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School of Arts & Sciences
East Coast Exclusive from China: "Secrets of the Silk Road"
With graceful eyelashes, long flaxen hair and serene expression, the "Beauty of Xiaohe" seems to have just softly fallen to sleep-yet she last closed her eyes nearly 4,000 years ago. She was found, and excavated, in 2003, one of hundreds of spectacularly preserved mummies buried in the harsh desert sands of the vast Tarim Basin, in the Far Western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonom
Making the Invisible Visible: Verbal Cues Enhance Visual Detection, Says Penn Researcher
PHILADELPHIA –- Cognitive psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania and University of California have shown that an image displayed too quickly to be seen by an observer can be detected if the participant first hears the name of the object.
Marcella Durand Named 2010-2011 Fellow at Penn’s Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing
PHILADELPHIA -– Marcella Durand has been named the 2010-2011 CPCW Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
Nine from Penn Selected as American Council of Learned Societies 2010 Fellows and Grantees
PHILADELPHIA – Nine scholars from the University of Pennsylvania have been awarded American Council of Learned Societies fellowships and grants.
Penn Physicists Honored With 2010 Europhysics Prize
PHILADELPHIA -- Charles Kane and Eugene Mele of the University of Pennsylvania are among five scientists awarded the 2010 Europhysics Prize of the European Physical Society Condensed Matter Division for the theoretical prediction
Sex, Drugs and Moral Goals: A Penn Psychology Study of Reproductive Strategies and Recreational Drug Use
PHILADELPHIA –- Why is there so much disagreement about whether using recreational drugs is morally wrong? A University of Pennsylvania psychology study shows that the debate about drugs might really be about sex.The study compared two competing theories.
University of Pennsylvania Analysis: Contrary to Popular Models, Sugar Is Not Burned by Self-Control Tasks
PHILADELPHIA –- Contradicting a popular model of self-control, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist says the data from a 2007 study argues against the idea that glucose is the resource used to manage self control and that humans rely on this energy source for will power.
“Grinding Mouth, Wrinkle Eye”: Penn Graduate Student Describes New Species of Plant-Eating Dinosaur
PHILADELPHIA –- A team of paleontologists, including a University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate, has described a new species of dinosaur based upon an incomplete skeleton found in western New Mexico.
Penn Researchers Add Genetic Data to Archaeology and Linguistics to Get Picture of African Population History
PHILADELPHIA –- Genetic researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have combined data from existing archaeological and linguistic studies of Africa with human genetic data to shed light on the demographic history of the continent from which all human activity emerged.
Penn Professor Richard Beeman’s “Plain Honest Men” Wins 2010 George Washington Book Prize
PHILADELPHIA -- University of Pennsylvania History Professor Richard Beeman has been awarded the 2010 George Washington Book Prize for “Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution.”
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
A collector donated 75,000 comic books to Penn Libraries, valued at more than $500,000
Alumnus Gary Prebula and his wife, Dawn, have donated a $500,000 collection of more than 75,000 comic books and graphic novels to Penn Libraries, featuring remarks from Sean Quimly of the Kislak Center and Jean-Christophe Cloutier of the School of Arts & Sciences.
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