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Cholera vs. flu: Philadelphia’s historical epidemic successes and failures
Map from 1830s depicting the eastern United States, showing cholera cases with red highlights

The map depicts the spread of cholera in Pennsylvania and other eastern states in 1832. (Image: Courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine)

Cholera vs. flu: Philadelphia’s historical epidemic successes and failures

Philadelphia’s response to the 1918 influenza might be the poster child of how not to handle an epidemic. Timothy Kent Holliday makes the case that the city was well equipped for outbreaks decades and even centuries earlier.

Kristen de Groot

New database aims to make Alzheimer’s diagnosis easier and earlier
outline of a head in profile, the brain matter is filled in with question marks and the face, back of the head, and neck is outlined with roots resembling tree limbs and roots.

nocred

New database aims to make Alzheimer’s diagnosis easier and earlier

A five-minute online session will allow neural health to be tracked across time, so that doctors can make an earlier diagnosis and researchers can evaluate medications and other treatments.

Susan Ahlborn

Michael Hanchard on continuing injustice and the fight for equal protections
Michael Hanchard

Michael Hanchard, chair and Gustave C. Kuemmerle Professor of Africana Studies. (Image: Omnia)

Michael Hanchard on continuing injustice and the fight for equal protections

The chair and Gustave C. Kuemmerle Professor of Africana Studies, discusses the recent wave of protests following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed Black women and men across the country.

From Omnia

Penn performers keep creating during pandemic
Mosaic of students singing together via Zoom call

Penn Dischord.

Penn performers keep creating during pandemic

During the pandemic, the student Performing Arts Council has been working with the Platt Student Performing Arts House to encourage and support the hundreds of Penn performers, finding ways to promote their work on social media.

Louisa Shepard

Coding for a cause
Satellite image of Earth highlighting border in different colors. This satellite image created by the Borders and Boundaries Project uses different colors to highlight the intensity of the official state presence along borders.

Coding for a cause

As the viral pandemic shuttered campus and disrupted routines, The Borders and Boundaries Project turned the challenging situation into a chance to give back and get work done.

Kristen de Groot

What the 1968 Kerner Commission can teach us
Historic image of police storming a storefront in 1967 during a riot in Detroit.

President Lyndon Johnson established the Kerner Commission to identify the genesis of the violence in the 1960s that killed 43 in Detroit and 26 in Newark. Pictured here, soldiers in a Newark storefront. (Image: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)

What the 1968 Kerner Commission can teach us

Criminologist and statistician Richard Berk, who worked on the report as a graduate student, explains the systemic racism and poverty found to underlie violent unrest in the 1960s and where COVID-19 and the economy fit today.

Michele W. Berger

‘Beauty alone’ is a reason to read Q-INE
Three blackboards in front of Claudia Cohen Hall say "I identify as..." with various descriptors written in colorful chalk (mormon, human, FGLI, queer, etc)

Untitled photography by Anthony Scarpone-Lambert.

‘Beauty alone’ is a reason to read Q-INE

A new student-run magazine highlights perspectives from the Penn LGTBQ+ community.

Kristina Linnea García

Cave discovery holds clues to earliest Homo sapiens in Europe
People squatting in a cave with face masks on, digging through dirt and clay.

Excavations in Initial Upper Paleolithic Layer I at Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. Four Homo sapiens bones were recovered from this layer, along with a rich stone tool assemblage, animal bones, bone tools, and pendants. (Pre-pandemic image: Tsenka Tsanova, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0)

Cave discovery holds clues to earliest Homo sapiens in Europe

Ancient DNA from 46,000-year-old bone fragments and a tooth reveals this group likely overlapped with Neanderthals for thousands of years.

Michele W. Berger

Kelly Writers House forum amplifies ideas and voices on racial justice
Six people on a videoconference

Penn's Kelly Writers House held a forum on racial justice featuring authors, students, faculty, and staff reading works written by themselves or others. 

Kelly Writers House forum amplifies ideas and voices on racial justice

Kelly Writers House held a forum on racial justice featuring faculty, students, staff, and alumni reading written works, their own and those by others, that speak to these times.

Louisa Shepard