11/15
Population Association of America Honors Penn Prof With Irene B. Taeuber Award
Jere R. Behrman, a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Population Studies Center, has received the biennial Irene B. Taeuber Award of the Population Association of America.
A Penn philosopher’s five-step guide to changing ingrained societal behaviors
In the 2015 Mexican telenovela “Simplemente María,” María is an average woman who must raise her child alone. To change her lot in life, she procures a sewing machine, learns to sew, and works her way up in the fashion industry. She can soon support herself and her son.
Brain stimulation restores memory during lapses
A team of neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania has shown for the first time that electrical stimulation delivered when memory is predicted to fail can improve memory function in the human brain. That same stimulation generally becomes disruptive when electrical pulses arrive during periods of effective memory function.
Penn Researchers Look to Cuba for Sustainability and Agroecology in Practice
On many farms in the Cuban countryside, yellow flowers bookend certain crops, placed in such a way to concentrate insects there rather than on the produce growing in the rows between. Equipment-toting oxen and tractors are equally common sights, and combined with a self-sustaining water system, minimize the need to transport fuel across great distances.
Visualizing Future Doesn’t Increase Delayed Gratification, Penn Study Shows
Some people are more impulsive than others.
Upcoming Penn symposium tackles obesity, hunger, and other food policy
Public discussion about food policy often lands on either end of a wide spectrum, with obesity, overeating, and unhealthy diets on one side, and hunger and food insecurity on the other.
What Makes Creative People Creative?
In a small conference room in the basement of a hotel, four comedians, two psychologists, a cartoonist and a seven-time New Yorker caption contest winner sit around a U-shaped table.
Penn Psychologists Find Photos, Videos Result in Similar Understanding of Actions
Viewing an action — for example, biting or kicking or punching — in a photo versus a video doesn’t change the understanding of what’s taking place, according to new research from University of Pennsylvania psychologists Russell Epstein,
Understanding how the brain recognizes actions in the visual world
Humans can recognize an action like biting regardless of whether they see a man eating a sandwich or a dog gnawing on a bone. But what in the brain helps to explain the innate similarities of the two, and does this reasoning change depending on the visual cues?