Michele W. Berger

An illustration of an old television with a person in sunglasses on it. On top sits a laptop computer with an arm reaching out past the screen, holding a rolled up newspaper. Another newspaper lays flat on top of the screen.

TV news top driver of political echo chambers in U.S.

Duncan Watts and colleagues found that 17% of Americans consume television news from partisan left- or right-leaning sources compared to just 4% online. For TV news viewers, this audience segregation tends to last month over month.

Michele W. Berger ・

Farhan Jivraj sits at a desk and looks at the topographic rug in the biophilic room

Can nature-inspired designs affect cognition and mood?

A team from the Center for Neuroaesthetics created a biophilic room to test the idea. Preliminary findings from a small pilot show promise, but also spur many questions about how to best use such a space.

Michele W. Berger , Kelsey Geesler, Michael Grant ・

A map of the Pacific Ocean. Australia is in the bottom-left corner, with Indonesia and New Guinea to the north. Also pinpointed are Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, with arrows signifying five migration paths designated M1, M2, M3, M4, and M5. M1, M2, and M4 originate in East Asia. M3 originates around New Guinea, and M5 originates between Polynesia and Melanesia.

Solving the mystery of migration into Micronesia

Penn anthropologist Theodore Schurr explains how the use of both ancient DNA and modern genetic materials revealed five paths into this western Pacific region of Oceania, and uncovered subtleties about the society’s marital customs.

Michele W. Berger ・

A put-out cigarette standing on its end, next to half of another crumpled cigarette. In the background are two whole cigarettes.

Parental nicotine use and addiction risk for children

In research done using rats, Penn Nursing’s Heath Schmidt and colleagues found that males that engaged in voluntary nicotine use had offspring more likely to do so, too. Some offspring also developed impaired memory and anxiety-like behavior.

Michele W. Berger ・

Guobin Yang and the cover of the book called "The Wuhan Lockdown by Guobin Yang." The image shows a person fully covered in what appears like a hazmat suit next to a person in a hospital bed. They are outside.

Frontline voices from the pandemic’s early days

In his new book, “The Wuhan Lockdown,” Guobin Yang uses personal diaries from that city’s residents to recreate how it felt at the epicenter of what was then a scary and unknown new virus.

Michele W. Berger ・