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School of Arts & Sciences
Student-Athlete at Penn Soars Over Life’s Biggest Hurdles
Eliana Yankelev doesn’t let life’s biggest obstacles get in her way.A member of the track and field team at the University of Pennsylvania, the 20-year-old sophomore competes in sprints, hurdles and the long jump.
Evolution Can Select for Evolvability, Penn Biologists Find
Evolution does not operate with a goal in mind; it does not have foresight. But organisms that have a greater capacity to evolve may fare better in rapidly changing environments. This raises the question: does evolution favor characteristics that increase a species’ ability to evolve?
Four Penn Students Named Emerging Leaders in Science and Society Fellows
Four University of Pennsylvania graduate students have been named to the inaugural class of Emerging Leaders in Science and Society Fellows. ELISS is sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Vagelos Gift Ensures Penn's Leadership in Energy Research
With a gift of $15 million, University of Pennsylvania trustee emeritus P. Roy Vagelos, C’50, Hon’99, and his wife, Diana, parents ’90, are continuing to ensure Penn’s leadership in energy research by endowing two professorships dedicated to this critically important field.
Penn Produces Graphene Nanoribbons With Nanopores for Fast DNA Sequencing
The instructions for building all of the body’s proteins are contained in a person’s DNA, a string of chemicals that, if unwound and strung end to end, would form a sentence 3 billion letters long.
Multidisciplinary Examination of Innovation in India Is Focus of Penn Bi-Coastal Conference
Burgeoning India is facing historic macroeconomic instability, and 2014 is shaping up to be a contentious election year there. Add a rapidly growing population and an overtaxed infrastructure, and it’s clear India is a case study in the urgent need for innovation.
Penn and Drexel Team Demonstrates New Paradigm for Solar Cell Construction
For solar panels, wringing every drop of energy from as many photons as possible is imperative. This goal has sent chemistry, materials science and electronic engineering researchers on a quest to boost the energy-absorption efficiency of photovoltaic devices, but existing techniques are now running up against limits set by the laws of physics.
A Tale of Two Genes: Penn Team Elucidates Evolution of Bitter Taste Sensitivity
It’s no coincidence that the expression “to leave a bitter taste in one’s mouth” has a double meaning; people often have strong negative reactions to bitter substances, which, though found in healthful foods like vegetables, can also signify toxicity. For this reason, the ability to sense bitterness likely played an important role in human evolution.
Researchers at Penn Add Another Tool in Their Directed Assembly Toolkit
An interdisciplinary team of University of Pennsylvania researchers has already developed a technique for controlling liquid crystals by means of physical templates and elastic energy, rather than the electromagnetic fields that manipulate them in televisions and computer monitors. They envision using this technique to direct the assembly of other materials, such as nanoparticles.
Lightbulb Café Talk: Penn’s Paul Cobb on Medieval Islam and Christian Holy War
Paul Cobb, professor of Islamic History in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations will give a talk “Getting Crusaded: Medieval Islam and the Pointy End of Christian Holy War” on Nov. 12 at the Lightbulb Café.
In the News
The Wall Street Journal
Suddenly there aren’t enough babies. The whole world is alarmed
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde of the School of Arts & Sciences estimates that global fertility last year fell to below global replacement for the first time in human history.
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Salon.com
The world’s oceans just broke an important climate change record
Michael Mann of the School of Arts & Sciences says that the warming of the oceans is helping to destabilize ice shelves and fuel more powerful hurricanes and tropical cyclones.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
Philadelphia’s Tyshawn Sorey wins Pulitzer Prize in music
Tyshawn Sorey of the School of Arts & Sciences has won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in music for “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith),” a concerto for saxophone and orchestra.
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The New York Times
Jerome Rothenberg, who expanded the sphere of poetry, dies at 92
Charles Bernstein of the School of Arts & Sciences says that the late Jerome Rothenberg was the ultimate hyphenated person: a poet-critic-anthologist-translator.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
He started college in prison. Now, he is Rutgers-Camden’s first Truman scholar
Tej Patel, a third-year in the Wharton School and College of Arts and Sciences from Billeria, Massachusetts, was one of 60 college students nationwide chosen to be a Truman Scholar.
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