School of Arts & Sciences

The question caused consternation. Several decades ago when Peter Conn and his wife filled out paperwork to adopt a baby girl from Korea, one of the questions on a state government form was about the number and names of their “natural” children. 

Like animals, plants go through several stages of development before they reach maturity. It has long been thought that some of the transitions between these stages are triggered by changes in the nutritional status of the plant.

WHO:             Peter Orszag

A new study by University of Pennsylvania linguists shows that the Philadelphia accent has changed in the last century. The traditional Southern inflections associated with Philadelphia native-born speakers are increasingly being displaced by Northern influences.

Philadelphia has the fourth-highest drowning rate among children, and drowning is the leading cause of death among those aged 1-4.  In 2005-2009, African-American children aged 5-14 were three times more likely to drown than whites. Some students at the University of Pennsylvania are taking aim at those sad statistics by teaching life-saving skills in the pool to youngsters from Penn’s West Philadelphia neighborhood. 

Early diagnosis is critical in treating Lyme disease. However, nearly one quarter of Lyme disease patients are initially misdiagnosed because currently available serological tests have poor sensitivity and specificity during the early stages of infection.

A psychological experiment known as “the marshmallow test” has captured the public’s imagination as a marker of self control and even as a predictor of future success. This test shows how well children can delay gratification, a trait that has been shown to be as important to scholastic performance as traditional IQ.

Marissa Nicosia, a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania, and four alumni are recipients of Rare Book School Mellon Fellowships in Critical Bibliography for early-career scholars.

The zoot suit is remembered as a “killer-diller” men’s suit of a long bygone era, but it was more than just a fashion statement, as research by Kathy Peiss, a University of Pennsylvania historian, shows.