The brain’s prefrontal cortex is thought to be the seat of cognitive control, working as a kind of filter that keeps irrelevant thoughts, perceptions and memories from interfering with a task at hand. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that inhibiting this filter can boost performance for tasks in which unfiltered, creative thoughts present an advantage.

University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and other experts will explore online learning and what it may have in store for higher education at the Silfen University Forum at Penn on April 5.

Joseph R. Biden, Jr., vice president of the United States, will deliver the address at the University of Pennsylvania’s commencement on Monday, May 13, 2013.

After seven years of widespread support and alumni participation, the University of Pennsylvania culminated its Making History Campaign, raising $4.3 billion, strengthening Penn’s position among the world’s foremost universities and making major breakthroughs in addressing society’s most complex challenges, Penn President Amy Gutmann announced today.

  WHO:            Robert Wittman, former senior investigator/founder of the FBI's National Art    Crime Team

PHILADELPHIA — Nicola Mason and Yvonne Paterson have been named this year’s recipients of the University of Pennsylvania

The body’s immune system exists to identify and destroy foreign objects, whether they are bacteria, viruses, flecks of dirt or splinters. Unfortunately, nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs, and implanted devices like pacemakers or artificial joints, are just as foreign and subject to the same response.

PHILADELPHIA — NASA has nominated three U.S. science teams to participate in the European Space Agency's planned Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to probe the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter and scheduled to launch in 2020.

PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania Project for Civic Engagement has teamed up with the Center for School Study Councils to host four community forums at the request of the

PHILADELPHIA — For decades, researchers thought that blood plasma behaved like water. But, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania and Saarland University in Germany, plasma is more elastic and viscous than water, and, like ketchup, its flow properties depend on the pressure it is under.