When Guy Viner learned in 2011 that the University of Pennsylvania was starting a chapter of Camp Kesem, he quickly joined the group. Camp Kesem, with 54 chapters in 27 states, provides a free one-week overnight summer camp for children affected by a parent’s cancer.

Almost every biological process involves sensing the presence of a certain chemical. Finely tuned over millions of years of evolution, the body’s different receptors are shaped to accept certain target chemicals.

Working memory, the ability to hold information in your mind, think about it and use it to guide behavior, develops through childhood and adolescence and is key for successful performance at school and work. Previous research with young children has documented socioeconomic disparities in performance on tasks of working memory.

Heather Andrea Williams has been named the sixth Presidential Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, effective July 1.  Williams will be Presidential Professor and Professor of Africana Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences.

By Marjorie Ferrone

The Luquillo Mountains of Puerto Rico are prone to extremes. Nearly all the rain for the year pours down in two drenching months. Lush, rolling forests give way to rocky, barren peaks. Even the soil is extreme, storing carbon differently than many other soil types, in highly localized iron minerals. 

Harry Reicher of the University of Pennsylvania Law School has been named as the recipient of the USC Shoah Foundation-The Institute for Visual History and Education’s inaugural Rutman Teaching Fellowship.

Cosmologists have established that much of the stuff of the universe is made of dark matter, a mysterious, invisible substance that can’t be directly detected but which exerts a gravitational pull on surrounding objects.

The classroom is not the only place at the University of Pennsylvania where a student can learn a language. Gregory College House’s residential modern languages program offers five “language houses” where students can enjoy new cultural experiences and improve their language proficiency.

By attaching short sequences of single-stranded DNA to nanoscale building blocks, researchers can design structures that can effectively build themselves.