, many international agricultural development endeavors efforts fail when the implementing agency leaves and the local farmers go back to their old practices.

  For the first three years of veterinary school, students spend the equivalent of a full-time job—or more—in the classroom and lab, absorbing the core scientific principles that will guide their practice of animal medicine.

By Patrick Ammerman  A high school mentoring program at the University of Pennsylvania designed for local first-generation students helped two sisters navigate the college-appication process. That path ultimately led both back to Penn.

Just as summer was winding down, around the time when many students were wrapping up internships and checking packing lists for a return to campus, 13 University of Pennsylvania undergraduates flew across an ocean and began acclimating to the thin air of the Swiss and Italian Alps.

To ensure the global population is food secure, it’s estimated that food production must increase at least 50 percent by 2050. One of the best means to achieve that increase is by boosting yield, that is, producing more food on existing cropland with fewer resources.